2014

MDI Gurgaon
Areeb Shaarique 13P128

[CRM STRATEGIES AT
LUFTHANSA]
A course assignment on Customer Relationship Management

Customer Retention Strategy:

Customer satisfaction is utmost important to Lufthansa. Time bound, highly focused passenger surveys
are undertaken to find out inputs and gather comments from the thousands of air travellers who travel
by Lufthansa carriers daily. This highlights Lufthansas commitment to customer satisfaction in great
detail.
An example can be quoted for illustration here:
In one survey, it was highlighted of a need of the passengers for a change in Lufthansa Aircrafts; they
wanted more legroom specifically the business passengers asked for more leg-room and elbow-room,
and also lounges, and an isolated passport control and check in.
Lufthansa responded to this need by redesigning the business class seats and making them wider.
Sometimes a huge demand for business class space has an effect on the economy class. The redesign
allowed any overspill into economy class to be met by telescoping seats on one side of the aisle and
extending them on the other to make the seats wider. This is an example of how Lufthansa values
customer satisfaction. This customer satisfaction is at the core of Customer retention at Lufthansa
All processes at Lufthansa, from design of customer centric seats to delivery of the planes are carefully
thought of. For example, when redesigning or improving seats, the airline seat manufacturer
commissioned to do the redesign is typically brought in to work with Lufthansas marketing and
technical staff.
Miles and More customer loyalty program:
The customer loyalty program: Miles and more is a frequent flyer program for Lufthansas frequent
flyers. It gives them lots of benefits of being a special frequent flyer and has a customer base of around
20 million.

Customer acquisition:
Real time updates and Flight status:
Conduit, which is a leading IT solutions provider, has deployed its community toolbar to provide users
with real time Flight status and updates. Lufthansa is one of many buyers for Conduit solution and it has
experienced impressive sales and increase in customer traffic.

In three week after the launch of the tool, there were more than 1000 downloads, this was a welcome
sign and a signal of a successful customer acquisition strategy at Lufthansa

The user benefits of the IT strategy are:

Flight status enquiry
Travel enquiry
Bookings for flight, car rental, hotel, tour reservations etc.
Also Destination weather updates
Sales, discounts and much more
Customers who do not check mails often, the information is easily available on the Lufthansa community
toolbar
Multi Hub strategy:
The multiple hubs: Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich and Brussels, offers passengers dependable
choices to plan their entire journey and ensure a proper travel. It offers them multiple choices as to
which location to choose to fly from and which location to fly to given the multiple hubs that Lufthansa
offers.
High Quality service:
Lufthansas service is revered for the quality of service it provides to its customers. The quality metrics
are clearly defined and communicated. Lufthansa values customer feedback and suggestions, so much
so that it is even willing to modify certain arrangements offered by the Aircraft manufacturer to suit the
customer demands.
Safety:
Lufthansa has had an impeccable record of Flight safety. The maintenance schedule, on ground checks
and flight safety checklists are specially made to ensure safe skies. It is one of the first Airlines to adopt
any and every modern safety feature discovered and developed in the aviation space.
Reliability:

Customer Development at Lufthansa:

Lufthansa considers customers to be an integral part of their growth plan. Their strategy defines
customers as an integral part of the organization growth and development.
Lufthansa has implemented CRM as a part of its strategy back in 2001. During the implementation, the
entire customer relationship management was integrated under one umbrella. The availability and
response times that were bad due to heterogeneous systems re integrated and the response times
improved. Lufthansa chose people soft as a CRM tool. To let customers adapt to this tool, a training

programme in the form of customer awareness is done. Call centers, mobile solutions, we optimizations
were all made familiar to the old users and all of these solutions were implemented step by step in
order for the users to get used to the solutions slowly.
To retain valuable customers, Lufthansa had also trained all valuable customer touch points
With more and more automated systems the need for customer development has arisen.

Shortcomings in CRM strategy

The major shortcomings of the CRM strategy have been the loss of personalized connect with the
customers at Lufthansa. The touch points have drastically reduced to mere technology like mobile
phones, websites and laptops. This has made the services to appear more standardized and low in
personalization, although it has been possible with the help of CRM tools. CRM tools also depend on the
business tools and the process rules. Data protection and safeguard has been an issue with the
implementation of CRM software. With the introduction of the CRM software, the relationship does run
the risk of becoming more transactional and similar has been the case with Lufthansa although to a
lesser degree.

Improvements in the CRM strategy for Lufthansa:

After the successful implementation of CRM at Lufthansa, even better services can be provided by the
following actions:
Improving navigation:
It can also help to improve the navigation features at the CRM tool. As the previous product was
manufactured by sapient and Lufthansa together, it did not have the functionality of saving the users
data. The user can save data at the first entry so that the user does not need to enter data again and
again.
Swipe functionality
The new I-phones and Android phones demand new features and to integrate CRM on those systems
would require special integrated features and those features if incorporated in the current CRM tool
would further improve the CRM functionality with Lufthansa.
Also Lufthansa can take a more personalized approach to CRM practices in the sense that the CRM tool
only acts as a facilitator and the best CRM practices would still tend more towards Relation rather
than standardized IT tool.

References:
1. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14757.html
2. http://www.expressandstar.com/business/midlands-business/2012/10/02/lufthansa-enjoysgrowth-in-business-customers-going-from-birmingham/
3. http://www.computerwoche.de/a/lufthansa-passage-startet-crm-system,1059040
4. http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/technology/customer-relationship-management-basedenterprise-wide-data-warehouseat-german-airl
5. www.Wikipedia.com
6. http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/lufth.htm
7. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14757.html