When talking about travel and transportation, there is only one thing a business should focus on: the end-to-end customer journey. Excellence in experience is what to strive for from the very first point of interaction to the destination.
Travelers nowadays have very strict requirements. From booking a ticket to arriving at a destination, they expect fast, convenient, and prompt assistance when they face issues along the way. No matter how perfectly a system is designed to meet needs, there will always be situations that can’t be avoided. Delays, confusing booking systems, long customer service wait times, and much more create frustration for travelers.
AI is reshaping how the travel and transportation industry is doing business. It delivers more avenues to provide customer care aside from the typical communication channels such as e-mail, short messaging services, and social media. AI provides smarter, faster, and more personalized customer experiences, leading to happier customers and therefore growth in revenue for the business. AI is no longer optional, it is now becoming a necessity.
Beyond tickets and timetables: how AI orchestrates the customer journey
Previously, travelers preferred travel agents over booking apps, relied on printed tickets, and valued personal service and human interaction. However, mobile apps for bookings, check-ins, and payments are now widely used. Travelers also expect real-time updates and personalized recommendations that provide seamless, end-to-end experiences.
SAP delivers an ecosystem that can provide the tools needed to meet these expectations. Using SAP Service Cloud, organizations can manage cases, complaints, and information requests efficiently. AI can respond within seconds, unlike traditional customer service processes that rely on manual handling of support tickets. AI-powered chatbots can also manage a high volume of customer conversations simultaneously. Here is an example integration strategy:
Intelligent selling services for SAP Commerce Cloud
Intelligent selling services for SAP Commerce Cloud are AI-powered services that leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to help deliver personalized customer experiences and optimize booking strategies. These services help analyze customer booking patterns, provide contextual data across customer touchpoints, and offer recommendations that can lead to increases in revenue.
Travel accelerator
The travel accelerator for the SAP Commerce solution is an industry-specific solution designed to enable travel companies to deliver omnichannel digital traveler engagement through SAP Commerce Cloud. For customers that already have an existing SAP Commerce Cloud solution, they can use the travel accelerator to help tailor it for travel business demand. It can provide real-time information to offer personalized customer experiences and reinforce customer loyalty.
Loyalty management program through integration
Organizations may need a system to reward customers for coming back, like earning points, perks, or special treatment when you repeatedly book with the same travel company. For this, an integration to a loyalty management program, either SAP Customer Loyalty Management or a third-party solution, can be used.
The way forward
The Advanced Success Plan version for SAP Customer Experience solutions can help you achieve your business goals. As a starting point, we can create a service engagement plan that provides a tailored approach to meeting your KPIs. During this phase, we also deliver sessions to help you set up SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, and SAP Commerce Cloud while working to ensure that travel and transportation industry best practices are followed.
With AI capabilities available across every solution, you can now categorize your customer base based on travel behaviors and patterns, as well as perform sentiment analysis on customer reviews and support tickets. The Advanced Success Plan can serve as a strategic partner in helping achieve AI objectives. Our experts, backed by deep industry knowledge, can provide guidance on the most effective path forward.
To deliver services that are aligned with each customer’s specific goals, we have organized our offerings into four phases: implementation, pre-go-live, post-go-live, and continuous improvement.
Implementation
During the implementation phase, our focus is on providing adoption guidance to help set up the solutions, from front-end applications to back-end systems. We work alongside the team to establish core capabilities needed for a successful implementation and to help ensure the solution is aligned with business requirements.
This includes, but is not limited to, application user management, key user extensibility, the SAP CX AI Toolkit, integrations, security considerations, and other essential platform capabilities. Our goal is to help build a solid foundation that supports scalability, maintainability, and future growth while enabling teams to get the most value from the platform.
Pre-go-live
In the pre-go-live phase, our focus is to validate and safeguard the solutions that have been built throughout the implementation. The goal is to make sure systems are configured correctly, performing as expected, and ready at go-live.
This includes conducting detailed reviews of business configuration settings, evaluating system performance, validating integrations, reviewing security and user access setups, and assessing analytics and reporting capabilities. We also help identify potential risks, gaps, or areas for optimization before launch, working to ensure issues are addressed proactively.
In addition, we work with teams to confirm readiness across key functional and technical areas, helping ensure that testing has been completed successfully, critical business scenarios have been validated, and the solution is aligned with operational requirements. Performing an adoption checkpoint during this phase helps reduce risk, improve system stability, and support a smoother go-live experience.
Post-go-live
During the post-go-live phase, we work closely with the team to help ensure that recommendations and best practices identified throughout the implementation have been properly configured and are delivering the intended results.
As users begin working in the production environment, new questions, opportunities for optimization, and minor challenges often emerge. During this stage, we provide continued guidance and support to help address those items, whether they are related to business processes, system configuration, integrations, extensibility, analytics, or overall solution adoption.
Our functional and technical experts remain available to review issues, provide recommendations, and help navigate any areas that require additional attention. We also help identify opportunities for further improvements and knowledge transfer, working to ensure the organization is well-positioned to maintain, enhance, and scale the solution over time.
Continuous improvement
Finally, as part of the continuous improvement phase, we help stakeholders remain informed about new innovations and enhancements introduced through SAP release cycles. By staying up-to-date with the latest capabilities, the team can continue to maximize the value of the solutions and drive ongoing business success.
Tara Tracey is global product owner of the Advanced Success Plan at SAP.
Geoffrey Arado is product manager for SAP Customer Experience.
