Airlines have experienced their fair share of challenges in the last few years. While it might be difficult to predict with certainty how the industry will evolve and recover in the near future, there’s no doubt it will remain resilient. The recent announcement that Frontier is planning to buy Spirit Airlines is a case in point. In addition, Bain has forecasted 2022 global airline revenue to reach $488 billion.

As the industry recovers, airline leaders are finding ways to accelerate the digital transformation that customers demand. There’s much to learn from other industries, in particular retail, on how to best provide excellent customer experiences and build loyalty while preventing fraud.

Don’t Let Fraud Compromise the Customer Experience

There’s no better time than now to introduce customer-centric experiences, especially as travelers grow accustomed to flexible payments and refunds. Those expectations are here to stay, and airlines are looking for ways to maintain that flexibility while avoiding fraud. As airlines build flexible payment options and refunds into their long-term strategy, it’s worth considering how they can use these tools to their advantage while at the same time protecting themselves from fraud and scammers.

According to estimates, e-commerce losses to online payment fraud were expected to reach $20 billion globally in 2021. That’s a growth of over 14 percent compared to the $17.5 billion recorded in the previous year. Airlines that are already dealing with soaring jet fuel prices — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concerns around global oil supplies have driven jet fuel prices up to the highest level in more than 13 years — and lingering pandemic-related challenges simply can’t afford additional losses due to online payment fraud.

Tech Tools for Delivering a Great Customer Experience

One in three consumers expect travel providers to offer multiple payment options, but many merchants in the segment still view payment diversity as separate from customer experience. However, a purely cost-focused perspective can restrict how airlines positively impact the customer journey. In an increasingly mobile commerce age, a robust digital transformation is paramount in order to win over younger, tech-savvy customers, and when it comes to mobile payment adoption the travel industry still has ways to go.

Riskified’s data shows that e-wallets such as Apple Pay, Alipay, and WeChat are being readily used for payments in online high-end fashion orders, and even more so since the start of the pandemic. But in travel, credit cards are still the preferred method of payment. For those customers who do use e-wallets, PayPal seems to be the payment method of choice. However, this method is a fraudster’s favorite since PayPal accounts store payment details. Aware of device-fingerprinting technology employed by tech-savvy providers like PayPal, fraudsters often sell user agent data and cookies on the dark web along with the account credentials.

Why Customer Experience Will Continue to Be Paramount in Building Loyalty

2021 was one of the most challenging years airlines have ever faced, and this unsurprisingly had an impact on customer service. With labor shortages and thousands of flights being canceled, customer frustration was at an all-time high. To tackle these challenges while improving the customer experience, industry leaders are looking to technology, namely tech innovations that have already had success in other industries like retail. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) tools utilized to sort through customer tickets and requests, as well as automated chatbots, can also be used in the travel industry. In addition to lowering costs and raising productivity, chatbots can improve customer satisfaction. In fact, Dutch airline KLM found that its service chatbot got a higher Net Promoter Score than typical channels.

It’s important though to strike the right balance between human agents and AI-powered agents. The airlines that can provide a stellar customer service experience — even when customers are frustrated — will be in a better position to build long-term loyalty.

The Power of Partnerships

As airlines continue to push their digital transformations forward to meet the demands of the rapid evolution of air travel and customer expectations, it will be important to look for partners that will help deliver the experiences customers are looking for. Leaders in this sector are doing just that by looking to the retail industry for inspiration, but they understand they can’t offer customers everything they need without some assistance. They need guidance from partners with experience in digital transformation, retail customer journeys, and e-commerce fraud prevention. They need partners with a finger on the pulse of current and upcoming trends. These partnerships not only help the airline industry move forward and provide seamless and engaging experiences, they also teach airlines how to anticipate and mitigate risk as they adopt a more progressive and digitally savvy business model.