Taking customer experience to new heights for a major international airline with an insight community

This case study is part of a year-long, 25th anniversary series that explores where insight communities have been, where they are today, and the market and customer trends that are shaping where C Space is taking insight communities next.

A major international airline turned to C Space to enhance its customer experience (CX), establish differentiated services in a highly competitive industry and assess its sustainability initiatives in aviation. As a trusted partner with multi-market research experience and deep travel industry expertise, C Space set out to connect our client with their most loyal customers through an insight community and, ultimately, inform the airline’s business strategy and plans for growth.

To provide our client with direct access to frequent flyers and in-depth feedback on every step of their journey – from booking to boarding and arrivals to issue resolution – C Space established an insight community where we engage frequent flyers from seven European markets on an ongoing basis.

We balance breadth and specificity within the insight community, exploring personalization expectations of customer and functional communication needs. We provide the ability to double-click on customer pain points and magic moments in the travel journey, such as amenity kits and the app experience. This arms our client with actionable insights and strategic recommendations for change. And with the longitudinal benefits that a C Space insight community offers unlike traditional market research, we’ve provided over 15 years of progress for the airline in a changing business landscape.

The customers within the insight community also help inform successful product development, support the airline’s key CX and commercial decisions and give our client real-time sentiment analysis of how their frequent travelers view low-emission aircrafts and other sustainable business strategies.

Through the combination of CX and production innovation research, alongside the organic insights that comes from participating customers who initiate their own conversations, the insight community is an essential resource for teams across our client’s organization. Our approach, underpinned by best-in-class customer engagement strategies and expertise in insight community management, helps the airline adapt to evolving passenger needs, enhance satisfaction and leverage new opportunities, driving real impact.

For the fourth consecutive year, our client has won a prestigious industry award that recognizes organizations for their achievements in customer experience. Additionally, the airline won a well-known data and insights award, confirming our client’s dedication to data-driven decision making for the optimal customer experience.

To mark 25 years of insight communities — and C Space’s 25th birthday!  — we’ve reimagined our most popular guide, Customer Inside, to explore where insight communities have been, where they are and where we’re taking them next.