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Predictions for the future of crowdsourced data in the airline industry for 2023

By Dwight Harris, Jr., CEO of DataScalp

Consumers today desire a platform where they can express their discontent with air travel, as they often feel that their complaints go unaddressed. With the emergence of technology and crowdsourced data, individuals can now report their experiences, see visual representation of similar consumer experiences, and make more informed choices about which airline to select before booking their flights.  Consumers can use this data to best avoid air travel issues, or at least decrease the likelihood of an air travel issue. This data also provides airlines with valuable insights into customer satisfaction and demands.  

Crowdsourcing isn't new in 2023, in fact, thousands of people contribute and rely upon their data on a daily basis through transportation apps like Waze and Nexar.  These tools help us navigate our routes and protect us when the unexpected occurs. What we haven't seen to date is a platform that captures and utilizes crowdsourced data, leverages inferential statistics into a simple to understand dashboard that ranks corporations with current data. This well-conceived idea begs the question: why haven't airlines such as Southwest or JetBlu previously adopted a similar concept to the skies?

I predict that 2023 will be the year that consumer fliers finally put their foot down and demand both transparency, accountability and change the industry has warranted for decades.  The key will be capturing consumer experiences, and reporting what is important to the air traveler.

Empowering the Voice-of-the-Customer

There is a significant gap between what airlines believe their customers desire and what customers actually want. For example, airlines report the % of on time performance.  However, that fails in capturing the degree of lateness, which is what consumers actually feel.  Although sentiment analysis and ratings offer some insight into preferences, there is insufficient ‘Voice of the Customer' data on understanding what's important to customers as it relates to air travel, on-time, number of cancellations, lost luggage and more.

Capturing the voice of the customer should be the top priority for airlines that want to maximize profits and minimize expenses. However, average customer survey response rates range from 5% to 30%, leaving a significant portion of the customer base unrepresented. To address this issue, machine learning and statistical theory can be employed to analyze consumer complaints as a way to understand consumer behavior.

Leveraging the Power of Crowdsourced Data

As consumer technology continues to advance, crowdsourced data is expected to play a larger role in the way consumers both research and review services. With the proliferation of review websites and apps, it has become easier for travelers to share their experiences with others, though these outlets lack the ability to collect, normalize and visualize large sets of data, leaving consumers without clear insights based on that data to help them make purchasing decisions.  

Consumers will be the first ones to rally behind this new technology, once they recognize the level of empowerment this technology will enable, finally giving them a voice backed by hard data, and not just tweets on a Twitter thread or poor Google reviews.  

The Rise of Performance Dashboards

A key trend we will likely see emerge in 2023 is the rise of performance-monitoring dashboards in consumer, corporate and even governmental capacities. Real-time reporting is becoming ever more possible with advances in cloud technology, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, allowing data to be collected, analyzed and presented in a timely, ordered fashion that consumers, companies and government agencies will use to make better decisions.  

I predict that at least one of the major airlines will endorse a performance dashboard by the end of 2023, which would indicate that ignoring the voice-of-the-customer is begrudgingly going away.  

As we move into 2023, effective methods of gathering and analyzing voice-of-the-customer data are necessary for the airline industry, as low response rates for customer surveys and a lack of information on customer behavior and preferences currently hinder the industry's ability to effectively serve its customers. The use of crowdsourced data and performance-monitoring dashboards in the airline industry will enable the real-time collection and visualization of large amounts of customer data, empower consumers to do pre-purchase research and ultimately be able to influence airline prices for the first time.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dwight Harris Jr. is the founder and CEO of DataScalp, the first online platform that captures consumer experiences and uses consumer data to rank companies in a performance dashboard. Over the past twenty years, Dwight has masterminded dozens of organizational change initiatives, and is recognized as one of the nation's most innovative experts in operational transformation and execution. He has resurrected organizations ranging from international conglomerates to public institutions to private companies across a broad spectrum of functions and industries. Dwight earned his undergraduate business degree from University of California at Berkeley and his Masters of Business Administration from Cornell University. More about Dwight can be found here.