Let’s travel together.

How analytics can retain customers

Sudipta DevMumbai

Mark Spicer

Specialising in loyalty marketing and customer relationship management, ICLP had started its operations in India eight years ago, initially as a back office processing unit serving its global clientele. “We want to change our business in India into full service loyalty agency and are looking at helping our clients and prospective customers understand their customers to cross -sell / upsell. We deliver end-to-end programmes for our customers,” said Mark Spicer, GM of ICLP, India. The company’s clientele in the travel and hospitality space include Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, Biman Bangladesh, Cathay Pacific, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Hilton, Cafe Coffee Day, among others.

ICLP does profiling and segmentation of its client’s customers and then helps in understanding them from loyalty perspective – what needs to be done to ensure that they come back. “We have found that a lot of companies here analyse how their product moved, but do not analyse who bought their product. That’s where we can help with analytics and insights,” said Spicer.

Spicer pointed out that while low cost carriers in India are resisting loyalty programmes, in the Middle East LCCs are launching such programmes. He explained the benefits, “First you understand who is sitting on the seat, then what drives them, where do they come from, tracking their travel plans. If you can give them free luggage or free food or an upgrade, that’s the sort of service that people want. You can know what routes they fly the most and indicate to them that travelling on certain dates/ timings are cheaper. You have to know who your customers are and make sure they come back.”

The company has a team of 80 people in Delhi and Mumbai. “We have identified that the skill set in India is particularly strong at analytics, data analysis and reporting. We have a really good team of statisticians and consultants who analyse all the data and spot the trends,” he mentioned.