DALLAS — Since Generative AI hit the mainstream in early 2023, the airline industry has been researching how to implement the tool into their business models. In fact, according to a recent study, at the end of 2023, nearly 100% of airlines were creating programs to implement generative AI into their operations.

In season 5, episode 9 of The Airways Podcast, we had a nice chat with Thor Olof Philogène, who knows this well. As CEO and co-founder of leading insights platform Stravito, Philogène has steered the implementation of generative AI capabilities into the platform to deliver precisely tailored support through a quicker access to consumer insights and market research for global brands, including Delta Air Lines (DL).

Delta, founded in 1925, is the oldest US airline. Originally named Huff Daland Dusters, a crop-dusting company, it later became Delta Air Service, which transports passengers. Today, DL is a major international carrier with over 100,000 employees, serving 190 million customers and operating over 4,000 flights daily.

Innovation has always been the core driver of DL’s success. When the airline needed a way to share research and insights across the enterprise effectively, the company turned to Stravito.

The Stravito enterprise insights platform has enabled DL to democratize its insights and maximize its research potential, improving the flying experience for customers and employees alike.

Tracy Watkins, CX Insights Innovation Manager at DL is enthusiastic about what’s been achieved. “It’s been a great collaboration and partnership, and it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to accomplish with Stravito so far,” stated Watkins last month.

The Challenge: Democratizing Insights at Delta

Delta invests heavily in primary research, including its post-flight survey to measure customer experiences as they fly on DL, as well as ad hoc research to collect consumer feedback on all aspects of travel—from trip planning to arrival.

Delta’s goal was to find an effective way to extract more value from its massive research.

Tracy summed up the problem:

“Like many large companies, one of our challenges is getting the right information to the right people at the right time. We needed an easy way for everyone at Delta to find the information we’ve already gathered about what our customers want and need, so we can make decisions with the customer experience at the forefront of what we do.”

Stravito was able to give DL an effective solution to their issue. As Tracy explains:

“The analogy we’ve used before is that finding the right ‘nugget’ of information that we need in order to make a good decision is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack – Stravito changes that for us.”

Their Solution: Delta Insights Hub

Using Stravito’s AI-powered enterprise insights platform, the airline can store consumer and customer insights in one place. The Delta Insights Hub gives stakeholders at all levels access to crucial information

instantly. Stravito has proven to be instrumental in guiding DL’s future decisions in a customer-centric way.

Kate Rouse DuHadway, Project Manager, Consumer Research and Insight, describes how Stravito has streamlined knowledge management for DL:

“It’s like our own personal Spotify for research and insights. It makes it so much easier for us to find what we’re looking for. And not only us as a research and insights team, but also our stakeholders and clients.

The teams that are using the research, we’ve empowered them to find what they’re looking for, and while they’re at it, find other useful pieces of information that they weren’t even looking for.”

Ensuring success: Best Practices From Delta

Delta embarked on a three-phase plan to utilize the Stravito platform to socialize insights across the company.

Phase One involved creating a launch squad from the Delta Consumer Insights team to name their platform, The Delta Insights Hub. The team then analyzed user requirements to train the AI search filters and optimize the site. It concluded with a 'Megaupload Day Pizza Party', where researchers populated the platform with five years' worth of insights.

Phase Two was the soft launch. The Delta Insights Hub was deployed to the Customer Experience Design department. This team designs the entire customer experience, from onboard food to free Wi-Fi, in-flight entertainment, and how customers check-in bags and navigate security.

In Phase Three, the Delta Insights Hub was rolled out throughout the company. Insights Hub links to relevant resources were incorporated in meetings and presentations whenever possible. Users received a Customer Feedback Video of the Week and weekly highlight emails.

Team members creatively used collections for onboarding, career development, and design inspiration. Kantar Monitor reports were integrated into the platform. User feedback and measured adoption and use metrics were gathered via an Insights Hub Survey.

As Kate put it:

“Ensuring successful socialization of a new tool like the Insights Hub requires learning about your users’ needs, making their jobs easier, and making it delightful. Our partnership with Stravito has made it easy for us to focus on these aspects, because it’s designed in such an intuitive way, and the support we’ve received from our Customer Success Manager has been unparalleled.”

Insights Democratization in Action

Delta has been quick to realize the potential of its new information hub. By democratizing access to insights on traveler needs, preferences, stressors, and delighters, the platform has enabled the iterative application of the research findings throughout all facets of the company’s operations, including how Delta approaches checked baggage, and boarding processes, pre-flight communications, customer service, and service recovery.

The partnership between Delta and Stravito has only just begun. Kate is excited about how the Delta Insights Hub is driving innovation and the many opportunities for positive change it will create in the future:

“Now we’re even using it for onboarding. There’s a feature in Stravito where you can develop Collections of insights, so we’ve developed an onboarding Collection. When new people join the team, everything is in one place, and they can easily get up to speed. We’re finding a lot of other use cases as well.”

Kate goes on to explain the impact of the Delta Insights Hub:

“In rolling out this platform, we’ve even found ways to connect with other teams across Delta which has been really valuable to us. It’s not uncommon for large organizations to develop siloed ways of working, and one of the key things that we’re doing is breaking down silos through research and insights, crossing department lines and all getting on the same page.”

About Stravito

Stravito is a Swedish SaaS Scale-up whose AI-powered enterprise insights platform allows the world’s largest companies to easily store, discover, and integrate market and consumer insights.

Using the Stravito platform, global organizations put more insights into the hands of employees worldwide so they can maximize the value of their market research and insights and make more informed business decisions.

Backed by leading European investors, Stravito was founded in Sweden in 2017 by a team of entrepreneurs with decades of technology and research industry experience. Today, it is represented globally with bases in Stockholm, London, Amsterdam, and the United States.