1. Background

I am based in Singapore, but my hometown is a second-tier city in China which doesn’t have direct flights to the lion city. So, every time when I commute between the two places, I need to transfer in another city, aka taking transit flights or connecting flights.

The logic of transit flights is simple: usually a big city as a transportation hub will serve as the middle point of the journey for passengers to have a layover, and the 2 legs of the connected flights are operated by the airline based in the city. For example, if you travel from Australia to China, you can transfer at Singapore with Singapore Airlines; if you leave from Southeast Asia to Europe with Qatar Airways, you will have a layover at Doha.

Also, if you book the transit flights together, especially via the airline’s official channel, you will enjoy the direct luggage service which means the passengers only need to collect the checked-in luggage at the final destination without worrying about it during the layover.

Transit flights provide convenience for people who travel between two locations without direct flights and becomes a way to generate new businesses for the airline as well.

2. An unhappy transit experience

Early this year, I was planning a round trip from Singapore to Shijiazhuang with my family. When I was booking the flights, an airline that I had never tried before caught my attention with a competitive price. Let’s call it X Airlines, based in City X.

Naturally, I selected this airline for the whole trip from Singapore to my hometown back and forth, and I booked the transit flights on their website. The itinerary looks like below:

Everything was looking good until I started Journey 1 at Singapore airport. The airline staff there informed me that there was no direct luggage service, meaning during the transit in City X, I would need to collect the luggage and check it in again.

I was surprised by this arrangement, and I was also sure that I didn’t see any relevant notice during the booking. Fortunately, the transit time of Journey 1 at the airport of City X was over 5 hours, and we had enough time to take care this luggage issue. So, this journey was not affected too much except a bit more physical works during the layover.

But after finishing Journey 1, I realized that the ‘no direct luggage’ thing would have serious impact on Journey 2, as the transit time between the 2 flights there was only around 1 hour and half. Please see the illustration below with more details:

When I was booking the flights, I thought we could rush a bit during the transit and 1.5 hours should be just fine. But if we would need to collect the luggage and check it in again, that would be 100% impossible.

So, during the stay in my hometown, I contacted the airline for this situation. They were feeling sorry and changed the first flight in Journey 2 (from my hometown to City X) to an early-morning one operated by them on the same day, and the new transit time would be around 6 hours. Until this moment, the problem was contained.

But what really made the whole thing a disaster was that 2 days before Journey 2, the airline notified me that the new flight from my hometown to City X was cancelled due to small number of passengers, then they offered several alternative options:

a. Change the flight again to another one operated by them in the evening of that day. But I wouldn’t catch the next one from City X to Singapore in that case.
b. Change both flights to the next day. This was not feasible either as the travel date cannot be delayed. I was already having other engagements in Singapore on the next day.
c. They cancel my booking from my hometown to City X and refund me. Then I would need to look for the solutions myself.

Obviously, the situation was so undesirable that I had to select option c. Then, I immediately booked a flight from my hometown to City X in the early morning of the same day from another airline. Of course, the price was much higher.

Eventually, the problem was solved, and X Airlines refunded me the cancelled flight one month after the travel date. With extra cost and unexpected anxiety in this incident, I couldn’t help but wonder what was leading to a situation like this, and which parts in the airline’s system went wrong.

3. Let’s analyze it in a deeper level

In my opinion, this is a classic case of digital transformation failure for a large enterprise. The digitization is not only about new digital products, instead, it is more about a general improvement of the business services, better customers experiences, and the integration of different channels.

For X Airlines, the digital products themselves have no issues. I can clearly tell that the airline’s booking website and mobile app are newly developed and the general UI and UX are acceptable compared their competitors. But the airline still failed to keep a customer like me who is digital savvy and travels frequently on the routes where they operate. I attribute the result to following factors:

3.1 The business side has its own issues to solve.

In this incident, the root cause of all the problems is the no provision of the direct luggage service for transit flights. Though I believe the airline has their own reasons for this decision, it would still be wise for them to match the industry standard.

Also, X Airlines cancelled the new flight they were going to offer me from my hometown to City X in Journey 2, which eventually led to the dire situation. Consequently, my suggestion would be that when revising the schedule, besides the economic factors, it would be more desirable for the airline to take account of other ones including customer profiles, reputation damage, and other impacts.

3.2 The digital product failed to provide key information related to the business issues.

The digital channels boast for self-help ways for customers to interact with the merchants. Yet there is no universal standard to require businesses across different industries to provide what kind of information in what kind of way. Consequently, booking products/services on digital channels with a new merchant will remain daunting for many customers, especially those who are not digitally savvy. And this incident with X Airlines is a great example why these customers’ concerns are valid.

When an airline chooses not to provide direct luggage services, this should be communicated in a striking position in the UI design of the digital booking system as it will be a key factor for customers’ booking decisions. X Airlines didn’t do this, it may be because the product owner wasn’t aware of this point, but more likely, it could be because they totally ignored it during the planning phase. Many product teams prioritize technology breakthroughs over the empathy with the customers, and a common result is that key demands from customers can be missing in a state-of-the-art digital product.

3.3 There are loopholes in the integration of the business and the digital service.

Following the last point, let’s assume that even if X Airlines had added a notification ‘No direct luggage service provided’ on the UI of the booking screen, would this be a good solution? Far from that.

From the customer’s perspective, a transit journey with short layover but without direct luggage service should not even be an option, in other words, the customers shouldn’t find and pay for a service that is physically impossible via the airline’s official channels.

This disconnection between the business and the digital service signifies a deeper challenge for digital transformation for all industries: the product team may focus too much on the digital side, i.e. the data structure, the UI&UX design, or the low latency, that they sometimes ignore the actual business requirements and constraints.

For X Airline’s digital booking system, I believe that all the transit services are automatically generated at the backend based on a specific algorithm. And clearly this algorithm is having some serious loopholes that could directly affect the business. The provision of this impossible journey may be only one of the issues here, as this incident is not any extreme case scenario. To fully solve this problem, there should be a strong involvement from the business stakeholders when planning the project and extensive pre-launch testing with client representatives of all kinds of scenarios. This is to make sure that the digital product will not trigger any business challenges.

When I was talking with the X Airlines staff, not matter the airport crew or the hotline team, they were all surprised as well that this impossible journey could be found via the official website. This proves my perception that in X Airlines, the digital team is quite separated from the business side of the company, and this is a key reason for this bad experience.

This problem could happen at any large traditional organizations, as the product team members including the product owner are usually newly hired professionals for the digital transformation projects, and they are not so connected with the business side of colleagues as they should, which brings major risks for the projects.

Having considered these factors, my guess is that the low-price strategy is a key driver for the airline’s business. X Airlines is not a budget airline, it is a flagship travel service provider based in City X, a wealthy Southern China metropolis known as the hometown of oversea Chinese. The airline has great customer resources, their services cover all the major cities globally, their aircrafts are new and top-notch, their crew is large, international and well trained, and the food on-board is also diverse and delicious. But due to these problems in digital transformation, they compete with price advantage in the market, especially in the international routes, and sometimes their prices are even lower than what budget airlines offer.

4. Conclusion

Digital transformation is not easy, especially for large enterprises in traditional industries. It goes way beyond simply developing digital solutions, and it could have serious implications to the business if not handled properly.

From this incident and the analysis above, we can safely conclude several key points that are important to drive a successful digital transformation on top of the product success:

· Take this opportunity to fix the existing business issues. While this may not sound like a suggestion directly relevant to digitization, the clients do expect better products/services after starting to engage with your new digital solutions. After all, the improvement of business itself is an evergreen topic, especially when something new is introduced.

· Empathy with clients is equally important as the technology. The product team should always focus on the clients’ actual need when delivering the digital solution and make sure that digitization is a way to improve customer experience and efficiency, instead of a trendy thing that may miss certain basic customer needs.

· Build strong connections with the business side of the company. This can be the most important task for the product team, as a successful integration with the business stakeholders can help them detect and avoid many risks under the hood. This is a job more relevant to stakeholder engagement, and it sometimes can be challenging for an externally hired tech team. The role of product owner at this time as the bridge between the business and the digital product is extremely critical.

With successful digital transformation projects, the company would enjoy greater chances to increase the profit margin in a more sustainable way, as its competitive edges would be client experiences, quality of service, and reputation, instead of pricing. What’s more, a successful digitization may be a differentiator to cater clients with unique needs, rather than a road blocker to repeal clients with concerns.