Air New Zealand a clear view of online customer experience
Air New Zealand is an international and domestic airline group which provides air passenger and cargo transport services within New Zealand, as well as to and from Australia, the South West Pacific, Asia, North America and the United Kingdom. Air New Zealand strives to be number one in every market they serve and customers’ airline of choice when traveling to, from and within New Zealand. In their home market, the company’s website acts as the single largest sales channel for the airline. One-third of Air New Zealand’s revenue comes as a result of the website, and represents over $1 billion in sales. Kim Walbridge and Andrew Shannon, based at Air New Zealand’s head office on the fringe of Auckland’s CBD, are jointly responsible for the company’s website. Kim is Manager, Global Online Sales, and oversees a team of ten entrusted with online customer experience. Working closely with Kim’s team, Andrew holds the position of Web and Distribution Team Leader, Group IT Production. As team leader of eight, Andrew’s group spends 95% of their time actively supporting Kim and his team.
Kim adds “Over a third of our New Zealand customers are still on dial-up connections, a group we have come to term as our ‘significant minority.’ Despite broadband uptake improving all the time, we especially wanted an understanding of how our site was performing for these dial-up customers.” Air New Zealand had an existing partner conducting website monitoring and providing alerts, but the team found these alerts to be unreliable. Andrew says, “We were working on trying to better these alerts, when we were introduced to PagePulse. They came in and showed us the tools and scripting available to us and we accepted a one month trial. In comparison to our previous supplier, the PagePulse service proved a far more reliable tool for Air New Zealand.”
“We’re ahead of the eight ball now and we