Airline personalizes the customer journey with Salesforce

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Surf Air, a monthly fee-based airline that services California travelers, launched two years ago, it needed a customer relationship management (CRM) system that could help turn prospects into customers more easily and then track customers throughout the customer journey. At the time it launched, it was using rudimentary tools, and it needed something more sophisticated to track prospects, turn them into customers and then upsell to them in a personalized way. It needed Salesforce to be more precise in its customer journey mapping.

"We were using Excel spreadsheets and shared printouts to dial for dollars and get our members on board," said Justin Hart, VP of member acquisition at Surf Air, at the Dreamforce 2015 conference. "We realized, no, it's just not going to do. … From the moment that a member gives us their information as a prospect … we track them all the way through existence. We know their preferences -- where they fly, how they fly -- to serve them better."

Surf Air uses Salesforce's Sales and Service clouds, as well as Pardot and Data.com, to home in on its customers' journeys and preferences. Referrals take a much different journey, Hart said, than someone who comes to the site via a paid ad.

For more, check out the video above; and for more on Dreamforce 2015, check out SearchCRM.

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