Customer Success matters at Blink Parametric

Hot on the heels of the Blink Parametric major UX upgrade and global rollout across its real-time Flight & Luggage disruption digital assistance services, our team has been immersed in partner training as we equip each new partner for the optimal usage of our parametric products and services. Our central focus is to ensure that our partners succeed and achieve their objectives, whether it is an increase in sales or ROI, or maximising customer engagement and satisfaction in the event of a flight or luggage delay. Fundamentally, achieving customer goals is what customer success is all about.

We know the travelling public appreciate the value of a simple, seamless service experience delivered at speed, particularly when they are facing frustrating or stressful travel delays and inconvenience in unfamiliar surroundings. Our parametric real-time flight delay and luggage delay solutions deliver a superior experience that results in a positive outcome following a disappointing event. A positive customer outcome in their time of need can contribute to the formation of a powerful business dynamic where customer satisfaction measurables such as net promoter scores improve, trust builds, revenue grows, and retention, renewal and referral levels are boosted. When our partners and their travelling customers are happy, everybody wins!

It only takes one air travel disruption event, such as the UK National Air Traffic Control system glitch in August to trigger hundreds of flight cancellations and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of travellers. Being unable to depart, connect for an onward journey or being caught overseas unable to return home – the impact on delayed customers and travel insurer claims teams will be felt for months to come.

For those travel insurance brands and insurers not utilising parametric technology to handle flight delay, flight cancellation and luggage delay claims, this will have resulted in a major spike in claims that will need to be processed manually. This type of surge event can have a hugely negative impact on traditional claims handling processes and lead to major backlogs on all types of claims being processed. Thankfully, our Blink Parametric travel insurance partners and the travelling insured benefitted from real-time assistance to alleviate the immediate inconvenience.

In turn, I’m delighted to take this opportunity to highlight how we work and encourage prospective partners to engage and explore how we can assist in the development of their real-time parametric insurance portfolio.

How we work with partners to ensure their success when deploying parametric technology

Customer Success at Blink Parametric supports partners from onboarding, service integration and ‘go-live’ through to contract renewal. We regularly speak with our partners to assess performance and identify opportunities for improvement. There are five key steps that are central to our proven and robust customer success implementation plan and we work side by side with our worldwide partners to ensure that it is executed to maximum and lasting effect.

1. Objectives: We identify our partners' mission, values and goals from the outset and keep them on our horizon throughout the project.

2. Customer journey: Propositions are designed and implemented for delivery across the Blink Parametric platform as per our partners’ Terms & Conditions.

3. Communications: Personalised white-labelled customer communications are created for each stage within the journey to align with our partners’ brand personality and tone of voice.

4. Process integration: Full-service technology integration is led by our Product & UX team. The customer travel portal is white-label, customised in line with partner brand guidelines and website look and feel. Partners’ frontline staff are trained on the support portal tools and processes to simplify and streamline the management of content and report output.

5. Measurement, results and continuous improvement: In addition to the wealth of data being made available to partners, we assist them to establish KPIs and utilise dashboard report summaries for performance assessment, analysis and future change initiatives. 

As a Customer Success team, we serve as the voice of our partners and their customers around the world. A key aspect of our role is to consistently assess, compile and channel essential partner and customer insights back into the Blink Parametric business, and in turn keep partners up to speed on new features and enhancements. In that way, we recognise our partner and customer priorities and fulfil our commitment to ongoing innovation.

How the Blink Parametric Flight Disruption solution works

An insured traveller simply registers their flight details prior to travel. This is a super quick and easy process, additionally it provides added touch points for the brand partner to communicate with their client. For some partners such as airlines and Online Travel Agents (OTAs) we can even auto-register the customer’s flight based on data available from the partner. Blink Parametric then monitors the flight(s) in the background in real-time. Any eligible delay that occurs to the registered flight automatically results in a traveller being notified and being offered choices in real-time that help alleviate the stress and consequences of the delay.

These assistance options can include airport lounge access if a flight is delayed by a predetermined number of hours, or a cash payout per traveller, which is directly issued. There is no need for forms, receipts or phone calls. We also integrate with a global service that can provide hotel accommodation reservations for extended delays or flight rebooking for customers. The traveller selects their preferences via their smartphone. The average resolution time is four minutes or less. For some partners we can also allocate reward points back to a membership account or redirect the customer back into the travel partner’s buying ecosystem.

For the travel insurance sector, we specialise in high-frequency, low-value claims with market-leading, multi-award winning real-time propositions for global flight delay, flight cancellation, checked airline luggage delay and loss.