Bill McKimm, Vice President of Travel at eSIM Go says about Data Security, Digital Transformation, and Passenger Experience for Lufthansa Group Airlines to Offer Seamless Experience to Passengers

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

eSIM Go, a leading provider of digital connectivity solutions, has positioned itself as a pivotal player in the aviation sector’s digital transformation. The company’s commitment to data security and privacy is a cornerstone of its operations, ensuring that both partners and their customers enjoy secure, reliable, and high-quality data access across the globe.

In an exclusive interview, Bill McKimm, VP of Travel at eSIM Go, discusses how the company is revolutionizing data security, digital transformation, and passenger experience for Lufthansa Group Airlines. He highlights eSIM Go’s commitment to top-tier data protection, seamless integration of eSIM technology within Lufthansa’s digital strategy, and the enhancement of passenger connectivity. McKimm emphasizes how eSIM Go’s solutions not only meet the rising demands for secure and reliable mobile connectivity but also play a crucial role in elevating the overall travel experience and fostering customer loyalty across Lufthansa Group’s airlines.

With the growing importance of data security and privacy, how does eSIM Go ensure that its services meet the highest standards, and how are these safeguards communicated to passengers?

Security of our platform and the protection of our customers, and their customers’ data, is at the heart of everything we do – from working with tier 1 cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon, to confirming our upstream mobile connectivity suppliers are equally reputable and reliable to ensure all our partners and customers have fast, safe and secure data access.

We initially communicate this to partners as part of their on-boarding, but we’re always making further improvements which we share through our partner channel updates.

Wherever our customers are in the world, the data always breaks out to the public internet through our locations in Europe and the USA. This ensures the highest standard of quality, security and privacy.

How does the integration of eSIM technology across Lufthansa Group’s airlines align with the broader digital transformation strategy within the aviation sector?

Digital transformation strategy has accelerated the evolution of the aviation sector’s infrastructure, operations and passenger experience. And it’s in the last of these where eSIM connectivity really comes to the fore. Nobody in aviation is even considering providing mobile data to passengers unless it’s a digital proposition in the shape of eSIM (rather than the more ‘analog’ fulfillment of old-fashioned plastic SIM cards).

Airlines are encountering increased passenger expectations for a fully digital experience; one that equips each individual with pertinent ticketing and other documentation, real-time updates, personalized offers and the ability to communicate with the airline, particularly during disruptions. Providing eSIM-based connectivity services to passengers provides airlines the conduit for facilitating a seamless and differentiated end-to-end travel experience that hinges on their digital platform, allowing them to optimize revenue and inspire loyalty.

As well as being an enabler for digital customer experience, eSIMs are also a fully digital ancillary product. But airlines don’t have to be advanced in their digital transformation to harness it – our fully managed Powered by Breeze solution allows an airline to go to market with a branded eSIM service very quickly while we take care of all the tech, support and software updates.

Can you elaborate on the key advantages that eSIM Go’s ‘Powered by Breeze’ solution brings to Lufthansa Group’s passengers, compared to traditional mobile data solutions?

Today’s international passengers are a new breed of “connected travelers” whose appetite for connectivity has risen in line with the widespread growth of smart mobile devices, video streaming and 5G access. The needs of connected travelers – whether business or leisure – will only expand further as consumer AI and other technologies become more data hungry. As demographics change, more passengers want to constantly communicate via social media, sharing live, media-rich travel experiences with others.

All the data that passengers want to consume comes at a price. The typical options are:

• Traditional data roaming, where you use your mobile device and your existing contract/service to connect to mobile networks in the places you visit. Roaming charges can be very high in some places; potentially thousands of dollars just for watching a few hours of video streaming, for example.
• Public Wi-Fi, where instead of using the mobile/cellular network you connect to the internet via Wi-Fi hotspots. This can cost less than traditional data roaming, but public Wi-Fi is also notoriously patchy in performance terms and extremely susceptible to cyber attack.
• Buying a local SIM card when you arrive at your destination. These use cellular networks rather than Wi-Fi and can be cheaper than traditional roaming in some places. However, it’s a time consuming process, the quality can be inferior, many SIM cards are unreliable and you run the risk of misplacing your existing SIM card when you temporarily replace it.

It’s in this context that Powered by Breeze provides a strategically powerful opportunity for brands like Lufthansa Group to satisfy and delight their customers now and tomorrow. This delivers both a relevant and essential service (e.g. “mobile data for my vacation to Mexico”) and the conduit for a hyper-personalized experience that both draws upon the travel provider’s entire portfolio and aligns with its digital strategy.

What were the critical success factors identified during the initial launch of the SWISS eSIM service, and how are these being leveraged for the rollout across Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, and Brussels Airlines?

Lufthansa Group (LHG) is the first we’ve partnered with in the aviation section that has multiple airline brands. Rolling one out first (i.e. SWISS) ahead of the others is an intelligent approach and one that, generally speaking, airline groups often tend to do with new services and other innovations. In that respect, it’s par for the course.

For any new Powered by Breeze service, the kinds of critical success factors we look for are mainly operational and adoption-based. On the adoption side, we’re looking for a positive uptake among target customers both in terms of sales conversion and a positive customer experience. Listening to customer feedback is very important, and we’re also looking for a strong repeat purchase rate showing that passengers who’ve tried it are confident to use the service for their next trips.

After the initial launch, we encourage partners to apply different marketing campaigns, messages, and use of customer touch points and measure the response, adjusting accordingly.

Operationally, we keep a close eye on metrics that show the service is running smoothly and that all the technical considerations around the customer journey are performing as expected.

In what ways do you foresee eSIM technology influencing passenger loyalty and retention, particularly for frequent travelers across the Lufthansa Group airlines?

The best ancillaries provide genuine additional value. eSIMs help travelers ‘beat the system’ and avoid expensive data roaming charges. Brands like Lufthansa Group are transparent about using travel eSIMs as another way of ‘championing the customer’ and providing a great passenger experience – literally protecting people from the kinds of horror stories you hear about when consumers rack up hundreds or even thousands of Euros/dollars in roaming charges when traveling to high-cost destinations. 

Compounding the feelgood halo effect of eSIMs is their flexibility as either a product, an incentive or a perk. For example, we see airlines and other travel brands offering free eSIM data as a way of enticing account registrations and reducing customer acquisition costs. UK-based travel insurance comparison site Confused.com has already embarked on precisely this strategy and we’ll see further traction among OTAs soon.

eSIMs also fit snugly within traditional loyalty schemes, representing an achievable reward that scales from less than $5 to over $100 per redemption (what’s often referred to as ‘micro-redemptions’). Achievable rather than aspirational rewards are critical to reducing the liabilities that unspent loyalty points accumulate on travel brands’ balance sheets. We are working with several leading European airlines who want to introduce eSIMs as perks in various tiers of their premium VIP and frequent flier programs to create more value and reduce churn.

How does eSIM Go plan to manage and support the seamless connectivity in over 190 countries, and what measures are in place to ensure consistent and high-quality service for travelers?

This is our primary focus as a business with 100+ experts.

Powered by Breeze is built on an unparalleled industry-leading platform, customer success and support infrastructure, and set of commercial agreements that addresses all the requirements for providing mobile data connectivity in all those different countries.

• We only partner with tier 1 mobile network operators (MNOs). This ensures the highest possible quality and reliability of connectivity products.
• We provide multi-network eSIMs in many destinations, which means that users can seamlessly connect to mobile network ‘B’ if they ever find themselves in a signal deadspot for mobile network ‘A’.
• We have a deep understanding of telecom service provisioning, billing and other specialized knowledge to develop endlessly scalable software that can assign eSIMs from multiple MNOs and deliver them to customers.
• We are fully invested in the mobile telecom industry. As members of the GSMA, ITU, ISPA and others, we work closely with network operators to ensure the consistent delivery of the latest standards.

This capability continues to evolve to meet the growing demands of aviation and other travel partners. In the last year, we increased our 5G footprint, added new and enhanced products (including unlimited data bundles), lowered rates in most countries, and expanded our global coverage from 150+ to 190+ countries. Our long-term strategy will evolve these capabilities further.

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