How an Insight Community delivered clear commercial and organisational value for one of the UK’s leading airlines
The client is a UK airline, operating flights across hundreds of destinations.
It’s a hyper-competitive, high-stakes industry. Competition is fierce, customer experience service expectations are high, and failures are instantly magnified on social media.
The client wanted a channel for “always-on” customer understanding, to support their wider insight programme, helping them proactively spot and resolve customer issues and allowing for tactical and strategic insight projects to take off at speed.
Staying ahead of customer expectations in a high-stakes category
The client operates in a category where customer expectations are high and loyalty is fragile. Its core customers are frequent flyers with deep category knowledge, strong opinions and a clear view of what they need from the brand. When things go wrong, dissatisfaction is fast to surface and highly visible, yet traditional tracking data often lags on emerging issues, providing a reactive point of view. Only running ad hoc research means feedback can be fragmented, and links between insights missed.
The business needed a way to stay continuously connected to customers across the end‑to‑end travel journey – from journeys to the airport and lounge experiences, through to in‑flight service. Research demand spanned tactical and strategic questions and cut across almost every department.
The brief was for an always‑on, cost‑effective solution that could surface emerging themes early, provide access to expert customers (bringing a fresh perspective to internal team), and support better decision‑making across the organisation – while keeping pace with a fast‑moving, complex travel landscape.
Always-on access to customers, at speed
To help the client stay ahead of rising customer expectations, Researchbods partnered with their insight team to design and deliver a branded, always‑on Insight Community tailored to the realities of the sector and which provides continuous access to highly engaged, expert frequent flyers.
The Community enables teams across the business to explore both tactical and strategic questions at speed – spanning the end‑to‑end travel journey, from airport and lounge experiences to in‑flight service, loyalty and future propositions. Our platform capabilities support a diverse research programme, combining a vast quant toolkit with in-depth qual, in‑the‑moment WhatsApp diaries (completed as journeys unfold) and organic customer feedback, which can be analysed quickly using our platform’s in-built AI Chat tool. Regular discussion rooms allow topics to be explored in depth, while ongoing member‑generated content helps surface emerging issues and shifting expectations early.
Emerging insights are synthesised and shared through weekly and monthly reporting, ensuring fresh insights are quickly fed back into the organisation. This approach helps the client stay close to customer needs, spot issues earlier, and make more informed decisions across departments.
Measurable ROI and organisation-wide value
The Insight Community has delivered clear commercial and organisational value. By replacing fragmented ad‑hoc research with an always‑on approach, the business has achieved annual savings of approximately £150k, while increasing the speed and consistency of insight delivery.
Crucially, the Community is embedded across the organisation. It is now used by over 20 internal stakeholders, with almost every department interacting with the Community, from the brand and food and beverage teams to interiors and customer service. This breadth of engagement demonstrates the Community’s role as a shared strategic asset, rather than a niche research tool.
The quality of engagement is equally strong. The Community brings together a highly engaged, opinionated group of expert frequent flyers who actively enjoy sharing feedback. Their contributions have helped teams surface emerging issues earlier, pressure‑test ideas, and make more customer‑centric decisions.
Beyond efficiency gains, community participation has also shown positive impacts on customers’ brand warmth and loyalty, reinforcing the value of ongoing customer closeness. The success of the approach has led to conversations about expanding the model to other brands within the group, underlining its scalability and long‑term strategic value.
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