Adobe Summit 2025 - why Virgin Atlantic is charting a flight path to unique CX built on AI, but not just yet

As an airline with just 45 planes, Virgin Atlantic isn’t able to compete on scale. Instead, the business has always focused on building its brand and differentiating itself from the competition via customer experience (CX).

This ranges from the little touches, like getting children on board to hand out sweets at the end of the flight, to letting travellers pre-select their on-board meal. Now, the company is looking to data and AI to extend its CX so that every interaction with customers is unique and different. Simon Langthorne, Head of CRM, Virgin Atlantic, explains:

Obviously our customers are at the center of everything that we do, but it's how we can supercharge that from an experience perspective that we we're looking to deliver. By understanding our customers even better through the data that we collect, we're able to provide a better experience at different touchpoints they have on a journey.

This might be leaving a business customer alone to be able to work, or making sure support and plenty of snacks are available for a family, to making it feel special for a couple going on their honeymoon. Langthorne adds:

It’s how can you use data to drive a better understanding of what motivates and drives customers, what do they expect from the service, products, flights and resources we provide.”  The extra touches Virgin Atlantic is able to provide today are traditional, in the sense that the airline obtains some data, delivers some insight, understands a pain point or potential opportunity within the journey, and then delivers those experiences as a result. The pre-ordered meals on planes are an example of this, ensuring customers get the meal of their choice and aren’t disappointed on-board; and as a result, cabin crew can do a faster meal service because they know what to serve to various customers. 

Future lies this way 

The next objective is to deliver more of these experiences in a way that can scale, and that's really systematic. Langthorne says:

Imagine we held all your preferences about all the meals that you've ever had. I know that you're a vegetarian, so why would I ever give you options of various different meals that we have that you're never going to eat.

By building up a much more comprehensive data profile around its customers, and enabling smarter tools, this could enable AI to curate the type of experience Virgin wants to give its customers.

The challenge now is to use the power of the data it’s gathering directly and drive that into a different type of unique customer experience. Langthorne notes:

Doing that at scale is really hard when you've got 300 people on a plane. To give 300 people on the plane a completely unique experience is incredibly challenging, but you can do it in a way where you can start to group similar characteristics together: this group of customers is more likely to respond well to being left alone versus these customers need more attention.

Another area Virgin is interested in is being able to link historical profile information with some of the more real-time interactions with customers at the airport or on the plane via Wi-Fi. This isn’t something the airline is doing today. 

Virgin uses a range of Adobe tools to run its business, including Target, Audience Manager, Campaign, Analytics and Experience Manager. The airline also rolled out Adobe Experience Platform last year. The implantation was completed within five months, and there was a rapid turnaround in terms of developing some simple use cases. Langthorne explains:

It was more based on commercial drive around return on investment to start with and building out more personalized journeys based on web interactions and some of our historical data as well. We are now looking at how we can build that out into more of our customer-facing channels, so with the digital stuff we're building and scaling, how can you also build it out into some of the physical touchpoints.

It is also using Adobe technology to make some improvements to its Flying Club loyalty program, which will be ready in about a month's time. From a contact center perspective, the airline is using Adobe technology so when customers call, the system knows if it’s a Flying Club customer and it can reduce call-handling times. Langthorne says:

You get straight to the customer's question rather than having to go through a whole load of security questions.

Regarding the newer AI capabilities Adobe unveiled this week at its Summit, Langthorne says that while Virgin is using AI within the business, it's more based around processes than it is customer experience, using tools like Microsoft copilot and Genesys in the contact center. It has been looking at more advanced tools like Adobe Firefly, but it hasn’t yet unlocked the ability to connect together AI-generated content. Langthorne explains:

That's some of the challenges that we have at the moment, how we can connect together some of that Generative AI content in a way that's truly scalable, and truly engaging as well. We have our brand guidelines, the way we create content, it's crafted in a very thoughtful way based on the brand guidelines and we need to make sure that whatever else is crafted, whether it’s AI or not, it adheres to those things. That's the bit we haven't cracked.

Regarding the other AI capabilities Adobe launched at Summit, Langthorne says the airline is definitely interested in the translation, forecasting and predictive elements, but the question now is how to use AI innovation in a commercial way. He explains:

So when someone visits the website and they see an image, and that is something that interests them and then keeps them engaged, and that leads to some type of action, whether it's booking or some type of service action, that's the future we see. The path we're on combined with the technology being developed is clearly going to get us into a better place from a customer experience perspective. But the sweet spot is how do you take it to that next step essentially. We're developing a path towards that at the moment.