Firefly is one of the Malaysia Airline that owned by Malaysian Airline System Berhad on 3rd April 2007. The name of Firefly comes from a mandarin word Fei ying, Bahasa Malaysia ‘Kunang-Kunang’ which describes the characteristic of Airline which are agility, brilliance, charm and fun.

The vision of Firefly is to be trusted brand known for offering safe, reliable, accessible premium travel experiences that resonate with passengers. For the mission of Firefly is to be strengthen our footprint by exceptional services and sustaining our profitability above industry average. While we continue to dominate our routes, we also take pride in aligning our business model and work culture to our social conscience.

Originally, it operate in Penang and expand to Subang Airport as their headquarter on 29th October 2007 and it provide connection to various countries such as within Malaysia, Singapore, Southern Thailand, Sumatera of Indonesia and so on. The reason of Firefly expand to Subang is to avoid conflict with others Malaysian Airline in Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Since KLIA is the main Airport in Malaysia, Firefly is very difficult to compete with their competitors such as Air Asia which also depart at KLIA. It is also very difficult for them to manage their system and provide customer a good service. Therefore, Firefly chooses to monopoly at Subang airport. By doing this, they can store many aircraft due to its small size of aircraft compare to others Airlines aircraft.

SWOT analysis and main problems face by Firefly Company

SWOT analysis is a planning to identify the organization strength and weaknesses. Firefly Company also uses SWOT analysis to manage their company. Under SWOT analysis, it involves four elements which are internal factor such as strength and weakness and for external factor are opportunity and threats.

Firstly, the strengths of Firefly are it is a subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines System (MAS). Therefore, Firefly need less startup cost and training cost. Besides that, Firefly provide direct arrival to world tourist destinations in Malaysia such as Koh Samui and Pulau Langkawi. Moreover, Firefly located in Subang which is nearby the cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya by comparing to KLIA which is far from cities. Other than that , Firefly also provide customer services such as free beverage and snack to customers as in flight dining and also provide larger compartment such as more weight on baggage check-in compare to local airlines such as Air Asia.

The weaknesses that Firefly facing is lack of experience on online advertising as its parent company which is MAS are also late introduce on using online advertising. The other factor is Subang Airport is having the problem with public transportation compare to the KLIA which is convenience to travel to and from the airport. Other than that, Firefly also receives quite a number of customer complaints about flight delay for example flight breakdown due to engine having problem. Besides that, Firefly will travel only the selected destination which causing customer drawback from taking firefly. A next weakness that face by Firefly Company is the lost or delayed luggage of customers.

Follow by the opportunities of the Firefly airline, it can actually work with medical tourism. According to Connell (2006), he comments that medical tourism is quite successful in Asia. This lead Firefly has an opportunity to enhance their sales. Firefly has also the opportunity to increase the popular flying destination in Malaysia to attract their customer to fly with them. Since MAS is the parent company of Firefly, MAS can actually help them to train out the employees which can operate the turbine aircraft. This is actually gives Firefly a good opportunity to gain new technology at lower cost. Besides that, Firefly Company can also gain customer from their parent company MAS if the flight delayed or cancelled.

The threats of Firefly airline are going a price war with Air Asia. Since Firefly provides their customer in lower cost to travel, Air Asia will also consider lowering down their price. Besides, customer will tend to choose Air Asia since it has more selection provided compare to firefly. Selection such as travel to more destinations will act as a threat of firefly. Therefore, air Asia has more competitive advantage. The third threat of firefly is hard to compete with public transport such as bus, train and so on. This is because their price is cheaper compare to firefly although it takes longer time to reach the destination. The last threats is since firefly is a small airline company which has only limited aircraft, it cannot fulfill all the customers need. This led them to choose Air Asia which has more aircraft.

However, the main problem for Firefly Company is customer always complaint about the delay flight issue. Secondly, the lost or delayed of baggage always face by their customers. Lastly, customers comment that Firefly has less selection compare to their competitor Air Asia.

Market segmentation and customer profile

Firefly Company targets their customers through several segmentations. Segmentation is actually defines as the process of dividing a huge group of customers into small group. Firefly targets their customers through demographic segmentation which depends on the age group of customers. For example, the age group between seventeen (17) to twenty-five (25) years old can be recognized as student which they are studying in different states in Malaysia, so that they can easily travel with firefly at a cheap and reasonable price. The age group of twenty six (26) and above is the business traveler; they might travel within Malaysia to operate their business locally. Therefore, by giving them a low price and efficiency travel promotion, it might attract them to take firefly rather than other airlines.

Besides, both groups of customer may have a low income which could only afford the flight ticket price. High income group should be able afford in this price level and can even help them to save more cost.

Geographical segmentation is also very important for firefly, since it cannot only target in individual place. By targeting more areas of customer, it allow firefly to bring in more customer to enhance their profitability. For example, Firefly provides more convenience services which allow customers to depart their destination easily.

The other segmentation is Sagacity segmentation. Firefly promoting new package programs of travel such as family vacation. It has many package of vacation with are reasonable and affordable by every family. Besides that, the location choose by Firefly are more suitable for family and working adult where they can relax and enjoy with the nature environment.

Our CRM objectives

Our objective to form new CRM strategy is to enhance our customer satisfaction and create long term relationship with customer. Due to our main problems which customers argue that our flight has always delayed or cancelled. This has causes them a big trouble and causes us to loss our customers. Therefore, we need to come out with a solution to overcome this problem. Besides, we also need to develop a new strategy to reduce the loss of customer baggage and also increase the speed of loading baggage. Lastly, we have to provide more selection for the customer to fly or travel. Since our company is the cheapest airlines service in Malaysia, we should provide more selection to them to bring in more customers.

Our CRM plan to achieve our objectives

In order to achieve the CRM plan objective, we have to take into considerations of all the weaknesses and threats. One of the weaknesses is customer complaint about the delayed flight. To solve the problem, Firefly can actually arrange them to another flight in Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Since MAS is the parent company for Firefly, they can corporate with them. Firefly can arrange their customers who are in urgent to KLIA flight instead of waiting for the delay flight. Firefly also provides free transportation such as taxi for them to KLIA. For the customers that are not urgent with their travel, Firefly can actually provide free meal for them as apologize due to delay of flight. This might helps to reduce their anger although delay problems cannot be solve since it is difficult to predict the external causes such as weather.

Secondly, according to the research, Firefly Company found that there is a low percentage that customers will lose their baggage. At the same time, customers should have to be more patient while loading their baggage because sometimes their baggage are not loss it but it take a longer time to load the baggage. By dealing with this issue, Firefly should train their employees to be more efficiency on loading the customer baggage. However, if the baggage is loss, Firefly will compensate as what they had promised. For the lost for the domestic flight, Firefly will compensate RM48 per kg of baggage while RM80 per kg of baggage for the international flight.

Moving on to the next issue, Firefly Company should increase more selection of travel destination to the customers. By comparing with their competitors where both depart from their headquarters (Subang and Kuala Lumpur respectively), Firefly provide limited flight in local destination which only fly to 7 destination while Air Asia fly to 14 destination. The parent company MAS can train Firefly crew to fly more destination locally. Besides that, MAS should give more opportunity for Firefly to monopoly in local flight while MAS focus on international flight.

Evaluation and monitoring methods to evaluate the performance of the plan

Through our observation, after applying the entire CRM plan, Firefly found out that they are now able to serve more customers, fulfill customer needs and satisfaction.

Based on feedback from customer, Firefly found that there is a lesser complaint from customer about delay of flight issue. By comparing to previous, there are a lot of complaints received by customer which Firefly company often delays their flight. After developing the strategy which arrange the urgent customer to KLIA flight and provide free food and beverage to them, it helps to increase customer satisfaction and reduce their anger.

Besides that, by comparing the historical record and current record, Firefly found that customer complaint about the lost or delay of baggage issue had reduced. Since Firefly implement the compensate strategy to those customer who lost their baggage, it can increase customer satisfaction compare to previous that they do not apply this strategy which may cause losses of customer. Moreover, the speed of loading the baggage had improved compare to last time because training provided to the staff.

Based on the analysis, Firefly has increases the selection to the customer to fly more than 7 destinations which they wish to fly. Previously, there are a lot of customer argues that Firefly did not provide their customers travel to Kelantan. Hence, by providing them this destination, it can actually enhance their needs and satisfaction. Therefore, the amount of customer will increase since Firefly provides more selection to customers.