Enhancing Avios' Customer Loyalty Scheme through Serverless Mobile Backend Innovation

The Problem

Frequent flyers expect to earn rewards for their loyalty. British Airways has established and maintained a reputation for customer excellence. Over the years, its most dedicated customers have been handsomely rewarded through loyalty initiatives, such as its Executive Club. But in the modern era of mobile apps, the loyalty game is changing, and organisations need to do more. Customer experience is an essential part of that.

To help improve customer experience, Avios was developing a new white-labelled consumer app for global airlines group IAG, beginning with a new mobile app for the British Airways Executive Club.

Operating as a fast-paced development team outside of IAG Group IT, Avios stumbled across several challenges. First, it was struggling to engage effectively with IAG Group’s security governance, leading to the Avios team being frequently denied access to key systems. Second, even when access was granted, legacy systems were often unreliable and performing poorly.

A Serverless Mobile Backend on AWS

In a consulting capacity, Talk Think Do were brought in to improve the solution architecture. We also helped Avios better understand the legacy system landscape and figure out how to work more productively within the IAG Group governance framework.

The end result was that we designed and built a serverless mobile backend, using AWS Lambda and a 4-tier mobile architecture. This provided the necessary isolation and resilience from backend system issues.

We also worked with iOS and Android developers to provide technical guidance and architectural support.

The Results

Loyalty is an important currency in modern business, where customer experience has become a critical differentiator.

Talk Think Do played a crucial role in helping Avios design and build the British Airways Executive Club rewards app.

We also helped Avios overcome the initial challenges of working with legacy systems and governance frameworks. This drastically improved Avios’ ability to work productively with the IAG Group.