Landside and Terminal

Operations

All Rights Reserved ACI 2022

 Session Objectives

Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:

• Appreciate the benefits of understanding customer
priorities that drive customer satisfaction
• Explain Airport Customer Experience Hierarchy of
Needs
• Define the role of airport standards
• Identify best practices to enhance customer delight
• Demonstrate a general awareness of the ACI ASQ
programme
Customer Priorities

• Drive customer satisfaction

• Are based on customers’ needs, wants, expectations and perceptions
• Basic services, when perceived below customer expectations, become a priority for that customer
• Customer priorities are as diverse as customers
• Decisions regarding strategic CX plans should be decided in the aggregate
• Decision regarding how front line staff respond to an individual customer must be based on the
individual customer/situation being served

3
Drivers of customer satisfaction
Best
SeniorPractices to enhance
Level Commitment is Key customer delight

 Senior Level Commitment is Key

 Unless board and senior management is

fully committed to the concept, chances of
success are compromised
 Top management needs to give formal
approval to the program, assume its
leadership, assign roles and responsibilities
and allocate adequate resources

How might you be able to use this practice in your current role at work?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Know Your Customers

Excellence is reliant on knowing your customers needs, wants, and
expectations through:
 Feedback directly from the customers and staff
 Direct discussion with customers
 Analysis of complaints, inquiries and compliments
 Customer Satisfaction surveys and questionnaires
 Off-site visits to “best-of-breed”
 Focus-group discussions and customer audits

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Performance Management – can’t manage what you do not measure

Develop measurement strategy:
 What, how and when data will be collected
 Use several valid methodologies and instruments for all customers
 Trade-offs may be needed because of feasibility and cost of collecting, processing
and reporting information in a timely fashion

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Different Measurement Methodologies
 Customer surveys
 Customer focus groups
 Site visits
 Comments/suggestions cards-boxes
 Complaints/compliments monitoring
 Employee surveys or focus groups
 Social Media
How might you use this practice?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Suggestions to improve the value of data analysis and reporting of results :

 Provide comparisons over time
 Compare levels of satisfaction of various groups
 Assess if expectations vary among different groups
 Assess if expectations are realistic given the needs
 Assess if expectations are realistic given the organization’s capability
 Establish the cause of major gaps between expectations and actual quality of
service
 Collaborate with Airport Community How might you use this practice?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Use and communicate customer satisfaction information:

 Distribution to business partners, stakeholders, regulatory groups, concessionaires,
contractors, front-line personnel, communities (airport community) as well as
customers
 Adjust service delivery as needed based on customer direction
 Set, review, adjust, confirm service standards
 Improve communication with airport community and customers

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Develop and Publish Service Standards

Service standards should place the customers needs in front of the service
providers convenience:
 Based on customer needs / feedback
 Worked out, discussed, and agreed with service providers
 Service standards should be challenging but realistic with clear targets
 Measurable with indicators (objective e.g., quantitative or subjective)
 Let customers know what they are – otherwise regulators may impose

How might you use this practice?

Role of Airport Service Standards

Airport Service Standards define more specifically the interaction between the airport and its customers. Service
Standards define the service the customer is entitled to receive.

Published airport standards are an airport’s song book and are an important tool to:
 Communicate airport’s brand to business partners, stakeholders, and employees
 Assure a consistent and reliable level of performance
 Guide customer communications and marketing campaigns
 Manage customer expectations

The airport operator is like the conductor of an orchestra playing a symphony.

Without a song book, music can quickly become cacophony.
The airport operator is in the best position to spearhead airport service standards.
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Assess / Monitor Performance

Review measurement practices:
 Adaptation to changing realities and priorities
 Periodic review of indicators to follow evolving trends and expectations and
to keep information useful and meaningful
 Social media – engage the airport customer before they arrive
 Airport website ‘mobile’ via App – assist the customer through their airport
experience.
 Real-time flight and airport facility status
How might you use this practice?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Recruit the Right Staff

Service delivery is only as professional as the people you hire / train / engage!

Delighting customers and attracting new customers is a task for competent and
engaged people

Focusing recruitment process on customer service requires attention at the

interview stage covering:
 Prior experiences with customers
 Service levels and customers’ expectations

Remember Customer Service Orientation / Training Program

 Consequences of getting this wrong are high

How might you use this practice?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Convert Disappointed Customers to Raving Fans

 Customers whose complaints are promptly and adequately dealt with are
more loyal than customers with no complaint
 All employees should know the airport brand, the airport standards, and
proper procedure, and be fully prepared after receiving the complaints to start
converting the customer’s dissatisfaction into satisfaction

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Reward Service Excellence

 Build excellent customer service into the culture by recognizing and rewarding
staff for superior service performance
 Recognize smaller deeds, not just major ones
 Customers too, appreciate rewards for their loyalty
 Such rewards will make a significant contribution to employee and customer
retention

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Stay Close to Customers, Business Partners, Stakeholders & Employees

 Carry out continuous research to learn more on your customers
 Ask questions of airport community and customers about the quality and
performance of services at regular intervals
 Implement Services, Amenities, Innovation, Technology Enablers, Fun, etc. to stay
up to date with and anticipate customers’ needs
 Listen and Act!

How might you use this practice?

Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Train Employees Through Continuous Improvement Strategies

 Complements recruiting
 Train staff on a continuing basis:
 To understand customers’ needs and tackle their problems
 To turn threats into opportunities
 Friendly telephone, email and face-to-face techniques
 Cutting training with cyclical business downturns will guarantee future service level
challenges
How might you use this practice?
Best Practices to enhance customer delight

 Communicate Results
 Communicate feedback from customers and measurements results
 Make them available to airport operator, airlines and suppliers/service providers and
airport employees, so as to lead to corrective action when targets are not met or
customer is not satisfied
 Communicate to all personnel to raise awareness of quality of service
 Communicate to potential customers in order to build future relationships
 Establish Customer Experience Performance Council

How might you use this practice?

Customer focus/satisfaction

Airports provide a service to a broad range of customers, in particular passengers.

 Passengers expect and demand higher levels of service

 Regulators monitor quality of airport service provision
 Airport competition is impacted by Customer satisfaction and Airport image
 New stakeholders/business models

How do airports know what their passenger customers think of their experience? ASQ is the
only globally-established service quality benchmarking program
ACI Airport Service Quality (ASQ)

ASQ is a survey programme that provides key passenger research and insight, as well
as essential management and benchmarking* information, designed for airports seeking
more effective, efficient and profitable ways to serve their passengers.
*(Benchmarking – comparing one’s performance with another)

ASQ VIDEO
Passenger Personas – 6 main traveler types (ACI ASQ data)

The value seeker

The workman The friendly vacationer

The sunlounge tourist

The timekeeper The airport enthusiast

Passenger Personas – 6 main traveler types (ACI ASQ data)

A persona is a fictional character that communicates the primary characteristics of a group of

users, identified and selected as a key target using data collected across the airport(s).

Understanding their behaviours and needs regarding their airport experience will help airports
with their customer experience management.

The workman – experienced, demanding, with high expectations

The friendly vacationer – looks for traditional customer service, highly responsive to
clear wayfinding and friendly staff

The value seeker – not a frequent traveller, but has clear expectations for efficiency
and processes in retail and F&B, is the highest spender but expects value for money
Passenger Personas – 6 main traveler types (ACI ASQ data)

The sunlounge tourist – an experienced consumer eager to enjoy an entertaining

airport experience

The timekeeper – not a frequent flyer but has clear and specific priorities to be
satisfied with airport experience if needs are met

The airport enthusiast - has a very positive attitude to airports and wants to enjoy
the experience, accommodating to the occasional delays
Customer experience touch points
Customer experience management

Courtesy of: IATA Consulting

Thank you
Any Questions?