"NextGen" Customer Experience
Posted on Jul 6, 2009 by Gary O'Neill |
No one needs to be told that Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport has become one of the busiest airports in the world. Jokes abound about changing planes in Atlanta, and it is a perennial rival for the nation’s busiest airport along with Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The activity surrounding ATL has made it a sizeable economic engine for the state and the region. Millions of people flow through the airport every year. Scaling its operations from its regional beginnings to its international present with mammoth proportions has been incremental, and at times innovative. In many ways, the airport, and the airlines that serve it, are models for the air transportation industry. But the industry is in a bit of a slump right now, and some would say it’s even a crisis. This gives us a chance to ‘never waste a crisis to bring about change’ as our leaders and Washington have recently noted.
The current dialogue among industry members is focusing on the transformation of air travel from a special, high value service towards a commodity because ‘that’s all the customer wants.’ The consensus belief is that customers just want to get from “A to B” at the lowest possible cost; all else is subordinate to that. But I can’t help thinking that this might be a ‘chicken and egg argument.’ Did customers force this trend toward being a commodity as a result of only wanting to get from “A to B,” or did they become strictly focused on price because of the actions of the airlines?
The airlines truly have faced a number of major issues over the years, and they have had make major changes to their operations to remain in business. Costs for fuel, security, maintenance and flight crews over the recent past have made operating an airline just plain crazy. Many of the things they’ve done to remain viable have been tough on their employees and their customers. I personally think that many of these actions, while probably necessary, put them at odds with the customer and led to the ‘price first’ mentality of their customers…not the other way around. I remember two cases where the ‘old school’ ways of Delta Air Lines kept them high on my list of preference for air travel. Years ago, I was rushing home from an overseas military assignment to attend my father’s funeral. After several days travel on military airlift across the Pacific, I arrived in San Francisco, bound for Washington DC. I made my way to the Delta counter and they handled me with speed and compassion, booking me on a standby flight that still gave a shred of hope of making it home on time. Reaching the gate with minutes to spare, the gate teaming with passengers and yet, somehow, I made the flight. On another day, again returning from overseas to attend my in-laws’ 50th Anniversary, I nearly missed connections but for the calm professionalism and judgment of the famous Delta Red Coats. From those two events, I became a Delta customer whenever it was possible. For me, and I suspect a large number of others, service does matter.
So, what does this all have to do with innovation?
I think that recent advances in technology by the airlines to streamline the flow of passengers to their aircraft (kiosks, advance boarding, and the like) are great examples of using technology to free employees to better serve the customer. I think that technology used to improve baggage handling and other sources of customer dissatisfaction go a long way to restoring air travel to a ‘high value’ experience, rather than feeling like being crammed into a tube and mistreated at every step of the way. Similar use of technology to aid the mechanics and air crew can give them more time for truly value-adding tasks. Getting from “A to B” starts with having a working aircraft that departs on time and arrives safely—so this is one place that success can be a market factor.
There are a lot more ways that technology can help. In the immortal words of Tom Cruise from the movie Top Gun, “it’s a bogey-rich environment.”
Tagged: aviation, delta, hartsfield, atlanta airport, customer service
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