Airports: Flying ahead with trust
What makes Singapore’s Changi a ‘perennial winner’ at airport awards? A deep commitment to excellence in passenger experience, which reflects in its popularity with travelers. Changi is not alone in its quest.
As more passengers pass through the gates, airports the world over are looking to improve customer experience, with a greater focus on convenience and service. Else, they risk losing territory to competition. Digital transformation is here. And airports know it can help. Think faster immigration, quicker baggage transfer, efficient security, and more.
The question: What digital strategies can be used to design a more memorable customer experiences (CX) at airports?
At AtomX, we suggest starting with a simple yet fundamental move: building trust.
Trust is good for business
95% of customers surveyed said that trust would keep them loyal to a brand. They were likely to buy more products and services from such brands, and spend more money on them. The takeaway here: trust is at the heart of a great customer experience, which translates into more revenue for your brand.
Combine this with other facts about today’s customers:
They live in an ‘always’ connected world.
They seek fast, relevant, and personalised engagement.
They expect brands to anticipate their needs.
Here’s what this means for airports
Information about facilities, retail zones, and boarding gates are disjointed. Travelers locate them with effort while scanning through irrelevant messages. After all, a traveler needs the details of her/his particular flight, not all the flights listed on the information screen. It’s precious time and mind space lost.
Digital technologies can make a difference here by tailoring information to each traveler’s unique needs and delivering it on the channel of his/ her choice. No information overload. No wasted effort. Just easy access to the right data at the right time, creating the right degree of trust.
What next?
Once a basic trust is established, strengthen the relationship with deep personalization. Customers are willing to pay a premium for better services and exchange personal information for value-rich, personalized engagements. Airports can harness smart technologies to gather customer data – ranging from flight bookings to retail preferences to services consumed – and deliver a seamless, individual experience throughout the airport journey.
What might that look like?
As you drive into the airport, get a parking coupon with a discounted rate. The airport wayfinding map on your phone guides you to your airline lounge, where a combo deal for your favorite meal awaits. Pick it up and board the flight, without waiting in long queues. Or if waiting, receive offers about lucrative deals based on your purchase behavior. On landing, track your bags, collect them just in time, and enter a pre-booked cab. In all this, if you get lost or delayed, use conversational AI to find a solution at your fingertips. It’s a frictionless end-to-end journey, filled with ‘magic moments’ that delights customers.
Creating such experiences involves integrating systems and data from multiple partners. At AtomX, our specialized solutions for airports harness data from across the airport and airline ecosystem, personalize, and present it to travelers, before, during, and after their journey.
It’s great CX that begins before you reach the terminal and lasts much after you leave it. And it all starts with a simple step: creating trust, which helps you understand and anticipate customer needs.
