Op-Ed: Meeting The Airport Customer Service Challenge

Over the next 10 years, airports in North America will invest billions of dollars in capital improvements and expansion plans to aid the growth of the air transport industry. Global trends in air traffic growth, increased investment and airport expansion and improvements provide fertile ground to grow North America travel and in turn will have a direct impact on the corporate travel industry. Such growth will come through innovative and readily available technology providing state-of-the-art airports with world-class customer service that will improve the corporate passenger travel experience from parking to planeside. It is in the air transport industry's best interest to provide the best customer service through the most innovative technology and keep passengers coming back.

However, this type of expedited growth does not come without challenges that impact customer service. Many customer complaints, from leisure to corporate travelers, involve mishandled bags and flight delays. The rate of mishandled bags has increased by 83 percent since 2002. In 2007, flight delays cost the industry an estimated $40 billion and passengers an estimated $12 billion in terms of lost productivity. Such challenges push the industry to innovate and deploy new technology initiatives, including the Baggage Improvement Program, launched by IATA, and SITA's Integrated Baggage Management Solution.

Airports themselves recognize that utilizing technology to assist with passenger processing, including baggage, checkin and security, is one way to combat these challenges. According to the 2007 Airport IT Trends Survey, global research conducted at 200 airports through a partnership between SITA, Airports Council International and Airline Business magazine, 96 percent of airport respondents indicated that improving customer service and satisfaction was the top priority when making decisions on where to invest their IT budget.

The adoption of self-service technology is fundamentally transforming the corporate travel experience from beginning to end.

Self-service is now accepted both for selling to and servicing these passengers. To improve customer service, increase productivity and simplify the passengers' travel, airports and airlines are turning to multiple self-service checkin devices, such as kiosks, the Internet, PDAs and mobile phones. These self-service checkin tools have improved customer service by reallocating agents who normally would be behind checkin counters, placing them in front of the checkin counter in a concierge role.

Today, more than 90 percent of airline passengers carry a mobile device. In the 2007 Airline IT Trends survey, 56 percent of responding airlines identified mobile checkin as a top customer service initiative for implementation in the next two years.

As the capability of mobile devices continues to expand, they are becoming a more important tool for the air transport industry to employ. Devices are evolving, with bigger screens, enhanced battery technology, and faster Internet speeds.

In three to four years time, corporate travelers will have on-demand access to a range of mobile-enabled services.

Many passengers are already ready for this. The Passenger Self-Service Survey states that while mobile phone checkin is still in its infancy and unfamiliar to most corporate travelers, 63 percent of travelers surveyed in Atlanta expressed a positive attitude to mobile phone checkin, while 48 percent did in Hong Kong.

Customer service is clearly a top priority for airlines and airports and, with the current economy weighing down on the industry, it is important to keep passengers happy and coming back.

The air transport industry is constantly changing to implement relevant and helpful technologies, such as self-service and mobile applications, to improve the overall passenger experience.

As it develops innovations, the industry will implement technologies to help make air travel pain-free. Passengers will continue to drive the new technology adoption rate as a way to improve the productivity of their journey.