Strategic Customer Service

Recently, J.D. Powers and Associates released its ratings of customer service provided by the North American airline industry. For the third straight year, the industry has experienced a decrease in customer satisfaction. And while many of the changes are driven by airline cost-cutting, it is airports that suffer. Airports have no choice but to partner with the airlines to fill the void in customer service. I am a true believer that a culture of customer service can be created if there is the leadership and the will to do it. I have seen these efforts have a dramatic impact on how customers perceive service delivery, particularly air travel.

Organizations that provide outstanding customer service understand the relationship between exceptional performance and customer satisfaction. They understand the customer, value employees, monitor performance on continual basis, seek customer feedback, and continuously improve services that don’t meet customer expectations. An organization’s performance is closely associated with customer satisfaction.

The love field experience
In April 2006, Dallas Love Field won the first of two J.D. Powers Awards for customer satisfaction. In a previous article [“Innovation Leads to Recognition”, AIRPORT BUSINESS, November/December 2006], I wrote about the steps that were taken to improve the customer experience at Dallas Love Field. The success of this effort was primarily due to a clear understanding of the unique needs of the Love Field traveler and developing strategies to address those needs.

In June 2006, I was appointed to lead a major customer service initative for the 13,000 employees of the City of Dallas. The city took a comprehensive approach for changing the culture of the organization by linking customer service, performance management, and process improvement into a strategy for delivering services.

The results of this effort have been dramatic. The city experienced a double-digit percentage improvement in customer satisfaction from 2007 to 2009, as measured by a citizen survey. The researcher on this project, Christopher E. Tatham, vice president of ETC Institute, concluded, “The City of Dallas demonstrated remarkable improvement in the quality of customer service provided by city employees between 2005 and 2009.  The dramatic increase in customer satisfaction shows that the city’s efforts to enhance customer service have been extremely effective.”

Common approaches
There were common elements to the Love Field and City of Dallas initiatives. Both started with leadership and commitment from top management in creating a culture focused on quality customer service. There was a conscious effort to link strategic planning, customer service, and performance management. There was also a realization that inefficient or outdated processes must be improved. Just as taking this broad view of customer service has made a difference in city services, the lessons learned can be used to improve the airport experience.

Before identifying the elements of a successful customer service strategy, consider how critical customer service is to the future of airports. If the airline industry is going to experience a sustained recovery, it must improve the travel experience of its customers.

I offer the following as essentials of a comprehensive strategy for customer service excellence.

¦ Know the Customer
Determining the profile of the typical traveler using the airport is critical to sustaining high quality customer service. Generally, these customers fall into broad categories such as business travelers, vacation travelers, Generation-Y travelers, weekend travelers, etc..