The aviation industry places a significant emphasis on the experience of passengers. It is what sets apart top-class international airports and attracts passengers and airlines. However, flying can be tiring and time-consuming. Many airports understand this and have adopted passenger experience management to improve customer satisfaction.
Passenger Experience Management (PEM) allows airports to oversee and manage customer satisfaction by improving various aspects of the airport experience across all interaction points with passengers. It involves enhancing how airports deal with passengers from the time they check in for their flight, during the flight, and after the flight.
Customer experience management is a broad topic, and if you are interested in knowing more about how customer experience can be managed and regulated, stick around.
What is Passenger Experience Management (PEM)?
Passenger Experience Management (PEM) is the comprehensive approach and set of strategies that airport authorities and operators implement to enhance the overall experience of travellers and other airport users. It involves managing and coordinating all aspects of the passenger journey through an airport and during flight. PEM also encompasses implementing processes and technologies to ensure passengers have a seamless, comfortable, and enjoyable experience.
Key Components of Passenger Experience Management
PEM involves various activities and processes designed to understand, improve, and maximise the overall passenger experience.
Passenger journey mapping: This involves identifying and analysing passengers’ journeys in the airport to understand how they interact with various touch points and identify trouble spots that need improving.
Service design: Entails planning the airport’s operations and services to cater to passengers’ demands and expectations.
Feedback gathering and analysis: Various techniques like surveys and focus groups are used to get feedback from passengers, and that data is evaluated to find areas that can be improved.
Technology integration: Using technology resources such as analytics tools, AI, customer relationship management (CRM) packages and automation to provide an enjoyable experience.
Employee training and development: Training and engaging employees to deliver excellent customer service and ensure they understand the importance of customer satisfaction.
Continuous improvement: Implementing a culture of constant improvement, where feedback and data-driven insights are used to make ongoing enhancements to the customer experience.
The Benefits of Passenger Experience Management in Airports
Management passenger experience in an airport has numerous advantages. They include:
Increased Operational Efficiency
While it may sound cliché, simplifying passenger experience enhances airport efficiency. This has a far-reaching impact on every aspect of the passenger’s journey. PEM enables floor workers, planners, and professionals to better understand the passenger’s journey and implement the necessary adjustments and improvements.
The enhanced efficiency not only prevents operational delays but also significantly aids in resource preservation, the identification of problematic areas and equipment, and, naturally, swift issue resolution.
Enhanced passenger Satisfaction
Feedback is crucial in passenger experience management; it gives real-world insights into the customer’s journey. By continuously monitoring and analysing massive amounts of video data, smart technologies like AI-driven video analytics provide airport managers and planners with reliable insights about the passenger experience across all digital and physical touch points. Using the analytics, planners can gauge current customer satisfaction levels and identify areas needing improvement.
Positive Airport Reputation
Airports that prioritise passenger satisfaction through PEM initiatives enjoy a positive reputation in the aviation industry. This attracts more airlines, partnerships, and travellers, benefiting the airport’s growth and competitiveness.
Safety & Security
PEM also enhances airport security and safety. Airports require constant and strict security measures. PEM systems aid in identifying and preventing safety-critical incidents throughout the airport by monitoring passenger flow and optimising the customer experience. This is achieved through camera-based video analysis, enabling airports to closely monitor activities and respond swiftly to emergencies.
Future Trends in Passenger Experience Management
Biometrics
Even though some airports have already adopted biometric authentication, it’s still gaining ground in the aviation industry. Biometric authentication helps airports get rid of the lengthy and tiring contact-oriented passenger processing. Biometric authentication has several potential applications, including automated check-in counters and self-regulated boarding processes.
Biometric authentication helps streamline and expedite the cumbersome manual authentication processes at airports. It effectively eliminates the need for contact-based passenger processing, potentially facilitating various advancements such as automated check-in counters and self-administered boarding procedures.
Automation
Automation helps in improving passenger experience by reducing human involvement and improving efficiency. Airports are expected to continue automating most of their processes in the future as more innovations, such as robotic check-in counters, continue to be developed.
Other than check-in, automation can also be used in airport delivery systems, maintenance, cleaning, and even customer service. This leads to streamlined passenger flow, reducing waiting and processing times, and allows the airport to focus its human involvement in areas that matter and are challenging to automate.
Human-Machine Collaboration
AI is gaining prominence and slowly finding its way into airports. In the future, airports are expected to use AI in many of their operations, such as providing personalised services, helping travellers book flights, and addressing passengers’ in-flight queries.
However, full AI integration is still miles away, and one way to fast-track it is to factor in human-machine integration. This collaborative approach optimises airport operations and customer service by combining the best features of humans and machines.
Airport Gurus can Help boost PEM in Airports
Passenger processing has become more important than ever before. Airport operators are under constant pressure to reduce wait times for passengers and provide a seamless experience for all travellers in light of increasing security concerns and regulations.
Airport Gurus has worked with airports of all sizes and has a wealth of industry knowledge. We are an airport consulting firm offering airport operations and technology assistance and airport operations expertise consulting. Our airport technology solutions are designed to be efficient, cost-effective, space-saving, completely integrated, and readily adaptable to meet the ever-changing demands of airport operations. If you need any help, our staff of experts is here to help. Contact Airport Gurus so we can collaborate to enhance your passengers’ travel experience.
