Lost Luggage, Cancelled Flights: How Airlines Can Shift from Reactive to Proactive Customer Care

Lost Luggage? Cancelled Flight? Why Is It So Hard to Get Help?

You’re travelling, and suddenly, everything goes wrong—your bags don’t arrive, or your flight gets cancelled. You may be a loyal, frequent flyer with status or an occasional traveller en route to meet your grandchild for the first time.?

Regardless of the why, day of travel support remains cumbersome, frustrating and pre-digital in many cases.

A Frequent Traveler’s Perspective on Airline Customer Experience

For the most part, things tend to work as they should. The booking process is intuitive, and FFP status with preferred airlines reveals much about individual preferences that can be applied as a force for good.

When flights are on time, the crew is courteous, and baggage arrives safely, an airline's great service often goes largely unnoticed. This is because, in a well-oiled system, everything functions seamlessly, as expected.

However, the real test of an airline’s commitment to customer service emerges during periods of disruption. Whether it’s a cancelled flight, significant delays, air traffic control issues, or other unexpected complications, the ability of an airline to provide cohesive, accountable, and proactive care can make all the difference.

What airline travel does well:

• ?Convenience and Speed: Airlines offer the fastest mode of transportation over long distances, making it possible to cross countries and continents in a matter of hours.
• Comfort and Service: In most cases, the in-flight experience is comfortable, with attentive service, entertainment options, and amenities that help pass the time smoothly.
• Global Connectivity: Airlines connect people and places globally and are modernising their fleet to provide increasingly high-quality connected cabins via devices and smart IFE systems.

One of the biggest pain points for travellers is inevitably occurring on the day of travel. Dealing with disruptions such as flight cancellations, significant delays, and the all-too-common system outages that grind much of the network to a halt often leads to frustration and confusion for passengers, especially when communication is lacking.

Airline travel opportunities for improvements :

• Reactive Customer Service: During disruptions, airlines often fall into the trap of reactive customer care, responding only after problems have arisen. This approach can leave passengers feeling stranded, with little guidance on alternative options or compensation.
• Lack of Cohesion and Accountability: When problems occur, there is often a lack of cohesion among different departments within the airline (such as ground staff, customer service, and flight crew) and between airline partners (like codeshare partners and airport authorities). This can result in passengers receiving conflicting information or no information at all, amplifying their frustration.
• Lack of Trust in the Broader Ecosystem: The airline is typically the dominant constituent part of the traveller journey, and accommodation, car rental, and others typically wait in line for their share of the spoils. The financial rewards associated with ancillary revenues, however, are so intrinsic to the airline's profitability that fear of revenue cannibalisation outweighs the case for journey orchestration across disparate providers.

If the medium-term goal is a fully integrated, end to end CX, orchestrated around the passenger or guest, then the short-term imperative is for airlines to simply be better at operationalising the stages of the journey they do directly control.

To accomplish this, there is a significant opportunity to pivot from reactive to proactive customer care. Instead of waiting for passengers to ask for help, often from ill-equipped ground staff, airlines can anticipate needs and provide solutions before issues escalate.

CX Differentiation Opportunity - Proactive Use Cases:

• Agent on Demand Kiosks: Introducing multilingual, omni-channel CX kiosks at high-traffic areas (e.g., near baggage carousels or departure gates) can ease tension during issues like cancelled flights or short-shipped bags.
• Service Recovery Tools: Adding features like QR codes to in-flight entertainment or device log-ins in the connected cabin can turn negative situations (e.g., missed connections) into opportunities for proactive customer engagement, transforming the customer experience in-flight or in transit.
• Cost Efficiency: Proactive CX during service outages significantly reduces the cost to serve by eliminating duplication of effort and the burden on staff who are not best placed to resolve issues. Reactive CX is not only more expensive but adds complexity and customer dissatisfaction. Pivoting to proactive CX using technology as an enabler can be transformative, improving service at a lower cost.

The airline industry is at a crossroads, and the difference between retaining loyal customers and losing them can hinge on the ability to provide proactive, seamless, and transparent customer care. If you’re evaluating emerging tech & ops solutions for day of travel CX improvements, we have a growing portfolio of use cases we can showcase. Please send me a message & I’d be delighted to share more information.

#Airlines #Travel #customerservice