theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

Something’s happening in travel culture: friendly customs and security people

Now here is a trend that is long overdue. Friendliness among customs and security people at airports.

I know this may be hard to believe but I've seen it with my own eyes. Brief glimmers have been witnessed in other places, but several clear instances of cheery, friendly border people were in evidence on a recent trip through LAX to and from Baja. [Perhaps this group deals more with holiday travelers and business travelers; perhaps we are less snarky; but gosh they were friendly.] One guy made some jokes, I could hardly believe it. He was joking about the length of the lineup, and that yes, we did need to go through this even if we were just connecting to an outbound flight.

One of the security screening people hinted that we could spend less time with them if we followed all the rules. Also laughing.

I'm not sure what's happening, but I suspect that people are cluing in to the fact that none of this stuff is going to go away. How horrible must it be to work in an environment where you are expected to be a sourpuss all day. [To say nothing of all that smelly footwear.] Goodness knows it's horrible for travelers to deal with hostility in every airport. So I think we are witnessing a culture shift among the security staff and among customs and immigration staff, and boy is it ever welcome.

No one is minimizing the security risks or the need for countries to control who comes into their borders. But the vast majority of us are simply tax payers, not threats. It's nice to be treated with some simple humanity.

Related

The US agency responsible for airport security, the TSA, has started a blog. It's actually fairly amusing, and has attracted a number of comments.

I found a surprising number of blogs referencing the who area of security screening. This is one of the common experiences of our time, and is universally hated. Check out a few of these stories.

"We're all porn stars now thanks to airport security", Current.com - wonderful picture of how we will look when the next x-ray tech arrives

What happens when a filmmaker packs prop explosives in his luggage, Home Away From Home blog

Buffalo Blood Donor on how to improve the experience: add some color.

Germs on your feet at airport security. And yes, there's a company selling a solution for that.

Frustration with priority line-hoppers, on Textually Promiscuous blog.

Delightful postcards from hotel web site charm road warrior: Holiday Inn nails the insight

As hotels continue the march up the sustainable innovation curve, they just get better and better, don't they? My current hotel started out as a motel on a strip development, but looks more like an oasis for road warriors now.

In-room amenities include a two-tiered desk suitable for a laptop as well as the piles of paper we all still seem to need. A giant Philips flat screen TV looks almost like art. [I'm here working at a trade-show type of event, and looking forward to the design innovations I'll get to see later on.]

Such pedestrian items as a blow-dryer, in-room coffee maker, and luxurious bed are now pretty much mandatory to stay in the game. Free parking and free in-room internet are among the distinctions between this kind of a place and a major downtown hotel.  Even the quality of the restaurant food has improved, no longer smacking of diner-with-a-garnish entrees.

But I had a genuine surprise when I logged in to the internet this morning. Charming post-cards you can customize and send! [I suggested just such an application to a business a couple of years ago. Too bad they didn't try it to support their hair care product line. But I digress...]

These postcards could charm the kids you are traveling with, or the road warrior keeping in touch.

The insight: when you are traveling, you are either having an adventure with family and friends, or you are lonely and missing them - or perhaps just knowing that they are missing you.  The postcards neatly nail this insight and speak to it. So they win on two counts: they show that the hotel 'gets it', and they give you something nice to do with those emotions.

I was also pleased to see a truly useful web site, with things like 'check your flight' and 'local dining'. Best I have seen in quite a while. Good on you, Holiday Inn. Or should I start calling you Holly, to reflect your new sensibility?

Express bag check in at Air Canada: not quite

See this line of people? They have already checked in ahead of time, like good customers. Now they want to drop off their bags. But there's no one there to take their bags. The floor-walking customer service person tells them several times "someone will be here soon".

Meanwhile my companion and I try ticketing our own bags at the new kiosks. We can't seem to get them to work. Neither can anyone else. The people at our end of the counter take pity on us and offer to tag our bags for us, so we don't have to stand in the other line.

My question is simple: why pay someone to walk around the floor "helping", when they could be actually helping. If you know what I mean.

Off to get inspired at the conference, and pick up booty at the trade show.

Ten minute manicure: what to do while waiting at the airport

Seen at Pearson Airport in Toronto: 10 minute manicure. A great solution to boredom at the airport, and a little indulgence. Great concept. Sorry the picture is so blurry.

Airport retail is a great place to see creative thinking in action.

People with a problem are a gift to marketers: new business opportunities in travel and tourism

The glamour and excitement has definitely gone out of most air travel, between the general withdrawal of services by the airlines and the increased security. This is just the sort of environment where there are NEW PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE! UNSOLVED PROBLEMS!  In short, a marketing gold mine.

Check out some of the new businesses that have launched to address our travel-related problems.

Beep Tech Inc  provides beep-free products like belts so you don't have to disrobe at security. They also have leather travel accessories to make the presentation of ID and boarding passes more convenient.

If you hate lugging luggage around, you can get it shipped for you by several different services such as SportsExpress, LuggageExpress, Excess Baggage, and so on.

You can go one step further and avoid packing the bag in the first place. Flylite will give you a virtual closet that you can use to select the items you want for a specific trip. You send them the items you usually take when travelling, and they store, dryclean and ship these items for you.  Perfect for the chinos and sports-shirt consultant that's on the road a lot.

When you see a sector where there are unhappy people, you are looking at a sector rife with opportunities.

Is it time for Air Laws? Or just more thoughtful design?

I discovered the Zeitgeist blog when Bill Geist linked to my piece on yield management in travel, and what it's done to the experience.  And discovered his excellent list of Air Laws -- the new rules designed to restore civilized behavior to air travel, ensure that space hogs don't take up all the storage, and that big guys get the emergency exit row seats. [I confess I don't totally support that one, unless we could reduce the height restriction to 5'8" ...]

Law #8 about crowding around baggage carousels particularly resonated because the baggage thing seems so unnecessarily badly designed.

All it takes is for a few people to crowd in, and then no one can see. You can't enforce polite behavior, but you can design things in such a way that they signal what is expected. I've spent countless hours waiting for my bag and observing this phenomenon in detail, and have a couple of ideas.

• Signal a no-crowding zone with different floor markings, perhaps even vertical elements like short pillars that show people where they are supposed to stand. These seem to do the trick nicely to prevent people crowding the exits in airports -- those waiting for arriving passengers to leave the secure baggage area.

[I learned via Bill that a guy named Chris Maland has built a web site dedicated to this idea.  I prefer my  no-crowding zone name to his proposal.]

• Build angled mirrors over the carousel, just like the cooking shows have. So we can see if our bag has arrived even if the front is crowded

• Put a video camera on the business end of the chute with several large screens, so you can monitor without crowding.

Of course, none of these measures will help those who obsessively check every black bag tag to be sure it's not theirs. [Buddy, see those red plaid ribbons? Keep your paws off.]

Bill also pointed to this wonderful destination marketing campaign about aliens that love New Mexico, 'the best place in the universe". Very innovative marketing that carves out a unique position.

Should you give stuff away or not? Lessons from luggage carts

My home town now has one of the most expensive airports in the world, judging by the landing fees charged to airlines. I guess that's why they want to charge a couple of extra dollars to get a luggage cart. [see pic below] 

In Calgary, which has a very nice airport, and approximately half the landing fees of Pearson, the carts are free. And present in abundance, both inside and outside the airport (see pic below).

In Toronto, you have to press down the handle all the time to keep the wheels from locking up. [This is deliberate ... some kind of runaway-cart-prevention-measure thing no doubt]. You can see people all over the airport having trouble keeping their carts moving. Calgary's carts roll when you push them, with no extra complications involved.

So what's the point here?

You can try to extract a few extra bucks from every little thing. Lots of businesses do it. And it can be a significant source of revenue.

It can also make people feel nickle-and-dimed. This practice can turn the rental of a cart into something done only grudgingly.  A grudge purchase is not a strong customer experience position to be in, is it?

So if you are doing this, you should start asking yourself what gains you might make in loyalty by taking another route.

What would Susan do?

Someone's got to pay for that giant airport, and I suspect there's enough revenue there that it would be tough to convince anyone to let people use the carts without a charge. 

An alternative would be to provide sponsorship opportunities for the carts. Hotels, local tour operators,  local tourist attractions might all be willing to sponsor the carts. Or brands that stand for comfort and convenience, like TD Canada Trust.   

I would ensure that the whole thing occurred within some design constraints so that it would feel clever, thoughtful and interesting for travellers, not noisy and commercial. Any good agency could handle that element with ease.

After all, an airport is the gateway to your city or your country. Do you really want people feeling irritated as soon as they get here?  Poor things -- they had no idea they would need Canadian COINAGE just to use a luggage cart.

Travelling in Baggage Class: Service Recovery Observations

On a recent flight to Calgary, I experienced a little Canadian winter. Some freezing rain had the airport seriously backed up.  Here are a few of the highlights:

• Because the weather was getting yucky, my trip to the airport was slow. So I wolfed down my food at Casey's to be sure of being at the gate on time. Shouldn't have bothered, because the crew was 40 minutes late arriving.  [I think there is some rule that you can't make a "delay" announcement until there's no choice, even when you know there is a delay. Dumb rule.]

• Once we hit the tarmac, the airline recorded us as departed. We weren't going anywhere for another two hours, however, while we waited for a lost runway position, and then for de-icing.  The captain handled this BRILLIANTLY. He told us what was going on with down-to-earth language ('big problems, long wait') and said we could all use our phones until further notice. I called my beloved, who said, "The web site says you departed at 7:05 !?!".  Yeah, well, not quite...

• This captain had a lot on the ball. To keep the masses distracted, he explained the process of de-icing, and why there are two different colors of stuff being sprayed around. He also de-fused any anxiety about the First Officer's visual inspection of the wings by telling us it was all "just part of normal procedures, and doesn't mean anything is wrong". He said they would get the in-flight movie going as soon as possible, and try to dig up an extra video for us as well. WELL DONE, I say. He did a great job!!

• The captain also announced that there would be complimentary alcoholic beverages served to those of us mooing in the back. A nice gesture. Too bad it took the attendants more than an hour to get to my row, and I wasn't in the back row. Basically, as far as I could tell, they were already exhausted themselves, and chose not to modify their normal procedure one iota to accommodate the situation, because it would have made more work.

Here's the thing, though:  we had now been sitting in this tin can for 2.5 hours at this point. I think most of us would've killed for anything to take the edge off. Some of us had to wait another hour for that.  So the niceties may be missing when they toss you your heated beef brisket (see previous post), but heaven forfend they should rush the beverage service.

What's the Point?

Okay, here are the lessons we would like to draw from this.  You need to encourage your staff, (or yourself as the case may be) to abandon caution and put the customer first when things start to go wrong.

Give people license to start modifying procedures. When things go wrong -- and they will in every operation -- take the time to extract the learning and share it as widely as possible. What works. What we should try next time. How to cope with your own stress and still look after customers. That sort of thing.

Encourage your staff to act like the captain in this story: show some empathy, talk like a human being, do what you can to alleviate the irritation. Don't pretend it's business as usual.

Travelling in Baggage Class: modifying expectations

I've been tardy with my posts lately, dear reader, but I have a good excuse. I was out on the road documenting the joys of modern travel for your reading pleasure.

Before going any further, I'd like to say something about expectations and satisfaction.  If I ask you, "are you satisfied with the service", you actually conduct a process along these lines before answering the question:

• I didn't expect much, and they more or less delivered ... "satisfied"
• My expectations were low, and they actually did more than I expected ... "very satisfied"
• I didn't expect much, and they were actually worse ... "dissatisfied"
• I could keep going here, but you get the idea ....

The thing about airline travel right now is that our expectations have been lowered A LOT.  Between the airlines and the security services, it's a far cry from what it used to be, and even what it could be. [Unless you happen to be paying full fare for overseas first class.  I only wish ....]

Remember we used to complain about airline food? The little plastic trays it came in? The fact that the salads were always weird?  Strangely rubbery eggs?  Yeah, well ... here's what we've been reduced to:

I can actually recommend the beef brisket sandwich. But I'd really like some kind of service that doesn't involve tossing me a foil-wrapped thing without any ceremony at all. This isn't a meal in any sense I can identify -- it's refueling at best.

But the fact that it tasted good actually exceeded my expectations, which were exeptionally low. So I guess I'm satisfied with the food, right? Don't be fooled by customer satisfaction scores -- they're only half of the story.

Oh yeah ...  about the wine.  Stay tuned for the next post, where we discuss service recovery.

This is civilization: Flying Porter

I'm sitting in an airport lounge that feels a bit different... it's Porter Air, at the Toronto Island Airport. A fellow sitting nearby just said to his buddy, "This is civilization!". And indeed, so far this trip has lacked half the hassle of flying out of Pearson.

[Above: ferry waiting area]

For starters, the lounge is free to everyone. And wireless access is free. There are nice flat-screen computers like the one shown above, and branded water.

The guy beside me -- who has a combat pattern skinned onto his Blackberry -- just finished an espresso. 

You get here via a short ferry trip from downtown. You can pass the short wait by watching the scoters bob and dive for fish. You get to the ferry terminal via a comfortable shuttle bus from the downtown check-in kiosk. And it's a NICE bus. And all the staff are NICE!  They say things like "have a great trip" while giving you a smile.

There are a few mis-steps. I wasn't sure what floor the checkin kiosk was on, so they could have better signage there.  Plus, I just heard Frank Sinatra sing "New York, New York" on the audio for the second time in an hour. And "The Girl from Ipanema" just started. Tape definitely not long enough. But interesting ambiance, and obviously thought through by someone. (Note to self: remember to put the new Sennheiser headphones in briefcase for the next trip)

But the main advantage has to be the ease of access from downtown, and no $50 taxi ride to get to the airport.  I actually came to my first meeting via public transit, and then walked over to the shuttle kiosk. I have to agree: it feels VERY civilized.

I confess I was not in favor of keeping this airport, when it has come up as an issue in municipal politics. And there has been more than enough jiggery-pokery on the funding to keep us taxpayers in a state of rage for years. But as long as this thing is rolling, I plan to give it a try.

Compliance vs Customer Experience: the Joys of Travel

This is the third post in a series looking at how compliance procedures have infiltrated customer facing environments, and how to meet the challenge without damaging the customer sales and service experience.   

Given the identical situation, let's look at how different organizations are responding.   Since we've all been in an airport, dear reader, this seems like a good place to look. 

In Canada, we seem to have airport security who relish
acting in an officious  manner.  (It feels like class warfare to me: if you can afford to travel with a laptop, they already hate you) 
What a treat in some US airports I have been in, (e.g. Phoenix) where security staff
are friendly, polite, smiling and service oriented, even as they are
telling you they need your shoes.  They wish you pleasant travel. They
invite you to return soon.  Their subtext goes something like this:  I know you aren't a terrorist, but we need to pay attention to this and I know you understand why it's so important.  Okay?

Pearson airport in Toronto has US Customs and Immigration pre-clearance for Canadian
travellers to the USA.  They have helpful people directing traffic.
They use line-up management methods that they learned from Disney.  It
might not be fun, but at least it's efficient.   

Contrast this with what you will see coming in to Canada Customs in the same airport.  No line-up management at all, which occassionally results in a full-room-crush.  I've been in this room
when the crowd was backed up the stairs to the boarding lounges, pushing and jockeying for position.   It's hot.  There is nothing to look at -- no posters for the sights of the city you are entering, no welcome signs, no commercial messages about where you can get a cell-phone.   It feels like the third world. (Actually, I've had better experiences in the third world.  It's embarassing, frankly, and let me just apologize to all visitors for our dismal performance)

So to anyone who doesn't think organization culture counts for much, I invite you to explain this difference.  It is possible to balance competing objectives.  But management has to actually make the effort.