Finding a Beautiful Balance Between Personal and Digital Customer Service

October 24, 2016  | Written by Valerie Silva

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APEX Insight: The APEX EXPO 2016 keynote panel emphasized human interaction and personal service as opportunities for airlines to differentiate themselves and means of meeting passengers’ rising expectations.

Industry forecasts anticipate a global annual growth of 4.8 percent in passenger traffic, thanks in part to Asia-Pacific’s mounting middle-class demographic, armed with greater disposable income. Rossen Dimitrov, senior vice-president of Customer Experience for Qatar Airways, Steven Greenway, deputy CEO of Asian low-cost carrier (LCC) alliance, U-Fly, and Yehudit Grisaro, vice-president of Customer Experience, El Al, discussed how to meet the rising expectations of a passenger base that is ever growing and increasingly diversified.

“Good customer service is like beauty – hard to define, but when you encounter it, you recognize it.” – Yehudit Grisaro, El Al

Off the start, Dimitrov and Grisaro agreed that the single greatest thing an airline can do to differentiate itself from its competition is refine its personal service. “It’s important that we invest in our people …  Hardware and software can only take you so far,” says Dimitrov. “A lot of airlines are investing in technology and forgetting that what matters most is the personal touch.” Grisaro concurred, maintaining that human interactions, unlike digital points of contact, leave a lasting impression: “Good customer service is like beauty – hard to define, but when you encounter it, you recognize it.”

Which kind of interaction is most important when it comes to #PaxEx? #APEXEXPO

— APEX (@theAPEXassoc) October 24, 2016

But Greenway insists that no matter how well trained an airline’s staff is there are just too many human variables at play. By minimizing manual interfaces and eliminating the unknown, he argued, there is room for greater consistency across all stages of the passenger experience. Maximizing digitization is one way that the LCC alliance’s airlines can also meet the demands of its passengers, who are for the most part 18- to 30-year-old digital natives.