Adaptive Path Blog

There was an article on BBC that I thought was a very interesting account of a traveler stuck in Heathrow during the latest terrorism scare. Many other people were stuck without proper information about the new carry-on rules, or flight delays or what was really going on with their travel plans on a minute-by-minute basis. To be fair to the airlines, it seems as if they didn’t have the whole picture either and were reacting as well as they could.

It got me thinking about how airlines use their communications systems to convey different types of information to their customers. Traditionally, the kiosks, signs and monitors are in place to convey one-way information about flight status or departure information. The gates will tell you you’re in the right place and that you may as well sit down because your flight is delayed.

But what happens in a situation where the need for information dramatically shifts beyond the normal flight status? In the case of Heathrow (or any airport in an emergency situation), the needs of the passengers grew dramatically and there lacked sufficient resources to explain, educate and reassure.

Here is an opportunity for companies to have plans or infrastructure to immediately shift the use of their existing communications systems for a completely different purpose.

Imagine if the airlines were able to turn on new templates and new information feeds to their website, rather than just a simple “Emergency Travel Information Update” page? What if their booking engine transformed into a tool that helped existing passengers re-route their travel? What if the kiosks and monitors at the terminals changed into live updates and alternate travel option information instead of just “Flight 280 is Delayed/Ontime”? What if the airline had an RSS feed that could find it’s way into people’s laptops or mobile devices that gave them instructions on what to do (or don’t do) next.

This issue goes beyond a website design, beyond customer service policies. It speaks to the heart of service design and how having a holistic approach to communicating to your audience has a greater impact than one or two good tools.

The companies that get service design already do a good job of uniform communication across all their channels. The interesting challenge for some companies is understanding that they may need to have multiple sets of service design policies to communicate with their customers even more effectively.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Service Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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