To your passengers, the cleanliness of your toilets says a lot about the overall state of the airport. It’s often the first and last facility they visit before their departure. If you’d like to make a good impression on your passengers and encourage them to fly from your airport again, get on top of the toilet cleanliness and maintenance.
DIRTY FACILITIES WORSEN EXPERIENCES
People can become easily stressed in an airport environment. Before they even begin to get in line for check-in or security, they often have to wait to use the toilet. And frequently it’s dirty. 2018 study by Sofidel found that 86% of Americans said that a clogged toilet would negatively impact their perception of a business.
Steve Mayers, the Customer Experience Director at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL), one of Avius’ clients, indicated that passengers always refer to the cleanliness of the restrooms when talking about the cleanliness of the entire airport. This not only impacts their perception of the airport, but their overall experience too.
The world’s busiest airport recognised it had to get on top of the toilet cleanliness and restocking issues in order to improve passenger experiences.
“Passenger experience improvements create a significant improvement to the bottom line. Finding out where improvements are needed can be challenging and time intensive – this is where Avius provides the ideal solution,” said Steve Mayers.
Since implementing Avius’ Voice of Customer solution in 2017, ATL has improved customer satisfaction levels by over 14.5%.
Find out more how the world’s busiest airport does customer experience.
CLEAN FACILITIES INCREASE PASSENGER SPEND
Toilet cleanliness not only impacts passenger satisfaction, but also their spending in shops and restaurants. Customers who are dissatisfied with the lavatories are less likely to spend money in your food and beverage or retail outlets. If the toilets are not up to standard, customers’ perception of the entire airport can be impacted, and that will discourage them from eating or drinking. Additionally, waiting in a long queue will reduce their time to linger before departing. Clean facilities improve satisfaction and encourage dwell time. As a result, customers are more likely to make purchases and increase revenue.
COLLECT AND LISTEN TO FEEDBACK
By collecting passenger feedback at key touch-points, airports can improve satisfaction levels and make informed decisions on the commercial and operational areas of the business. With Avius survey kiosks, airports like ATL have been able to pinpoint exactly what the issues are, resolve them instantly, and put processes in place to limit them happening in the future. Asking passengers to press smiley faces is simply not enough. You need to find out the reasons why. Therefore, make sure you’re asking the right questions and act on the feedback you receive.
IMPROVE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY WITH INSTANT ALERTS
Having alerts whenever a passenger leaves negative feedback allows the relevant team to respond to maintenance and cleanliness issues in real-time. This can significantly improve passenger satisfaction and experience. Avius software provides such alerts as well as a cleaner check-in feature; the cleaning staff are able to check-in at each facility and mark how many supplies they used. Managers can use this data to manage schedules and predict when each toilet needs attention, improving operational efficiency.
By Natalia Kaczmarek
