How To Make Air Travel Enjoyable
This is part of an on-going series of articles exploring how to use behavioural science can improve every day life.
I’m currently waiting for a flight in New Delhi airport. And I’m wondering something you may have too. Why isn’t air travel more enjoyable?
After all, we dream about going away for months. A large part that isn’t priced is the pleasure of browsing — fantasising about some far off destination.
Of course there’s security, regulations and so on. I’m not going to argue with those (one for another time). Instead let’s focus just on what an airline can do.
You see, the airline isn’t just responsible for the flight. They take responsibility in our minds for the whole airport experience. The question you get asked is, “how was your flight?”. But we don’t just recall the flight, we recall the journey. And if anything went wrong we blame the airline.
Specifically let’s look at solving three problems:
1. How do you make the customer experience less stressful?
2. How do you reduce complaints and build loyalty?
3. How do you reduce delays by encouraging customers to be on time?
First let’s dissect the customer journey: what happens from when we turn up to when we get on the plane.
One key insight we learn from behavioural science is that small things make a big difference. A chocolate on a pillow costs about 12p to a hotel. But the gratitude it brings after a long flight and transfer is many times greater. And if we can find the pain-points, we can work out where to focus.
The Airport Experience: Does this sound familiar?
You enter the airport. The first question you ask yourself is: where’s check-in? You look up at the small black and yellow board. It shows 20–50 options. You have to search for yours. Frustrating, isn’t it?
You find it and make your way to the check-in desk. There’s a queue. You have to wait in one of those snake-line queues, sandwiched between other holiday-makers. You’re probably quite calm. But there are always a few people huffing and puffing. It makes you feel anxious too. (Emotions are contagious…put frustrated people near frustrated people and you feel shit. The London Underground during rush hour is perhaps the best demo of this.)
You drop your bag. Will you ever see it again? And collect your boarding pass. A piece of paper with a few pieces of information on it. Then you head to security.
Here’s where the fun begins. You have to queue to publicly undress. Take off your belt. Sometimes your shoes. Stuff your toiletries into a plastic bag. All in front of a crowd of strangers. You get patted down. Your bags searched. And when they’re satisfied you really aren’t a terrorist, you have to get dressed again. Quickly. The conveyor belt doesn’t wait.
(Incidentally I’ve heard Heathrow are trialling a different design of security, where you split into six and remove your metallic items in your own time, reducing the rush and anxiety of being watched. Really good idea. Supermarkets could try a similar idea with self-checkout queues. Or even fast-food restaurants with ordering.)
This next part is actually quite enjoyable. Duty free. You find yourself looking at £180 headphones. Or go hunting for a travel adaptor that might actually work. Or overpriced leather goods. There’s food. And even if it’s 7.30am, it’s socially acceptable to start drinking.
But you’re worried about something. When does boarding start? Again — another screen you have to check time after time. And the information is pretty basic and not very usable. What you really care about is: how long will it take to get to the gate? Which direction is the gate? Do I have time to have another drink?
Finally it’s time to get on the plane. If you’re lucky you’ve got priority boarding. Or business class. If you haven’t you’re pissed off when they walk past you to board first. And that’s all before you even take-off.
From leaving the taxi to getting on the plane that’s about 2 hours if you’ve turned up “on time”.
Now let’s dig a bit deeper. What are the behavioural insights that are useful here?
Two Behavioural Insights Airlines Should Focus On
1. We Hate Uncertainty
There’s almost nothing more stressful than uncertainty. And we’re willing to pay irrational sums to avoid it. This is explained by evolutionary psychology. Uncertainty means there’s a threat. It saps energy. It’s why when you feel stressed, you feel tired too.
That means the most frustrating thing a passenger can see is “Delayed”. Not only does it mean they’ll be late but, far more annoyingly, late by an indeterminate amount of time.
If you’re delayed by 10 mins, that means you’ve got time to get a coffee.
If you’re delayed by two hours, you’ve got time to have a sit-down meal. But not knowing means you have to keep one eye on the board at all times. It’s stressful. It’s annoying.
My friend Rory Sutherland has explained a few times that the best thing London Underground ever did to improve customer satisfaction had nothing to do with improving the service at all. They didn’t speed up the service. They didn’t reduce delays. They simply added dot-matrix signs to the platform stating when the next train would arrive. A certain wait of six minutes is less frustrating than an uncertain wait of two.
And if this sounds trivial, consider Uber. It’s a $40BN business built on well-packaged certainty. You know how far away a car is. You know how long it will be. You know how much the ride will cost. You don’t have to stop to get cash to pay. And you have the added security that your driver is being tracked and rated (as are you). Minicabs and taxis just can’t compete with that.
2. We Crave Rewards
There’s a reason people who take photos are more likely to lose weight. Positive feedback — or progress — is a very effective way to encourage people to keep doing something. It builds habits.
(Strangely this is true even when the person giving the feedback is lying. There’s research showing that people perform better on a maths tests after they are told that they did well in a previous test. Even if really they didn’t. And vice versa. This is known as priming.)
And in airports we’re looking for information to tell us if we’re doing ok. Am I on time? Do I need to speed up? Am I in the right place? And so on.
Now I’ve done some consulting to a few airlines now. So I know how tiny the margins are. Even if there’s a slight delay a flight can lose money. And, of course, the longer the delay the bigger the loss.
The biggest “unknown” is whether the passengers will turn up on-time. Specifically passengers that have checked in but don’t make it to the gate on time.
Of course there’s a very big incentive for people to show up. Miss your flight and you have to buy another ticket. But there’s a margin of error. They’ll do a final call. They’ll shout your name over the PA.
But airlines don’t want pissed off customers taking their frustration on airline staff because they missed their flight. And they don’t want to run the risk of having to pay compensation.
One way to make more people turn up on time is to offer a reward. The typical economist’s answer would be simply to use incentives.
The problem is this can backfire.
Michael Sandel, a Harvard Professor, explains in his book ‘What Money Can’t Buy’ that when you create a market you can crowd out intrinsic motivations — our social desire to do the right thing. If an airline pays a reward to turn up on time then some view it as the accepted market price for being late. “If I get there 10 minutes early I could get £5. I’d rather relax with my coffee, thanks.”
With behavioural economics we can take this idea a step further, learning from the lottery. After all, why do millions play the lottery each week, despite the odds of willing being 1 in 14 million? Optimism bias. We overestimate our chances of winning. “It could be me”.
How To Turn These Two Insights Into Innovation
Innovation is simply two things: making things better and making things less bad. A better type of innovation is doing both. And the holy grail of innovation is doing both for less.
So here’s the three problems again:
1. How do you make the customer experience less stressful?
2. How do you reduce complaints and build loyalty?
3. How do you reduce delays by encouraging customers to be on time?
Why not solve them, all at once, with one solution?
You see a lot of the pain-points came down to the communication medium. The boards were designed to solve this by creating a one to many communication channel. They were very effective between 1950–2007 when that was only way to communicate with customers.
Now though customers have a direct one to one communication channel in their pocket. The smartphone.
Shlomo Benhartzi, Professor of Behavioural Economics at the UCLA School of Management, has done some fantastic work creating an app that increases saving rates.
And whether it’s increasing savings or many other decisions, the interplay of psychology and behavioural economics with technology creates an immensely powerful tool to change behaviour.
Of course airlines aren’t oblivious to this. British Airways, for example, has quite a good app. You can check-in. You can get basic info about your flight. You have a digital copy of your boarding pass.
But they and others could do a lot better, solving these three problems with a single app.
1. How do you make the customer experience less stressful?
Provide certainty. Tell me where I am. Let me find out where I want to be. Tell me how I am doing. And tell me what I need to do.
Practically that means tapping into the incredible GPS systems in smartphones. The airline knows where the check-in desk is. They know where my gate is. They know how long it will take. And when I need to be there. Let me see that information in real-time. Show me the path from A to B. I’ll just follow the line — and deviate when I need to.
If things change, tell me. My flight is delayed by 20 minutes — Ok, I’ll go and get a drink. My flight is boarding — Great, I’ll leave the Haribo in WH Smith’s and get going.
And remove the anxiety about losing luggage. Take a note from Dominos Pizza’s app. Four stages and I can see in real-time what’s going on. Your luggage is heading to the plane. Your luggage is on the plane. Your luggage is being unloaded. Your luggage is available for collection at collection point 1.
Quite simple but immediately a lot of anxiety is gone. The experience is a lot less painful.
2. How do you reduce complaints and build loyalty?
The “new new thing” are messenger apps like Operator and Native. Just imagine you’re every desire a message away? The app does the searching. And gives you a few options to choose from. I think it’s a fantastic idea. (Full disclosure: I’m currently advising a shopping messenger start-up)
How does this apply to air travel?
Well the bane of every companies life are complaints on social media. Many have tried to solve the problem by creating separate account for customer service. But dozens of companies entire Twitter streams are “We’re sorry…”, “We’re sorry…”, “We’re sorry…”.
Adding a chat or messenger tab takes the conversation off social media. And gives airlines the opportunity to proactively deal with a situation rather than fire-fight to minimise the impact.
Plus they can provide personalised support. Let’s say I’m flying to Rio and I want to know when boarding starts, I can get the answer immediately. And I can set up alerts so I don’t have to think at all.
“When’s my flight boarding?”
“11.45am from Gate 34. Do you want to create an alert to give you time to get to there?”
80% of questions will be the same or similar. These can be programmed to give default answers. Anything else goes to the customer service team. And bingo. Both parties benefit.
The airlines get fewer complaints and chance to create a better relationship with the customer. The customer gets a better experience.
3. How do you reduce delays by encouraging customers to be on time?
Let’s say you’re flying with British Airways from London Heathrow to New York JFK.
In an economy flight you get 865 Avios Points. (Quite what that actually means is one for another day…)
The Boeing 747–400 to JFK carries 345 people when full. So that’s 298,425 points on offer (to keep this simple I’m ignoring that Premium/Business/First get more points). So take 10% and offer a lottery.
Turn up on time and you get entered into a draw for 29,842 points (even better would be making it something tangible like a case of Verve or a flight to Reykjavik). Not everyone has to enter but it’s an added reason to. And an added reason to show up on time.
You arrive in JFK and get a message to say you’ve won the points. What’s the first thing you tell your friends and family when they ask how the flight was? Who will you choose to book with when there’s a £50 difference between British Airways and American?
The cost of all of this? £20,000 or so. The benefit? Well, it’s an $8BN problem.
If only I had it right now…
Thomas Cornwall is the Director of Behave. A new company that turns insights from behavioural science into innovations that improve bottom-line results.
