Service Design Case Study — Why are airports net promoter scores declining?

Case Study

I love having challenges at work, thinking creatively and outside the the box is something I enjoy to do.

As part of my recent interview process at a company, I was set a challenge to find out why the net promoter scores & passenger number were declining at Heathrow airport. The catch? They gave five days to complete the challenge and present it to their team.

Passenger number performance and the net promoter scores are declining and the digital experience director of Heathrow Airport is unsure as to how the activity aligns to the strategy.

Design Thinking Approach

• Given that large volume of people travel from Heathrow, I was confident to find customer stories/experiences via reviews online.
• Interviews were great way to gather insights from recent travellers and dwell deeper into their experience. (Why they do what they do?)
• Self-ethnography was great opportunity to experience the service myself. Took photos of my surroundings, observed how users interacted with various touch-points.
• Finally for the purpose of quick research with limited time

Online Research, Interviews & Self-ethnography

Online Research & interviews results :

• Despite the latest technology used at the airports and expectations self-serve, travelling is time consuming. “Long Queues at passport controls. Then I moved to the baggage reclaim and even though I waited a lot at the controls, my baggage hadn’t arrived yet.”
• Travelling can been exhausting, especially when travelling with family. Due to lengthy process at every stage especially if there are delays etc. “I am normally exhausted when I arrive at my destination”
• Lack of staff and passport readers don’t work! “lack of staff is very noticeable There is no attempt whatsoever to ease things for families right from the moment you un-board the train, right through passport control and until you claim your baggage.” “ The automatic passport reading does not work”

Timeline of steps required at the airport.

Ethnography results:

• Travelling is a lengthy process and requires a lot organisation prior & during travel, especially if travelling with young children.
• Adoption of latest tech and self-serve seem to be at the norm airports. However the service isn’t efficient to match customers expectations. The user experience isn’t intuitive and many items older generation prefer to go down the traditional route of asking for human help as they struggle to work out how to operate tech.
• Parking at the airport, long queues nearby the airports, expensive parking charges are just some of the other things that contribute to stress of travelling.

There was so much data I collected by empthazing with the travellers, I organised all the data in a format that I could present back during the interview. I decided to use Empathy map to communicate the outcomes. The diagram was spilt in four parts, Think & Feel, Hear, See and Say & Do, followed by the summary of Pains & Gains.

Pains:
- Stressful & exhausting
- Very busy surroundings
- Number of hurdles to overcome & especially with young children
- Lot of prep before travelling
- Expensive parking
- Poor Wifi. requires registration for 20mins free Wifi

Gains:
- Breaks in-between are good
- Look forward to arriving to the destination
- Satisfied if all runs as per schedule

Persona formed based on the data collected

With the data I retrieved through interviews, ethnography, and online research, I was ready to craft a persona called Jessica and her customer journey at the airport. These are all tasks she performs and airport touch-points she interacts with before boarding the plane.

Customer journey before boarding the plane

Ideas for improving the service & NPS score

As you can imagine, there were number of directions I could go with this service improvement proposal. I decided to brainstorm and then narrow it down to one. This was a huge project and it required numerous other teams and stakeholders to be involved. However for the purpose of this task I wanted to show that a lot needs be improved for the NPS to improve.

I decided to focus on: Reduction of steps required at the airport & queue time before boarding the plane.

I decided to present my idea using desktop walkthrough method. The reason behind this was simple, it’s a technique that tries to imitate the real service environment. By the use of LEGO figures I can act different scenarios and simulate the possible problems. Below is one of the scenarios, I presented to the business.

This is only the beginning and first stab at finding the solution. My proposal on the re-design of how the security checks are performed, reducing the queue times and simplifying the journey for travellers is massive change for the airport and the passengers. There are number of key stages missing and require more work:

• Business & stakeholder input
• The prototype needs to be tested at the airport, in the real context with passengers
• The value can be proved through smaller incremental changes and its adoption will be greater.
• There is large element of the security checks being accurate and ensuring correct skilled staff are there to support passengers.

I learned a lot in a short space of time. Hopefully you found something useful here. Please comment below and give me some critique. I could really use the help of the design community out there to perfect my process!

I hope you enjoyed reading the case study as much as I enjoyed writing it. I would appreciate any feedback! Say hello to me at khayati_r@yahoo.co.uk or connect with me on LinkedIn.