Enough data, but how do you turn the right data into usable information so that you can optimize the customer journey? Bernard-Jan Rietveld, as Head of Passenger Experience at Schiphol responsible for the customer experience of travelers for the airport, and Theo van der Steen, director of Underlined, explain how Schiphol Airport gives substance to 'data-driven passenger experience'.

“Schiphol is dealing with a new reality,” says Rietveld: in April 2020, passenger volume had fallen to 2% of the original volume due to the corona pandemic. Holiday traffic, in particular, picked up again in the following summer, but Schiphol expects business traffic to be permanently lower. Companies recognize that online meetings also work well. The airport must respond to these changes, and the costs and revenues of certain activities are more important than ever. Steering based on management information is therefore essential.

Improving customer experience: start with the vision

Schiphol's long-term vision (which extends to 2050) states that the company wants to work towards the most sustainable high-quality airport. Quality of the network and quality of service are important building blocks in this regard. At the airport, the quality of service is divided into three journeys: the passenger journey, the airline journey and the airport ecosystem (the role within the chain of which Schiphol is a part). Subsequently, the passenger journey was also divided into three separate journeys: the departure journey, the transfer journey and the arrival journey. With these three journeys, the airport initially wants to gain experience with data-driven steering. Later on, a distinction may be made between destinations or type of traveler (business or leisure).

What determines the passenger experience?

A second part of Schiphol's data-driven approach is the framework that the airport has set up around the drivers of customer experience. As far as Rietveld is concerned, customer experience always has two sides. On the one hand: what does the customer find important? And from an organizational point of view: what do we want to be as a brand and what do we need to change in order to deliver the right customer experience? If you want to focus on passenger experience (PX), you must know which variables determine passenger experience. What exactly determines the NPS (or contributes to) from the customer's point of view? For example, Schiphol receives a lot of feedback data from the toilets, but even then the question is what should happen if there are structural complaints about toilets. Do you need to clean more often or better or do you run out of toilet paper too often?

Data is less abstract than you think

Discussions about data-driven working can easily become abstract. Rietveld emphasizes that it is ultimately the behavior of employees that determines how the customer experiences the service. Making adjustments based on data largely comes down to changing the behavior of employees. The involvement of the work floor in passenger experience is therefore essential, but the work floor must be optimally facilitated to make adjustments. That is why Schiphol has translated 'behaviour' into cultural values, such as shared responsibility across all departments for working on a good customer experience, including shared KPIs, and into the required (facilitating) leadership. A multitude of KPIs has been reduced to eight main KPIs.

The eight shared KPIs are: the number of intercontinental destinations, the safety index, the on-time performance of airlines, the reputation score of local residents, the employee promoter score, the sustainability score (percentage of CO2 emissions), the NPS among passengers and the ROI for shareholders.

To clarify what exactly determines passenger experience, Schiphol has determined a set of value drivers for customer satisfaction based on its own and sector-wide research. These drivers are easily measurable and therefore 'actionable': suitable for steering.

Looking for the right data

When you know what determines passenger experience, you can look for the right data and data sources. Schiphol makes a distinction between operational data (produced by systems such as the user experience on the website, the feedback systems in toilets, or complaints submitted to the contact center) and experience data: observations of the operational staff on the floor and perceptions of the customer.

Schiphol's ecosystem is rich in data, but not everything is immediately available, usable or relevant. Schiphol is home to a large number of shops and restaurants, and the processes of the security departments, customs and check-in desks are also part of the passenger journey. Because these processes are performed by external parties, the airport has only an indirect influence on the total passenger experience. Another factor is that in the three passenger journeys mentioned there is only limited direct interaction between Schiphol and its customers.

What data can you send with?

If Schiphol wants to realize its ambitions, the airport must therefore actively search for data to contribute to its steering capacity. In part, Schiphol must request that data from partners; for another part, the airport can conduct research among passengers at the airport. In this extensive customer satisfaction survey, the airport asks for experiences that refer to the drivers of customer experience.

In doing so, it was checked for all touchpoints which of the eight drivers are important for each touchpoint. For example, during the security check, safety, hospitality and process effectiveness are the most important. Instead of a paper customer journey hanging on the wall somewhere, Schiphol has opted for a dynamic BI environment where processes, departments or touchpoints can be clicked to view the latest scores. When scores are below standard, this may be a reason to monitor what is happening more precisely. Partners from Schiphol's ecosystem can link up with the data portal that the airport has set up in order to improve the service to their own customers. For example, an airline that provides information on the day of departure about the expected crowds at the check-in desks or gates.

Working agile

The airport has further embraced the agile working method in order to strengthen its steering capacity – i.e. implement changes in processes based on findings. Value flows are central to this and work is done in periods of three months, so that it is clear to everyone which priorities apply and how employees can contribute to a better passenger experience with their own behaviour.

When you implement this step by step and refine it based on results, assumptions make way for evidence (or: data-driven decisions), says Rietveld. Part of this is also validating the customer's assumptions: which elements are decisive for the customer's perception?

This article is part of it dossier Data & Analytics from Ziptone.

This article is based on a webinar on data-driven working, an initiative of the data expert group of the KSF. Also read KSF's summary about the approach of Schiphol. For the next two years, the KSF data expert group will be led by Nikki van Gerwen (Underlined) and Aaron Post (Sabi). On the knowledge page of KSF contains more knowledge articles arranged by theme.

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