In July, TAV Airports kicked off an innovation competition to give startups across Turkey, France and Jordan the opportunity to meet investors, gain exposure and win support to develop their ideas.
The Airport Innovation Days competition, which is held in conjunction with Group ADP and Airport International Group, culminates in Paris at the end of the year. The event is looking for entrepreneurs to develop ideas across four categories — green or sustainable airports, passenger experience, airport operations and airport experience — that can then be bootstrapped to TAV Airport’s operations to improve customer experience.
“We’re inviting companies from startup ecosystems to collaborate, with the aim of benefitting from these partnerships,” said Şirin Ayça Sayılır, head of customer experience, TAV Airport Holdings.
“We’re keeping customer-centricity in mind, and we hope these companies might create projects for us. The competition reflects TAV’s commitment to blending innovation and customer focused strategy,” she added.
The startup competition is one of two initiatives launched this year by the airport operator that are indicative of the organisation’s customer-focused strategy.
TAV Airport Holdings has an “enhanced CX-focus now, that allows us to adopt technological innovation with a customer-focused approach”, explained Ayça Sayılır.
“When I say innovation, it is not only technology, it is innovating the existing processes as well,” she added.
The other major CX-focused project has been the launch of WeAssist, an app designed to improve the travel experience of visually impaired individuals (VIIs) at TAV airports across Turkey. Developed in conjunction with WeWalk, the system connects the user to an agent who provides real-time navigation assistance to the visually impaired individual, via the camera on their smartphone.
The specially trained call agents provide assistance for “every part of the passenger’s journey during their visit at our airports”, said Ayça Sayılır.
Since the introduction of WeAssist, the customer response has been overwhelmingly positive. The app has earned a 9/10 net promoter score and visually impaired travellers who had previously reported feeling like “a bag with a barcode” now say they feel significantly safer and more independent.
“The sense of safety and independence is rated at 4.6/5, indicating that WeAssist has transformed the airport experience for these passengers, making it empowering and stress free,” commented Ayça Sayılır.
WeAssist is the bedrock of TAV Airport’s award nomination at this year’s International Customer Experience Awards, to be held in November.
WeAssist and the startup competition are just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to TAV Airports’ customer-centric approach. The last 18 months has seen the launch of a number of ‘back of house’ initiatives designed to ingrain CX thinking across the multinational company.
In the last year, TAV Airports Holdings, which operates 15 airports across eight countries, created a CX Governance board across its entire organisation, with the objective of igniting “momentum for effective customer-centric change”, explained Ayça Sayılır.
“This shift was immensely important for the global reach of our CX strategy in our airports,” she added.
The need for the governance board becomes clear given the scale of TAV’s airport operation. Last year, staff at its airports handled 96 million passengers, and it expects to guide in excess of 100 million travellers’ safety through its facilities in 2024.
The globally connected nature of the industry means that the smooth running of an airport is often disrupted by an incident that happens thousands of miles away. The situation is further complicated by the rapidly changing requirements from its B2B clients, who commonly have different check-in, baggage handling, and boarding requirements.
Despite the complex and high-pressure environment, customer-facing staff have to remain calm, collected, and customer-focused.
“We have come a long way from merely processing complaint management, to owning customer-centric solutions and applying them with a customer at the heart of everything mentality, in every operational function,” explained Ayça Sayılır.
The governance board helps the firm’s customer focus to transcend local differences in each operating market, by pulling together decision makers from operational and managerial functions and aligning them with the CX strategy.
The airport operator has also appointed CX ambassadors who are tasked with maximising the impact of the CX strategy across the organisation. Ambassadors “spread the customer-centric mindset and drive adoption”, at ground level said Ayça Sayılır.
“They play a crucial role in strengthening, shaping and improving our company’s CX strategy,” she added.
To ensure customer-focused thinking takes root across TAV Airport Holdings’ 40,000 employees, it has rolled out an extensive training programme, designed to embed a customer-centric approach from among new recruits to the business.
The TAV Studio programme aims to create a culture of innovation and encourage creative solutions from the team to enhance internal processes.
“This year, the programme has placed a special emphasis on young talent, focusing on developing projects that improve customer experience,” said Ayça Sayılır.
In the last year the airport operator has also started to put more emphasis on hiring people with a customer oriented mentality who are capable of ‘influencing’ their colleagues.