Noble ambitionsFor Quintessentially Managing Director Fiona Noble the Heathrow project is fascinating and challenging in equal measure. “Heathrow has millions of people walking through it”¦ for business, for family travel and so on – it’s such a broad customer base,” she says. “So how do you define what great customer service means to them whoever they are, whatever their motivation?” One of the firm’s biggest challenges will be how to progress from “˜the big idea’ of being a world leader to actual specifics. “It is about having the high-level vision always there in the front of our minds but then breaking it down into bite-size chunks,” Ms Noble says. “But whatever process we apply, it’s always, always, always led by the customer. Who is the customer? What is their motivation? What is their expectation? What are they thinking and feeling? “And once you start breaking it down into those different sorts of customers and experiences then you begin to get to what are they currently thinking. Where would we like them to be and where are we at Heathrow – delighting them or just making them feel okay? “You can do your customer segmentation strategy and say, “˜well these are business people, these are people travelling on leisure, these are people who are halfway between’. But the truth is, we’re all people and we all have the same sort of human needs, whatever the motivation for our trip. “So one of the very simple things that we’re looking to help Heathrow with is this – what does absolutely delightful retail and customer service look like across all those different segments? “And that’s a huge challenge when you have people travelling for different reasons with different expenditures with different expectations. “It’s about how are we going to help brand Heathrow, if you like, take the definition of service forward? This is important, not just simply in terms of great airports of the world but actually in terms of great brands of the world. “It’s about being a definer of service outside of the industry and the sector and that’s what great brands do – they don’t just do better than all their competitors in their sector; they make people think quite differently about the product or the experience. That’s a lofty ambition but it’s certainly Heathrow’s ambition, which is exciting.” |
After being named the “˜Best Airport for Shopping’ at Skytrax’s World Airport Awards for the sixth year running in 2014, Heathrow Airport says it wants to take this legacy further with an extensive review of its retail service offering to “transform the airport retail experience” and provoke discussion with brand partners to raise standards in airport shopping and dining.
That’s a laudable aim and Heathrow is effectively baring it all with admirable transparency to ensure candid and challenging results.
The airport company has appointed luxury lifestyle group and concierge service company Quintessentially to drive the review. The company has been given full access to Heathrow’s retail survey the airport’s current retail offering and consult with passengers, commercial partners and staff. Quintessentially will review Heathrow’s full retail proposition including shops, restaurants and services such as Personal Shopping, Shop & Collect and Reserve & Collect.
Following its review, Quintessentially will provide Heathrow with a full, independent analysis complete with recommendations based on their expertise in service across the globe. The report will be designed to complement Heathrow’s own expertise in travel retail, helping the airport set a new benchmark for service standards and offer passengers “the best airport service in the world”.
The Moodie Report: Tell us a little more about the project please.
Jonathan Coen: We’re setting ourselves a new ambition at Heathrow Airport under CEO John Holland-Kaye’s guidance – to be the world’s best airport provider and within that context, clearly retail has a huge role to play.
We’re building on a strong platform, and a strong success within retail, over the last 30 years. We’ve led the way in travel retail and it’s about how we continue to move that agenda forward and take that leadership role in retail – and particularly in service within retail – as a differentiator between what Heathrow does, what other airports do and indeed what the High Street does as well. Our market is competing against all those areas.
How can we work in partnership to enhance the offers we’ve got and are there areas that we can be better at? So that is the ambition.
That’s laudable. Every good organisation should stop and self-check and I guess you’re doing more than that because you’re pulling in somebody to do it. Are you giving them carte blanche?
We said to Fiona Noble at Quintessentially: “Come in, look at all of our retail services and propositions and give us your view as to where we can improve, where we’re doing well and where we can improve.”
Jonathan Coen: Retail has a vital role to play in how travellers perceive airport service |
But equally we’ll be sharing with them our own insight; they’ll be able to conduct their own research, their own intelligence to validate, if you like, what we already have. So in simple terms, yes, they will have lots of access to our business and we’ll facilitate that conversation with partners so that they can do a comprehensive review for us.
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“Whatever process we apply, it’s always, always, always led by the customer. Who is the customer? What is their motivation? What is their expectation? What are they thinking and feeling?“ |
Fiona Noble Managing Director Quintessentially |
Is this a qualitative analysis only or are you also going to be looking at economic performance, i.e. commercial benefit to the airport?
Predominantly, it’s around how we can enhance the service qualitative environment for passengers. Clearly within that, one would hope that the right thing for our customers will drive through to commercial benefits. But the primary objective – under the concept of putting Heathrow up there against the best in the world in terms of travel full stop and retail specifically – is we want to provide those products and services that customers want.
And we believe we have a good insight into that, but there are lots of great things going on out there and we want a genuinely independent view of how we can enhance what we’re doing. We want to set ourselves up to be a world class airport retail environment within a world class airport. It’s a high ambition.
It’s at least a three-month project in terms of doing the research and conducting the insight with a view that we will have some concrete recommendations probably by February.
We’re looking to launch it as a kind of engagement with our partners in Cannes because obviously that’s a great opportunity for me to see as many of our key business partners and brands as possible to say, “This is the agenda that we have and we really want you to be part of it and we really want you to play your role.”
This is a positive initiative that will be applauded, I’m sure, by all Trinity stakeholders. After all, Heathrow was indeed the pioneer of the modern airport retail revolution, the guys that brought the High Street to Heathrow. It’s good, I think, to reassert those principles.
Yes absolutely, and that’s certainly some part of our thinking – about building on that success and building on that legacy of leading the industry. We want to get into that leadership space.
The personal touch: Heathrow aims to deliver a new standard for retail service |
The service review will run for at least three months and include contributions from stakeholders across the business |
Key question: The review will ask what exactly delightful customer service looks like in the airport environment? |
Putting themselves in the customers’ shoes: Fiona Noble, Managing Director at Quintessentially, and Jonathan Coen, Retail Director at Heathrow |
