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How Airlines Ground Their New Customer Experiences; Coffee Chains Want to Make You a Member
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Welcome back. Airlines’ customer experience chiefs are relying on scientists, customer surveys and remote live streams of the airport experience to do their jobs. Pret A Manger is trying to revive sales and form a tighter bond with customers through unlimited passes and subscription plans. And trade shows are limping back to life.
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Airlines’ customer experience teams are focused on making people feel that flying is safe. PHOTO: JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Those in charge of airlines’ customer experience and service have seen their job descriptions rewritten since coronavirus slashed world-wide airline capacity by 73% in early April.
Once focused on improving the physical journey through airports and planes, chief customer officers have now found themselves fine-tuning the emotional experience of flying to make sure people feel safe, Katie Deighton reports. That often means going above and beyond scientific advice when it comes to things like replacing a craft’s air filters and cleaning onboard.
Many of these executives are leaning on epidemiologists, airline associations and customer feedback to make changes, while United is getting local airport staff to livestream the evolving check-in and gate experiences to its scattered customer team.
There’s even been knowledge sharing between competitors.
“We truly believe that safety and health and well being is not a competitive play,” said American's chief customer officer, Alison Taylor.
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“Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative.”
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— Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings on working from home during the pandemic
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A Pret A Manger barista in London serves coffee from behind a perspex screen. PHOTO: BEN STEVENS/PARSONS MEDIA
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U.K.-based sandwich-and-coffee chain Pret A Manger has introduced “coffee passes” across its 72 locations in the U.S. A $9.99 “classic” option will get customers 30 days of unlimited hot coffee, iced coffee and tea, and a $19.99 “premium” offer unlocks access to the Single Origin blend, cold brew and espresso-based drinks.
The company also introduced a U.K. subscription service, which provides up to five barista-prepared drinks a day for £20 a month.
The moves come as Pret A Manger looks to stem losses resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, which led to government-mandated lockdowns that closed offices in city centers and cut off the company’s main pipeline of customers. The chain hopes people’s adoption of digital and mail-order subscriptions during lockdown will expand to include coffee memberships.
“We saw during lockdown the joy and positivity that subscription services like Netflix and Disney+ brought to people,” Briony Raven, the company’s U.K. food and coffee director, told Katie Deighton for the Experience Report. “That’s really what we want to re-create with our coffee subscription.”
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Trade Shows Try to Revive
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Huawei’s booth at a less-crowded IFA on Sept. 3. PHOTO: FABIAN SOMMER/ZUMA PRESS
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Trade shows and exhibitions are cautiously relaunching in Europe in a dress rehearsal for what organizers hope will be a broader resumption of fairs next year.
But the pandemic has brought about changes to a format that has hardly evolved over decades.
IFA, the biggest consumer electronics shows outside the U.S., opened in Berlin last week with a much smaller exhibition than usual. Closed to the general public, the halls were blanketed in spooky silence interrupted every 30 minutes by a dystopian public-service announcement in German and English reminding attendees to keep their distance, wash their hands and wear their masks.
Even after the virus, pandemic-era features such as remote participation might persist, said Ernst Kick, chief executive of Spielwarenmesse, which organizes an annual toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany.
“There will be hybrid trade shows in the future that will take place in the real world but will also be bolstered by digital media,” he told the Journal.
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Juul vaping pens. PHOTO: AJENG DINAR ULFIANA/REUTERS
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Juul shelved the development of a feature that would count users’ puffs and alert them when they reached their set limits. [WSJ]
Fast became the latest digital payment system to promise speedier and better online transactions. [Morning Brew]
Teachers know how they would redesign Zoom for remote education. [Fast Company]
Google added traffic lights to its Maps app for some U.S. cities. [CNN]
How health-care experience leaders are measuring progress during the pandemic. [Becker’s Hospital Review]
Review: The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 delivers a much better user experience than the original, but it still costs $2,000. [Input]
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