Indira Gandhi International Airport (IDIA) also known as Delhi International Airport (DIAL), a consortium led by the GMR Group operates the capital’s Delhi International Airport. The modernized Delhi International Airport is known to offer its passengers a world-class infrastructure and has taken a host of initiatives to enhance the passenger experience. It is the home to 500 plus brands and over 70 airlines making it truly an airport of choices for the end consumer.

The airport operator also enjoys a formidable presence on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. It is also the most followed social media airport page in India and amongst the top five airports worldwide.

“The Delhi International Airport stands as the busiest airport in India and also the 12th busiest airport in the world, with almost 70 million pax every year connecting them to over 140 destinations worldwide.”

Objectives

The overarching objective for the Delhi International Airport was to take its passenger customer experience to the next level. One of the major initiatives in this regard was to set up a 24×7 mechanism to listen to them in real-time and respond to their actionable comments or queries.

The objective was to offer an instant solution to passengers before they board their flight. And during this journey empower the management with data-backed decision-making.

Challenges

With the growing passenger footfall, online traffic to has been on a rise. Unlike most online brands, the airport as a brand has multiple names such as -The Delhi International Airport (DIAL), Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), and Palam Airport, to name a few. It was difficult to track relevant conversations on social media around the brand and take action.

Being an airport it can be best described as a “city within a city” involving multiple stakeholders such as airlines, immigrants, food outlets, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), brands, and many more. In the end, what matters to the airport operator is the seamless passenger experience irrespective of the stakeholder touchpoint.

Indira Gandhi International Airport (Delhi Airport) – Konnect Insights

The Delhi International Airport’s management team identified Konnect Insights as a partner in their journey to become a pioneer in customer experience.

Konnect Insights, is a comprehensive social listening platform based on the principles of AI, NLP, and Machine Learning, having the capabilities of online reputation management, social CRM, analytics, and publishing. Owing to these features, it was the right fit for the organization since they were able to make use of all these capabilities to achieve their objectives.

It facilitated the management to listen as well as drive strategic decisions based on the tool’s Big Data capabilities, as well as enabled them to enhance the overall passenger customer experience at the airport.

24X7 Command Centre

The state-of-the-art command center at Delhi International Airport displays some insightful graphs and charts which are directly from the Konnect Insights tool. Konnect Insights helped the management to set up their social media command center, which was then upgraded to a 24×7 operation. Owing to this and the efforts of their team, the airport emerged as the no. 1 airport in the world on social media response and engagement during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Delhi International Airport’s command center, which is functional round the clock, helps the team to respond to passengers’ queries on a real-time basis, besides posting various government advisories and vital updates on the situation at the airport through its various social media pages.

Crisis Management

Konnect Insights’ systematic ticketing system helped in bringing efficiency to the system in terms of response management. The volumes of customer queries saw a huge bump during the initial phases of the lock-downs in India.

The Delhi International Airport team heavily relied on the tool to monitor customer service tickets. Based on the in-built sentiment tracking provided by the tool, the relevant conversations were notified to the team who responded to those queries in coordination with the other departments. These conversations enabled the team to take the necessary on-ground measures to make it easy for the customers.

Combined efforts of their social media content & response management teams, supported by Konnect Insights led to…
Delhi Airport emerging the no.1 airport in response management during the crisis, spite recording as many as 20,000 queries in 24 hours during certain peak days.

Konnect Insights helped the airport operator to bring down its first response time to 10-11 minutes.

Customer Experience In Crisis

The Delhi airport operator managed to stay on top of their customer experience during the pandemic outbreak, especially in the last 3-4 months of the COVID-19 crisis. Using Konnect Insights’ 24×7 command center allowed the teams to work from home, yet be proactive in supporting their customers by responding to them promptly.

The team used Konnect Insights to perform extensive analytics and reporting of their performance across the social media channels and all over the web. The airport operator derived insights that were decision-driving and actionable. It also empowered the team to do timely interventions and convert negative feedback into positive experiences.

Beyond Social Media Channels – Call Center

The Delhi International Airport has integrated its call center data with Konnect Insights. The data is captured in the platform with appropriate tags and classifications as defined there. This is used for analytics and reporting. Even call-center agents’ performance is tracked using various KPIs to stay abreast with how the agents are managing and ensuring customer support.

Beyond Social Media Channels – Quick Response (QR) Codes and Kiosks

The Delhi International Airport team has implemented QR codes across the airport, for customers to be able to share their feedback easily. When a customer scans a QR code at the immigration or the washroom, they can easily submit their ratings and feedback which is captured into Konnect Insights. This data is then used being used for understanding customer needs and used for analytics and even informing stakeholders to take necessary actions.

Indira Gandhi International (Delhi) Airport – The Destination

The Delhi International Airport emerged as a pioneer in using technology to not only effectively service passengers better, but also enhance their overall experience, despite the magnitude of travelers it handles day-in and day-out. Even during a crisis, the airport is well prepared to ensure that they are still acing their customer experience management. It is no more a by-the-way place where travelers alight and depart, but has reinvented into a destination where passengers can have a world-class experience.

Konnect Insights

Konnect Insights – An Omnichannel Customer Experience Management Suite makes it simple and quick to extract conversations happening publicly regarding a brand, its competitors, and the industry, across social media, and use that data to perform analytics with a range of dashboards and charts for creating detailed reports to derive actionable insights.