How RBA keeps customers satsified

CUSTOMER service has grown to become an area of focus for many businesses in the private sector.

Many major local companies have grown and evolved their businesses mainly by finding out what their customers want and improving their business processes to ensure that their customers are kept happy.

In this first of a four-part series, The Brunei Times explores four different local companies to find out how they have benchmarked their standards, how they have improved their services over the years and what they have learnt about their business to propel them forward.

Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA), the Sultanate's national carrier, was established on November 18, 1974 as an independent corporation wholly-owned by the government of Brunei Darussalam. According to its website, RBA had a staff of 84 when it began operations.

Today it has about 1,900 on its payroll, 90 per cent of whom are based in Brunei. The airlines flies internationally to 13 different locations including, London, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Shanghai.

The Brunei Times' Debbie Too speaks to seven of RBA's staff: Head of corporate communications Azhani Daniel, cabin crew training controller Dzul Hj Mohd Yassin, training check instructor Nursusana Abdullah, head of cabin services Nur Rita Syakirah Abdullah Kaur, general management trainee Rojeam Hee, training check instructor James Wee and manager of traffic operations Masrini Abdullah.

"Our industry is very regulated, so obviously services that are done on an aeroplane are usually safety related and regulated by international standards," said Azhani. She explained that that was the basis of the cabin crew standards where basic safety procedures are prioritised and incorporated into cabin services.

"The additional customer service-oriented standards such as going the extra mile, in terms of your customers is what our cabin crew services have developed over the years," she said.

Azhani noted that nowadays customers are "more into customer service" as opposed to before, and one of the ways to differentiate one airline from another airline is customer service.

"You have to differentiate and make people feel warmer towards you, otherwise they won't want to fly with you again, and this is how we have approached customer service from an RBA point-of-view," she said.

Measuring customer service levels

RBA has been taking part in the International Air Transport Association (IATA) survey for a number of years, and regularly conducts inflight surveys.

"We recently had one in October last year, and we realised that the highest score that we received in ratings with our customers was with our in-flight services," said Rita.

She added that the survey does help especially with their products, but the ratings and the feedback that they get from their customers is what helped to propel their cabin crew services.

Online portal

Last year in July, RBA upgraded its online booking service to cater to online customers with the introduction of the new Internet Booking Engine (IBE) from Amadeus.

The features include Fare Calendar display which highlights the best fares available, the ability to purchase flights for multiple destinations under one booking with RBA, upgrade booking on the next fare class, a currency converter, weather information of destinations and the ability to share flight itinerary with a friend through email.

"In terms of technology, it is constantly evolving, and we just migrated to a new system to make the customer experience better," said Masrini. She added that while RBA may not be as technologically advanced as the other carriers, they do have the basics.

"We are moving towards this to improve our customer experience," she said.

She added that previously customers couldn't book their tickets online and now it has become the norm among travellers.

However, technological improvement will be something that will "always be a work in progress", along with trying to incorporate more products into their website.

"With the new migration, online check-in is not yet activated, but we hope to get that running soon, to ease the customer experience of checking-in online so they don't have to queue up at the check-in counter," said Masrini.

Ground staff

The national carrier also introduced a "snake queue", and veered away from designated counters for certain flights.

Hee explained that this was because of the dynamics behind queueing. "If you have a direct queue to certain counters for certain flights, then at the airport you will see a crowd of people," he said.

He gave an example of a situation where one counter is doing better than the other counter, which sometimes can leave certain counters empty.

"To better utilise what we have on hand and to reduce the pressure of the waiting time for the passengers, it evolved into a general check-in line," explained Hee.

Today, all check-ins can be done through every counter in one general line, instead of allocating certain counters for certain flights.

"With the snake queue, you can actually see the queue moving, so it feels better for the passengers," he said. RBA is trying to benchmark themselves against their competitors and strive to move in that direction, he said.

Ground staff are normally given between two to three minutes per check-in, with a maximum of five, and that is only if passengers are having issues that needs to be resolved at the counter.

Cabin Crew

"Customer service for cabin crew starts even before they go up into the aircraft," said Rita.

Dzul explained that the moment cabin crew members put on their uniform, they should already have the mindset that they are going to do their best on their flight.

To ensure that cabin crew are always "in the right mindset, we try to get them to think about good things so that their customer service will be better," said Nursusana.

"It's about positive thinking, she said, adding that the instructors don't want their cabin crew members to feel down and then look at passengers that they don't know and greet them. "Regardless of whether they know the person or not, they have to smile," said Nursusana.

A cabin crew member is expected to project that standard of customer service the moment they step into the terminal area. "They are members of RBA and employees, they are in the uniform so they represent us, so a smile on their face is very important," said Rita.

The criteria for cabin crew members isn't that they have to be "stunners", but RBA looks for "naturally friendly individuals, who like to be around people and who have the urge to want to deal with people". Rita explained that they also have to look presentable and clean. An added point for cabin crew applicants is if they have had basic customer service experience in the hospitality industry or the tourism industry.

Social media

Social media has become one of the airline's strongest tools in their customer service initiative. The airlines utilises Twitter and Facebook and has already garnered a reputation for being interactive, prompt and engaging with their social media efforts.

"For our social media sites, we have become kind of "gatekeepers" for RBA, and we basically get every request known to passengers from Royal Skies to ticket changes," said Hani. One example was how two passengers going back to the United Kingdom had a request about their check in and their flights because they wanted to watch a football match. They tweeted the airlines asking for their help and the airport staff made the arrangements with the staff in Dubai to help.

"It is things like this that help us get portrayed in a really good light, and when we do things like this online, it also encourages a culture of transparency and honesty," said Azhani. That there will always be detractors and supporters, the key is to act on it quickly, she added.

RBA has a team of four that regulates their social media in shifts.

"A lot of it is just looking at the RBA Twitter feed and just engaging, and it is not about using it as a marketing and promotional tool anymore, it doesn't work like that," said Azhani. She said that by doing so, people are going to "unfollow" businesses on social media networks. "We provide a very important customer service plus point in social media."

Challenges

One of the challenges that RBA has to face is that the airline is often compared to larger carriers in terms of products and services. The airlines tries to "find a balance between the two", and makes the effort to advance as much as it can in terms of technology and products, said Hee. But at the same time, it is trying to recognise that it has to keep itself local and deal with local issues.

"With the evolving environment in Brunei,we have a huge room for improvement. So when things start to change we get to explore options that we can have in terms of doing things and how to make things better," said Hee.

From the first day RBA was first incorporated until now, there have been a lot of changes, more so within the last two years.

"We are expecting more positive changes in the future, and in expecting these changes we try to find a way to adapt and to find ways to improve ourselves," said Hee.The Brunei Times