![\"Airport](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/handair.jpg\")
\nIn the second of a special Customer Service Week series, Samantha Saunders, Head of Innovation & Regulatory Compliance at OmniServ explores how cross-training staff improves morale, attitude and service delivery.<\/strong><\/p>\n Capability & Skills: Identifying and nurturing customer service skills in your organization.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Airports are like small towns, and like small towns are broken up into districts \u2013 there\u2019s landside and airside (the latter being the area \u2018beyond\u2019 security and customs checks), there\u2019s Duty Free, the food hall, baggage and so on. Companies across industries face the same challenges. How often have you read articles about how we need to break down barriers and lose the \u2018silo mentality\u2019? The issue is, if you have an \u2018us vs. them\u2019 mentality within a company, then it\u2019s all too easy to lose sight of the shared goal \u2013 to deliver seamless service to your users and customers.<\/p>\n One sure way to get people to lose the insular mindset is to cross-train staff, giving them the opportunity to experience what life is like in the other bits of the company (and, in our case, the other bits of the airport) and the challenges that their colleagues face every day. If they understand what other staff do and why, they\u2019ll start thinking about how their own roles mesh with the whole company and its objectives.<\/p>\n Take our biggest client, Heathrow. It\u2019s the world\u2019s second busiest airport by international passenger numbers and saw 75 million travellers pass through its terminals last year. On average, it serves around 220,000 passengers a day, who are assisted by more than 76,000 staff.<\/p>\n Many of those staff are vital to the smooth running of the airport, they are invisible to passengers. Even so, there are thousands who have day-to-day contact with the general public, in all its moods, and who play a key role in delivering the best possible customer service.<\/p>\n My particular responsibility is for our assistance services helping the 1.8 million passengers a year across the UK airports we operate in who have some form of disability (1.2 million of them at Heathrow alone); passengers with Reduced Mobility (PRM), as the airline industry and the regulators call them. People, as I call them.<\/p>\n Our PRM staff face challenges daily due to peaks and dips in passenger numbers, late arrivals and departures, changes in where flights are boarding or landing, unexpected demand (many PRM passengers let us know in advance, but it\u2019s not a requirement), language barriers. Also for some people, their needs may change as they travel across time zones so when they left Los Angeles for example, they didn\u2019t need any assistance however now they\u2019ve arrived at Heathrow, they do. Our teams need to react accordingly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to recognise just how important and challenging the employees\u2019 job can be. Our PRM support staff is on the customer service front-line every day and likely spend more one-to-one time with a customer than any other airport or airline employee. That makes them ambassadors for great customer service, and also puts them on the front line when challenges arise.<\/p>\n To help our entire team understand the importance of this role, we try and have staff from other areas of operations shadow members of the PRM team. The type of close role shadowing we have offered is known as horizontal cross-training. When staff contributing to an eco-system (such as an airport) better understand what each other does, they feel a greater commitment to the bigger picture, are more likely to stay with the company longer and can provide even better customer service.<\/p>\n Passengers, much like customers in a large department store, don\u2019t necessarily understand that all staff they encounter under one roof work on different teams or for different organizations. If they ask any member of staff for help and they are met with a positive response, their experience is improved and they feel cared for. Cross-training helps create this holistic experience.<\/p>\n Cross-training also has significantly improved staff morale and helped counteract the \u2018silo\u2019 effect that large organizations can fall prey to. This boosts our industry as a whole. I would urge all organizations to look at the benefits that offering a cross-training staff programme would have on their service users, employees, and their industry. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll find it\u2019s a win, win, win situation.<\/p>\n Other articles in this series:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
\nThat means it\u2019s easy for staff to become compartmentalised and focus on what their \u2018part of town\u2019 is all about, while losing sight of the bigger picture.<\/p>\n
\nRecently, the various members of Manchester Airport\u2019s security staff went through this cross-training, and the response was incredible. Comments included \u201cI feel that I\u2019ve made a real difference today\u201d and \u201cI will fundamentally do my job differently now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n