Customer Experience Strategy and inbound immigration at London-Heathrow

I used to travel to Oxford every two and a half months consecutively for two years. Total travel time was nearly 31 hours, including home to the airport, transit, wait time in the airports and airport to the hotel.

During those travels, I experienced the most horrible customer experience at London-Heathrow inbound immigration. For over two years, it did not change. I do recall a very significant incident very clearly.

I vaguely remember her face. She was a young mother, must be in her early thirties or late twenties. She had a toddler with her, a son, who must have been less than two years old. That little one was hyper. Let us call her Anna as I do not know her real name. Anna and myself were in the same cabin in the Qatar Airways flight from Melbourne to London via Doha Qatar. The flight took off around 10.30 in the night into its first lag of 15 hours. I settled down to read a book as I usually cannot sleep while travelling or watch movies (that is a disease I believe). After the dinner, people settle down to watch a movie or sleep, and the cabin lights went dim.

Everyone else was sleeping except me, Anna and her little boy. I noticed Anna because she passed my seat repeatedly a few times without making any noise like a ghost. Had I not been awake, I would not have noticed her. For a while, I was wondering what the hell she was doing in a dimmed cabin. It took me a while to realize what was happening.

Her little one was walking around in the cabin, and Anna was following her everywhere he went. The little one was so small that I did not even notice him in the dark. Anna was just behind him. He just went on and on through the entire cabin, Anna was walking behind him and prepared to catch him if he fell. Initially, it was fun to watch. However, soon, I got bored and went back to my reading. After another hour, Anna and the little one was still going through circles in the dark cabin. I tried counting how many times they passed me, and I lost the count. In between they stopped, to change the nappies. Boy did not sleep or slow down, and neither did Anna.

That incident helped me to create a whole different perspective on motherhood. I did not know how Anna managed that. For fifteen hours, she could not take her eyes off from the hyper-energized kid. She could not go to the loo. She could not sit, she could not sleep, or she could not watch a movie like others in that cabin. On top of that, she made a conscious effort not to make any noise especially because others were sleeping or resting. How she got that energy, I did not know.

Finally, after fifteen long hours, I got off from Doha to board the next flight to London after two hours. And there she was. I met them again in the same cabin. And the story began. Anna was following the little one who was running through the isles, and this time, it was more intense as it was the daytime. Everyone else in the cabin minded their own business as they were so bored of seeing the son and the mother running behind each other.

After seven and half hours we all off-board the flight in Heathrow and I saw Anna ahead of me, with huge two cabin bags and the little one at her back. Finally, we arrived at the inbound immigration after a long walk just to be shocked to see a long, long, very long queue at the immigration clearance. There was a zigzag line ahead of us, and more than seven hundred people were lined up and waiting impatiently for their turn. Me too joined the queue. After more than 24 hours in the air, I was restless, exhausted and with zero energy. Luckily, I did have only the backpack. But Anna, she had her son at the back, two big luggage and then the toddler started crying.

She started consoling him and, in the attempt, she slowdown in the queue and people overtook her. Toddler probably exhausted started screaming. Anna tried her best to control him but failed. She was still in the queue like everyone else, no special treatment.

I looked at the officers who were standing near the queues wearing, London-Heathrow staff badge and the purple uniforms, most of them were females. They supposed to assist and control the traffic in those queues. They saw Anna and the screaming toddler, and then they moved away to the front and did not do a damn thing. They were making jokes to each other and having a fun time, and the only thing they did at the font of the line was yelling ‘next’ informing the next person in the queue to the next counter. Seriously …? I was thinking to myself and lost my patience.

I called one of the officers and explained to her ‘that lady with the screaming toddler is coming from Melbourne, which is for more than 24 hours now. Can you please take her to the front of the queue? Can’t you see that child is screaming?’. She then gave a pitying look at Anna and said, ‘let me see what I can do’, and she went to the front of the queue. I saw she was muttering something to her colleague, showing Anna and but they did not do a damn thing.

After more than one hour in the queue, I saw Anna was clearing at another counter parallel to me.

That is why London-Heathrow inbound immigration should seriously think about ‘Customer Experience Strategy’.

Customer experience strategy

Customer Experience Stagey is serious business transformation. It is just not a label or a fancy word which CEOs or Leaders should talk in the board room.

I am personally fed up of leaders talking about customer experience. They give big talks on customer experience, why that is the big thing, and why they are implementing it. However, when they hit the ground, it is still the old processes. Customer is not the priority. (customer is the end user or the employee).

Customer Experience Strategy will change everything about your business

Designing a customer-oriented business model is a strategic decision and of cause is a long process. Such strategic decision-making needs a skill set from highest to the lowest ground. However, some small steps can be taken every day. These are the culture hacks.

Culture is the biggest enemy of any customer experience driven strategy. Unless the culture is changed, no results are materialized. According to research conducted in Canada by Gartner, 42% of CIOs noted culture as the most significant barrier to implementing such strategy successfully.

That figure could not be different from other countries. That is why changing the culture should be one of the top priorities of any customer experience strategy.

How to pin down such cultural change to each employee, defines the success of the strategy.

According to research conducted by Acxiom, London-Heathrow has 200800 daily visitors (Anna is just one of them, but there must be many such people) hence customer experience strategy should be seriously considered. London-Heathrow has taken many transformation programs, but inbound immigration waits time issue and employees attitude towards those passengers clearly shows that those programs have not reached to every function and every employee.

If those programs have reached the in-bound immigration, passengers may not have to wait in such a long queue after long haul flights. Exhausted parents like Anna, may have different priority lines with seating areas. Employees would be quickly recognizing such passengers who need special care, and they will take care of them by taking extra steps. They may not be acting blind if such programs have been successful. That simply showcase a few things.

• Transformation programs to bring customer experience is more complicated, big and complex than we imagine
• Without changing the culture, these programs are a mere failure

Culture is everything

According to a report by Mckinsey, adopting a customer-centric mindset can be a struggle. As ‘they require employees to change their mindsets and behaviours, and an organization to make cultural changes and rewire itself across functions, with the customer’s needs and wants — rather than traditional organizational boundaries — in mind. ( Ewan Duncan, Kevin Neher, and Sarah Tucker-RayMckinsey, 2017).