Current flight industry, due to market entry and stabilization of low-cost airlines as well as advancement of airline services, is in urgent need for quality improvement in order to attract new differentiated consumers and continuously secure existing...
Current flight industry, due to market entry and stabilization of low-cost airlines as well as advancement of airline services, is in urgent need for quality improvement in order to attract new differentiated consumers and continuously secure existing consumers, and the resulting competition is being intensified.
Additionally, with a trading up tendency due to industry development and consuming market polarization, the consumers are even paying premiums to buy high-quality, high-class products of relatively high-price. As a coping strategy, physical changes including luxurious service provision items and high-quality flight equipment are being quickly progressed, but on the contrary, due to technical skills and high speed of these progressions, service differentiation between airlines could not be felt which led consumers to turn to sensitivity rather than functional performance offering limited distinction.
Sensitivity management, sensitivity marketing, sensitivity engineering and sensitivity leadership are rising to an important value in every sphere of society in the 21st Century, and sensitization has already settled in as the new trend in the stream of the times. Product strategies using sensitivity in various fields of the industry are already being used but detailed cases about how to draw out the passenger's satisfaction using sensitivity are lacking in the airline service and its own strategies to counteract the sensitivity needs of the consumers are essentially lacking.
Thereupon, this study judged the importance of in-flight sensitivity service in airline services for differentiation to other competitors and competition superiority. In addition, the study aimed to secure the grounds for manual development direction proposal through in-depth interviews with past, present flight attendants in order to propose the airline service manual development direction centered on sensitivity service that can bring differentiation of passenger satisfaction when flight attendants are carrying out their in-flight duties. The direction of service manual for airline in-flight services could be proposed by recording the conversations with flight attendants, writing down the conversations post-recording, and comprehensively analyzing the recorded data in order to draw out the factors that bring desirable service and sensitivity satisfaction by collecting experience cases through in-depth interviews with flight attendants.
If summarizing the results of study which was analyzed, the factors which flight attendant would have to have in order to give an emotional satisfaction passengers were the creativity, judgement, empathy and power of execution and as to sub-factors of that, for the creativity, it was originality, flexibility and innovative characteristic, for the judgement, it was the speed, solvability and professionalism and for the empathy, it was communication, intimacy, reliability, carefulness and consideration and Finally, for the power of execution, it was activeness, action and spontaneity.
On the basis of these emotional satisfaction factors for passenger, I could propose the development of Emotional Service Check list and could suggest the direction of development of more subspecialized Customized Service Manual which enable to offer service that wins the sympathy of many more passengers through reflecting Emotion Information Sheet that could improve the quality of service for reference of emotional information of passengers by flight attendants as enabling the Emotion Monitoring for passengers which covers every stages of flight and the needs changed according to all sorts of situation like the characteristic of passenger, type of companion and the purpose of travel.
Moreover, for the qualitative improvement of human emotional service on board in the future, things that would have to be supported in the respect of scheme and system within the company are as follows.
Firstly, the development of tools for strengthening the emotional capability of the manpower that contacts with the customers is needed. This would increase the fundamental emotional satisfaction due to enabling the fundamental understanding for customer’s needs unlike the existing service which delivers the technique and the method as it makes the flight attendant accumulate the indirect experience for numerous situations through curriculum of service education like Case Study or Role Playing which could enhance the emotional quotient of flight attendants who are actual performer of service.
Secondly, it finds the latent emotional needs of customer through the development of emotional service program. Within the existing conventional service stages that have been organized, it could not arouse the expectation of customer. It could derive the emotional satisfaction effectively when perceived emotional quality is relatively higher than the expected emotional quality and it is because passengers already gave the legitimacy and the appropriateness services offered in the existing service stages. Thus, if expecting the effectiveness of high level, the delivery of efficient emotional service will be possible through creating new and differentiated service stages.
Thirdly, with the Manual Supervising System through Cabin Report, the flight attendant would have to have the discretion and the authority as performer and manager at the same time and keep an eye on the rapidly changing trend and consumer’s needs and aim the advancement through a constant update of manual.
Development of such airline service manual responds to a fixed manual without unnecessary trial and error which reduces passenger dissatisfaction and improve service effectiveness, thereby will be able to fix the brand image with consistent service.
Furthermore, the application of emotion service manual will be a strategy to certainly differentiate with other airlines as well as secure loyal consumers to raise repurchase intentions. By extension, a new chapter of in-flight personal service of the airline, especially in the sensitivity service aspect, can be anticipated.