Let your Comments Fly; Customer Experience Survey at PNS
(Pensacola, Fla.) October 12, 2021 — During one of the busiest summers on record, the staff at Pensacola International Airport decided to push the throttle on internal improvements, instead of just gliding through the travel season. As part of a new effort to improve the passenger experience, the airport launched the Let Your Comments Fly campaign. This campaign utilized the point-of-service software Limelight Performance developed by Pensacola-based idgroup, designed to gather consumer insights.
While final numbers are still being tallied, over 1,000 participants participated in the Let Your Comments Fly campaign and rated the airport on a number of factors. Respondents also left open-ended feedback about their experience at PNS.
This highly coordinated research effort is normally the stuff of much larger airports and major travel hubs. For Pensacola, the customer experience campaign was a way to reset and retool following the downturn of the 2019 pandemic, said Airport Director Matt Coughlin.
“As a smaller airport, we don’t have a lot of control over air service destinations, or TSA screening rules. But what we can influence is everything else involved in the passenger experience. So, we invested in this campaign to hear directly from our customers, build our competitive edge based on what they tell us, and make this a place where people can truly Fly Easy,” Coughlin said.
“So, during the travel downturn, we decided to really focus on how we can improve internally,” said Coughlin. “We knew that eventually, we would come out of the pandemic, and people would start traveling again. We wanted to put ourselves in the best position to compete for passengers and succeed in the market when that time came.”
This summer the airport saw record passengers as postponed vacations from 2020 and pent-up demand for travel flooded the airways. Increased travelers posed challenges and opportunities for the airport, but also created an audience for the research campaign. A quick snapshot of the results from the Let Your Comments Fly campaign includes:
- More than 1,000 passengers left feedback or took the Let Your Comments Fly customer survey.
- Over two-thirds of passengers (79%) rated their airport experience positively, with 32% giving the airport the highest rating of “Impressive.”
- Through the course of the summer, passengers gave the airport a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 92 out of 100.
- An overwhelming majority of respondents (80%) said that PNS definitely reflected Pensacola’s personality and hospitality.
The Let Your Comments Fly campaign ended on September 30, and airport officials are still reviewing the data and passenger comments. Moving forward, the information will be used to help guide improvements to operations, services, amenities, and facilities at PNS.
