Société de Distribution Aéroportuaire (SDA) is upgrading its customer service to the next level with the use of new digital and iPad software.

 

SDA Directeur Général & CEO Guy Bodescot says the 50-50 joint venture retail operation between Aéroports de Paris and Aelia will increasingly equip more personal assistants with customised iPads containing information software aimed purely at customers within the stores.

 

At the same time, it will refine its sophisticated French/English language digital experience at Paris Airports and Paris Charles de Gaulle in particular. Digital screens are being increasingly strategically located along the busiest customer walkways to deliver both messages and experiences, whether it is direct product advertising or an Action Against Hunger appeal [as was screened at the time of TRBusiness’ visit earlier this month-Ed].

 

A spokesman for SDA’s digital side of the business said that the main message positioning is around luxury, although this is still very flexible. He said messages can be changed instantly to appeal to different nationalities when appropriate, such as high spending Russians or others who may be waiting for flights and SDA expects to do even more of this in 2015.

 

Left: Laurent Perrier pop-up store at CDG.

 

In addition, SDA is planning to equip all of its sales assistants with iPads to help them develop sales with ready-to-hand product information, pricing, currency conversion information for customers and even basic language translation when one of SDA’s many foreign language-friendly sales assistants is not immediately available. Basic translations will be available to varying degrees at the touch of a screen in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and other languages and iPads can even be shown directly to customers while standing in the shops.

 

BASIC LANGUAGE ASSISTANCE

Customers will also be able to use the information contained within Buy Paris Duty Free’s own app and again, this will be available in several languages. The software at present is only in its first version, but SDA is very excited that the imminent upgrade will be a significant improvement on the prototype.

 

SDA’s Guy Bodescot said: “Aelia is developing their own portal and we will obviously use it and customize it to Paris airports, but for the moment we don’t have access to this portal. It’s a test for Aelia and it will be launched next year, so in the meantime we are using the application that Aéroports de Paris has created.”

 

He said that internal research has highlighted the most regularly asked questions by customers and the hope is that these iPad’s will carry more than enough information to answer most of them, both quickly and efficiently when required.

 

He said: “It’s just a modern tool basically and with the millennial generation, the young Asian people always have their phones with them and they use them immediately. The fact that our sales assistants have now got their iPads means that even though they may not speak the same language as the customer, they can at least understand and respect for each other while they communicate.

 

“At one stage – without any tools – some of our staff were just lost in front of Asian customers, so this has already made a change and in 2015 we will deploy this to almost all of our network and we’ll see how it helps sales.”