While German airline Lufthansa officially launched its new Allegris cabin a fortnight ago, the German business daily Handelsblatt took advantage of this event to interview the CEO of the Lufthansa Group, Carsten Spohr. On the menu for this interview, which largely concerns business travellers: the company's quality offensiveWith a CEO who admits that Lufthansa has somewhat neglected this aspect of travel in recent years.
Passenger satisfaction is once again a central theme for the Lufthansa Group, as the airline introduces its new Allegris cab on its long-haul product. The new Business Class offers virtually à la carte comfort, while Economy Premium and Economy now offer a superior product with new seats, improved connectivity and more extensive video programmes.
Quality at the heart of Lufthansa's strategy for 2024
The return of a quality product for all is Lufthansa's objective for the next few years," explains Lufthansa's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Handelsblatt Group CEO Carsten Spohr. In an interview with the daily, he admits that the company has been in survival mode following the financial and social crisis caused by the Covid pandemic. " The very existence of Lufthansa was at stake and safeguarding 100,000 jobs. But the recent transformation of our management structure means that we can now focus more on themes that are important to our passengers, such as the development of our product, the digitalisation of our services and our premium offer." he tells the daily newspaper.
It has to be said that the company has been the subject of numerous criticisms of its users since the resumption of traffic in 2021. The most frequent complaints include punctuality and baggage handling, followed by cabin equipment, in particular faulty seats. And finally, the long wait for a response from a call centre.
Repeated strikes in 2023 and early 2024 have further damaged the carrier's image. According to an analysis of Net Promoter Score, which assesses the degree of customer satisfaction, the German company went from an index of 57 to 33 between 2019 and 2022. It will finally fall to 27 in 2023. The aim is to achieve a minimum satisfaction rate of 50...
Lufthansa's strategy therefore concerns various aspects of service and products. On the service side, Lufthansa is hiring again. Over the next few months, the carrier has recruited some thousands of employees, particularly on the ground but also in call centres. On the ground, these staff are at the service of passengers, in particular for facilitate connections and transfers to the Frankfurt and Munich hubs. " Our punctuality and reliability rate must and will improve significantly this yearsays Carsten Spohr. We are already seeing a drop in the number of complaints." .
Another area of improvement: the Lufthansa application has been redesigned, offering more services and ways of checking that a journey is running smoothly. According to Carsten Spohr, the improvements to the application have already resulted in a 50% increase in the number of users over one year.
Economy class is also becoming a concern for Lufthansa
The quality offensive in the cabin is reflected in a number of initiatives, particularly in economy class. In his interview with Handelsblatt, the CEO of the Lufthansa Group points out that the airline has reintroduced a second meal service on long-haul flights. It is examining how improve its short-haul snack offerCurrently, this consists of a bottle of water and a square of chocolate.
Carsten Spohr believes that the deployment of Allegris will have an impact on service quality within a year. The late arrival of the new seats - 3 years behind the original estimate - was due to supply difficulties for the equipment manufacturers. The entire long-haul fleet should be Allegris-compliant by 2026.
But the fact remains that Lufthansa is increasingly disadvantaged by its geographical position. Not its physical position, at the heart of Europe. But it must now contend with a German government, which seems increasingly hostile to air activity in Germany.
The drastic increase in taxes and air services in the country has led Lufthansa to drastically reduce its offer, particularly domestic. " Set-up costs still higher in Germany In concrete terms, this means abandoning routes that are no longer profitable. Like Frankfurt-Friedrichshafen (Lake Constance) or Leipzig-Munich. Many politicians are complaining about this, and despite a large number of business customers, these routes are no longer profitable." says Carsten Spohr.
" The obligation from next year to purchase a percentage of sustainable fuel SAF for flights departing from the European Union is a new threat. According to our projections, this will represent an additional cost of €200 per passenger over the next ten years. This will make connecting flights within the EU unattractive. It will then be difficult to compete with the Gulf carriers." says the Group CEO.
(Information analysed on the basis of the Handelsblatt interview of 28/04/24)
An end to the problems faced by travellers confronted by the imperfections of chatbots and call centresThis is certainly the most irritating aspect of the all-encompassing intrusion of digital technology. It's now impossible to solve a problem when travelling by plane without using a digital application. And a digital application usually means a chatbot, an artificial intelligence tasked with helping the traveller. In reality, these rarely address the issues at stake. And Lufthansa is no exception. Heiko Reitz, Chief Commercial Officer of Lufthansa Airlines, readily admits that there is still room for improvement. " We are constantly working on refining the chatbot's responses. In the event of an incomplete or imprecise response, the call-centre will be put in touch very quickly." he explains. Another problem, more specific to Lufthansa, is the fact of travelling on one of the group's airlines and then on another. Until now, such combining flights could turn into a nightmare for the traveller forced to solve a problem. Example: checking in an extra baggage item after having purchased the ticket on Lufthansa but with one of the flight sections insured on Swiss. On such a combination of flights, the call-centres passed the quid, leaving the traveller to sort out his or her own problems. by itself if Swiss or Lufthansa had to manage demand. " This will soon be a thing of the past" says Heiko Reitz. While it's true that we have the same reservation system, there were still incompatibilities in the management from one company to another. We are in the process of harmonising everything and recruiting more call centre agents to manage this type of problem. Before long, travellers will be dealing with a single point of contact." . It's about time! |
