In 1996, Changi Airport introduced 16 feedback kiosks at its two terminals with postage-paid feedback forms. Travellers could post their feedback to us from anywhere in the world so they could share their experiences of Changi Airport.

We faced certain challenges when we started this feedback system. The management debated at length about whether we could cope with the volume of feedback that we would receive and if every one of them should be addressed. The conventional wisdom was that we would receive mostly complaints that would require too much time and effort to investigate, and subsequently address. After all, it is not second nature for us to take time and effort to pen a compliment.

When we introduced these kiosks, we received, on average, about 300 feedback forms monthly. To our surprise, 70% of them were compliments, 20% complaints and 10% suggestions. Fast forward 17 years later in 2013, we are receiving a monthly average of 3,100 pieces of feedback – 75% of which are compliments, 21% complaints and 4% suggestions. About half of them come through the electronic kiosks in Changi Airport’s terminals, with the rest through emails and our websites.

All feedback is taken seriously and routed to our line managers so that action can be taken to address service lapses and eradicate recurrent issues. The compliments received, on the other hand, motivate our staff to continue delivering the high level of service our customers expect of us. On the whole, feedback is vital in how it keeps us rooted to the realities of what our customers are experiencing and helps us assess whether we are delivering on our promises to them.

Acknowledging – and tapping – customer feedback has thus been key to Changi Airport’s continued success. In 2010, we took another leap in our service delivery at key touch-points at the airport with the introduction of our Instant Feedback System (IFS). This system enables our customers to alert us of service lapses, whether at washrooms, check-in, immigration or in our shops, so that rectification can be made quickly.

With the IFS, we gather real-time feedback from customers, who get to rate their experience through an interactive screen. If, for instance, users alert us to a poor experience in the restroom, this is transmitted directly to the cleaning supervisor’s handheld device. A cleaner will then be despatched to the specific washroom to rectify the situation. The information from the IFS also enables supervisors to identify washrooms with the most amount of positive or negative feedback. This can even be drilled down to hourly and daily ratings to better aid the cleaning supervisor to anticipate problem areas ahead of time through trend analyses.