SubscribeThere is nothing more frustrating for a passenger than having a baggage incident at the end of his journey. And the way the incident is treated can easily undermine customer loyalty.
Until now there were no alternative to queue alongside other angry and frustrated passengers, eventually to meet a Lost & Found agent only to be handed a piece of paper with some hand written numbers. Whatever good feeling the passenger had about his travel experience evaporates in seconds at this point.
The new BagAssist release will finally change this situation by giving an alternative to the hurry passenger that has to rush outside the airport: in 3 simple steps he will be able to make the lost luggage incident declaration on dedicated PC by filling in intuitive screens, running in a browser, with flight information, baggage description using the IATA Baggage Identification Chart and contact details.
Almost all lost luggage are ultimately united with passengers, but the overall process is usually disruptive, and the service recovery process must provide passengers with access to status information whenever they require it. At the moment, passengers have the option of using the Internet to find static lost baggage status or can make a phone call to the airline or its handling agent.
The second step in empowering the passenger will be made after the baggage has been received at the airport: from any internet connection worldwide, he will be able to verify on-line the incident status, but more importantly once the baggage is ready to be delivered he will be guided to organise the delivery, at his best convenience, through simple steps that takes care of all required airline restrictions.
Both initiatives are perfectly in line with IATA ‘Simplifying the Business’, which intends to streamline the Air Transportation processes and be more transparent and communicative towards the passenger.
It perfectly balances also between the BagAssist 2 main visions and philosophy: increase the Lost & Found department productivity and agent flexibility while at the same time increase raising the overall service quality for the passenger and the handled airlines.
About BagAssist suite
The BagAssist suite of products allows ground handlers and / or airlines to differentiate themselves from their competitors by raising overall service quality standards to gain a clear competition advantage in the marketplace.
There is a global basic baggage tracing system in use called WorldTracer™, from SITA. WorldTracer however, requires extensive agent training; as much as 2 weeks for basic agent training, and another 2 weeks for management training.
Cost and time often prevent baggage agents from attending training sessions and knowledge of this non-intuitive and complex old-fashioned legacy system has dramatically decreased, and is now mainly restricted to WorldTracer Co-ordinators and a few supervisors only.
The BagAssist suite of software was designed to change all that by getting bags to passengers, faster and with greater security. Users of BagAssist are delighted by its simplicity of use and by how its automated functions and intuitive graphical user interface cuts down training time for the agents.
The short training time allows the use of interim agents during peak periods. In line with Sky Assist policy, the users can also uniquely influence the direction of BagAssist though their active presence at the product User Conference and its result in the yearly release, and ensure BagAssist meets current business and industry needs. BagAssist product strategy is to address market needs, and deliver enhancements and new functionality quickly.
BagAssist has date syntax validation, verification of mandatory fields, help tips and warning messages, virtually anticipating and eliminating human errors before sending the information to WorldTracer. The airline information pages increase operational efficiency and by having data available on-line, agents are always up-to-date with any changes or special restrictions they need to know; making training and integration of new agents much easier.
Sky Assist is also listed in the SITA WorldTracer communication channel database, even though not customer of SITA and has been invited to last WorldTracer conference in Miami as observer. This ensures that all basic changes made to WorldTracer are incorporated into the BagAssist product suite and that the BagAssist customer community stays aligned with the latest industry wide tracing requirements, but also provide official company recognition in the ground handling market.
The BagAssist suite of products brings a new level of quality and productivity for airport ground handlers and airlines that ground handle themselves. All the necessary output documents for the passenger are professionally produced in a dynamic way, as are baggage labels and documents for delivery companies.
About Sky Assist
Founded in 2003, from the technological and intellectual foundations of the former Atraxis Belgium, SkyAssist has rapidly become a key player in the market for software applications for the airline industry. BagAssist, targeted at ground handling companies, airlines and airports across the world is currently deployed by Flightcare, Swissport, Jet Aviation, Aéroports de Paris, Groundforce and Virgin Express.
Luc Trentels - Sky Assist Director
luc.trentels@skyassist.com
www.skyassist.com
BagAssist’s new Business to Customer features aim to empower passenger.
