ACI Re-Launches Airport Service Quality Programme

Montreal, 2 February 2015 – Airports Council International (ACI) announces the re-launch of the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) programme, ACI's customer service benchmarking tool for airports worldwide. To date, ASQ has helped over 300 airports from around the world benchmark and improve their customer service initiatives. This exciting new phase of the programme will see ACI cooperate with a new service provider, TNS Canada, one of the country's preeminent marketing and social research firms. TNS Canada is part of the Kantar Group, one of the world's biggest market research providers.

To make the ASQ programme fully responsive to member needs, ACI has formed an ASQ Steering Group to guide the rollout and an Advisory Group to generate new ideas and best practices for customer service research and benchmarking. The revamped programme now features new interactive online deliverables, including a sample plan management tool; quarterly sample plans; an online reporting portal to deliver tailored and dynamic analyses; enhanced static reports; better data quality control and audit processes; and increased programme transparency and reliability.

The backbone of the programme is the ASQ Survey. Each year, some 550,000 passengers worldwide participate in the survey. Passengers at ACI member airports participating in the ASQ programme are surveyed about their on-the-day experience for a minimum of 1,400 customer surveys per year.

The ASQ Survey covers 34 key service areas and includes 8 major categories such as access, check-in, security, airport facilities, food and beverage, retail and more. All participating airports use the same survey questions, creating an industry standard set of responses that allows participants to track and analyze their performance, as well as benchmark results against airports across the globe. All participating airports can view the ASQ survey results of all other participating airports on a confidential basis.

"ACI's commitment to representing our members' best interests underscores everything we do, and the new ASQ programme is an excellent example," said Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World. "More than ever, this is a programme designed with member and passenger needs in mind. I'm looking forward to seeing the positive change the initiative continues to make in the passenger experience over the coming months."

The enhanced ASQ programme has already been rolled out at airports around the world, with more expected to participate in the weeks and months ahead.