Paradies Lagardère Adds More Smiles to Airport Terminals
Paradies Lagardère expands its efforts focused on improving the customer experience by adding 100 more HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals to select airport locations.
Operating more than 850 stores and restaurants in 98 airports, Paradies Lagardère’s goal is to create memorable and positive shopping and dining experiences for today’s travelers. HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals were originally piloted in retail locations in Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airports, both located in South Florida.
Taking only seconds, passengers rated their experience at check out or upon exiting by selecting 1 of 4 Smiley buttons (very happy, happy, sad, very sad) to represent their satisfaction level. With the HappyOrNot innovative data collection and reporting system, Paradies Lagardère’s team members were able to receive this feedback in near real-time and work quickly to correct any negative perceptions.
“Paradies Lagardère is committed to giving our customers first-class customer service. The airport experience is part of a traveler’s journey, and one that should be enjoyable and convenient,” shares Gregg Paradies, president and CEO. “Data points collected from the Smiley Terminals allows us to monitor our customer satisfaction levels according to time of day, day of the week and in multiple locations. We’re able to pinpoint specific areas of concern and are able to address them immediately.”
Within weeks after rollout, Paradies Lagardere executives were able to experience first-hand the immediate effects of collecting instant feedback and setting up service decline email notifications. "We had a short, but significant weather event that caused many flight delays in the gates near one of our stores," described Paul Draeger, regional vice president, Operations, Paradies Lagardère. “The delays resulted in traffic 2.5x higher than normal for that store. While our store team was working hard to help customers, the HappyOrNot real-time alerts helped leadership quickly recognize an opportunity, and take immediate steps to deploy additional staff from other stores to improve the customer experience and capture sales.”
With the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reporting that 4 billion air travelers will fly this year and that number expected to double by 2036, this expanded partnership between Paradies Lagardère and HappyOrNot will begin to set the bar for overall traveler experience performance.
