Chief Customer and Digital Officer at Virgin Australia, Paul Jones believes the airline’s recent cancellations and poor on-time performance will no longer be an issue, as the company have announced a new tagging tool, in an effort to keep track of baggage.
“We had a disappointing performance in July. It wasn’t up to our standard or the standard our customers have come to expect for us. We’re sorry to those who were disrupted. August is looking significantly better than July.”
Paul comes Virgin’s rival Qantas, and arrived during the depths of COVID-19 in December 2020. His appointment came just one month after the airline was saved by US private equity Bain Capital.
“Customers need to experience an airline in a seamless way from an end-to-end basis in order for it to be successful. That’s my biggest focus.”
Virgin have unveiled the country’s first customer baggage tracking tool, part of a $400 million investments, revamping the technology assets of the company. It took two years to develop, and now customers can track the status of their checked bags from the app. So far, it has been rolled out around 70% of the network.
Paul is hoping it will encourage more to check bags, and speed up the process of boarding and disembarking.
“The genesis for the tool came out of a 2019 survey we did, which revealed that checking bags was one of the biggest stress points for customers. I’m sure during the last few years, that’s only become greater. So we’re now giving customers visibility over their bags across every step of the journey.”
This is just that latest initiative the airline has tried in order to improve the stressful parts of travel. Following the “middle seat lottery” where those choosing to sit in the middle, went in the running to win prizes, along with a “rapid rebook” tool allowing customers more options if there is a cancellation or delay.
The success of these in an efforts of the airline meeting its core goal of transporting passengers on time. This has been difficult recently, due to Regional Express, Qantas, and Jetstar all meeting its average on time performance last month.
Paul claims the airline has zeroed in on service and value since 2020.
“The cause of the July challenges were a combination of air traffic control issues and weather and as a result of that some of our resources were impacted. So, we’ve spent a lot of time working on how to ensure the elements in our control work better for us into the future.”
