Communication Award: APCOA and London Luton Airport

British Parking Awards 2024

APCOA manages and provides customer services for London Luton Airport (LLA). On 10 October 2023, a vehicle fire in LLA’s multi-storey Terminal Car Park 2 (TCP2) quickly spread, causing extensive damage to the building and affecting more than 14,000 vehicles. There were no injuries but alongside the customers directly affected, the airport was severely disrupted with all approaches closed and operations paused for 18 hours.

With the airport closed, flights diverted, road access routes blocked, thousands of passengers disrupted and dramatic pictures emerging from the scene, media scrutiny was instant and intense.

A joint Major Incident (MI) team was immediately convened with senior personnel from APCOA and LLA’s operations, customer services, communications and public affairs, and executive management. This team played a critical role in a fast-moving situation, ensuring accurate information was shared between all departments, and providing a conduit for high-level decision-making.

Communications responsibilities were designated:

• APCOA’s Customer Service Centre (CSC) was the hub for all customer communications on behalf of LLA
• APCOA and LLA operations teams on the ground assisted airport personnel to direct traffic and manage the situation locally, supporting customers as they returned to the airport
• APCOA and LLA public affairs teams co-ordinated all communications activity and also managing interactions with the media

APCOA’s regional managing director, Kim Challis led liaison with insurance companies.

APCOA’s CSC provides a wide range of services, internally and externally, with a total team of 110 full and part-time employees across two locations, Wigan and Inverness. The CSC’s organisational structure is designed to manage peaks and troughs of customer interactions. One of the biggest communications challenges would be for APCOA’s CSC to manage the exceptional volume of LLA-related customer enquiries (more than 16,500 incoming customer contacts in the first fortnight) without impacting service levels for other clients. The first step was to set up APCOA’s customer management system, TOPdesk and Instant Management to prioritise inbound and outbound contacts.

Phones were already set up in hunt groups, but more agents were moved to the LLA team to handle enquiries, and others transferred to manage the rapidly increasing volume of emails. APCOA also reached out to all CSC colleagues, offering overtime and asking for volunteers to surrender days off to help, which ultimately led to a 24-hour working team handling all inbound contact for 10 days.

Consistent communications were essential to avoid further confusion for customers. In the aftermath of the fire, the Major Incident team held regular calls to clarify the situation on the ground, and to share the CSC’s feedback on incoming contacts and priority questions to be answered. A decision was quickly taken to use the APCOA and LLA websites as the key channel for customer information, supported by social media posts to encourage customers to monitor the websites for updates.
An FAQ document was created as the ‘single point of truth’ across both organisations and this was continuously updated with old versions deleted. Both companies’ websites were updated every time there was a change – in the early stages, this could be many times a day – and the information was also used by the joint public affairs teams to respond to a high volume of ongoing media enquiries.

Setting priorities

The MI team played a critical role in such a fast-moving situation, ensuring accurate information was shared between all departments and providing a conduit for high-level decision-making, so customer questions could be addressed as quickly as possible.

For example, the CSC was receiving many questions from customers due to travel about where they should park, how to cancel bookings and how to claim or process a refund, all of which the CSC handled on their behalf where necessary.

APCOA’s operations team quickly organised alternative car park facilities in the vicinity of LLA and that information was then added to the FAQ’s document and communicated to customers.

Insurance

Communications to insurance companies quickly became an important issue as they began to receive enquiries from customers about hire cars, vehicle contents and claims for vehicle loss. The scale of the structural damage to the car park became more apparent from structural surveys carried out by LLA, making it unlikely (but still uncertain) whether any vehicles would be recovered.

Information about vehicles parked in TCP2 was gathered from APCOA’s IT booking system and cross-referenced against other records. APCOA co- ordinated with the Motor Insurers’ Bureau and the Association of British Insurers to make arrangements (complying with data protection regulations) for relevant information to be provided to insurance companies to enable customer claims to begin.

Media

There was significant media interest throughout. APCOA and LLA’s public affairs teams co-ordinated on all media contact to provide consistent responses. The activity included radio and TV interviews by LLA to explain the impact of the fire and the challenges that were causing the uncertainty about vehicle recovery.

Impact

In the first fortnight, the CSC handled more than 16,500 LLA-related incoming customer contacts (some customers contacted us in multipleways). LLA customer contacts usually average at 1,000 per week.

Each time the FAQs were updated with new information, the CSC emailed everyone who had contacted us to alert them of the change, so in total, there were actually more than 40,000 customer interactions.

There is no doubt that this was an extremely stressful period for many customers, whether they were anxious about how they might get home, or their vehicles, or the personal possessions or equipment left in them, and when (or if) they might be recovered, or whether their insurance policy would cover a hire car.

Customer satisfaction

One key measure of customer satisfaction for APCOA is its Trustpilot score. In early 2023, the company achieved the score of 4.1 (“Great”) and that score has not been affected by the fire – it still have 65% of customers scoring APCOA as 5*.

The extra mile

Around 20% of CSC workforce volunteered for extra shifts and others provided cover for colleagues. Their efforts ensured the LLA-related demand did not have a negative impact on service levels for other APCOA clients.

Testimonial from London Luton Airport

“October’s car park fire highlighted the importance of the effective partnership we have with our car park operator APCOA. Managing the immediate situation required strong working relationships and trust between our operations, communications, customer support and leadership teams. With thousands of people affected and significant media interest, providing timely and accurate communications was critical. Together we dealt with unprecedented levels of customer questions and uncertainty – with APCOA’s Customer Service Centre (CSC) handling nearly 16,500 contacts received by email, phone, or webchat. The CSC team worked tirelessly and professionally throughout and our daily co-ordination calls to review feedback helped frame ongoing communications and customer responses. That collaborative approach ensured we were fully aligned and consistent on the incident handling and information being shared. Our strong partnership continues and the quality of service that our customers receive on a daily basis from APCOA’s CSC on behalf of LLA is to be commended.”

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