Airlines looking to introduce inflight retail or scale-up their existing retail offer must consider customer appetite, journey and carefully manage the perception that they’re simply adding cost to a passenger’s journey.

While customer is key in defining how and when retail is introduced, it is vitally important that the people who come into closest contact with customers - the crew - are also onboard.

We mentioned the important role of product in delivering an engaging inflight retail experience in a recent article. However, incentivising and engaging crew plays a bigger role in the customer experience and can prove the difference between a successful retail experiment or one gone wrong.

Ensuring crew are ‘onboard’ with retail requires more than one-way communication. Crew must be valued as key, commercial stakeholders - rather than a final line of delivery. Engagement, training and incentives will drive performance.

From an engagement perspective, they need to be engaged in the role and the product and brands they’re promoting.

Alpha LSG Inflight Retail & Managed Services Director Alan Hayes said: “Passengers are much more likely to buy from someone they like, who they have a rapport with and who they feel knows the products well.

That’s not unique to aviation.”

In studies by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization, disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects.

Product demonstrations and ‘sales surgeries’ with key suppliers provide selling tips and help engage crew in the critical role they play.

While the crew population is considerable, ensuring they get opportunities to connect with suppliers for knowledge and training is invaluable.

That training needs to encompass not only traditional sales techniques but also management of technology onboard - include POS. An experienced retail provider, like dnata, will ensure these diverse stakeholders are brought together to deliver a seamless experience for crew and passengers

Online crew portals, crew room area displays and applications provide a modern, mobile method for training and engagement to be kept alive, and at the fingertips of crew.

Critically, crew are no different to sales people who flourish when they know they’ll be rewarded for outstanding performance.

Amongst other initiatives, Alpha LSG has also developed the annual ‘OMG’ cabin crew awards, which recognise the achievements of cabin crew and, combined with a pioneering new training programme, form part of a strategic initiative to help increase inflight sales performance.

“This has taken a number of years to develop and suppliers are now seeing that upfront investment to incentivise product sales is paying off, with an uplift in sales for products crew focus on,” says Alan Hayes.