How Marseille Provence Airport used more detailed passenger feedback to identify service issues, guide operational improvements, and measure results.
Every passenger interaction offers an opportunity to understand and improve the airport experience. The challenge is turning those individual moments of feedback into information that operations teams can use to make a difference.
FeedbackNow's 3-button Smiley Button has long provided a simple, immediate way for passengers to share how they feel. Building on that foundation, the 6-button FlexBox gives airport teams more flexibility to explore satisfaction in greater detail, understand varying levels of passenger sentiment, and make more informed operational decisions.
For Marseille Provence Airport, the transition demonstrated the value of this added detail. By using FlexBox feedback to investigate odor-related concerns and guide corrective action, the team reported a 75% reduction in negative votes associated with the issue and an improvement of nearly 15 percentage points in satisfaction.
Their experience highlights how a more nuanced understanding of passenger feedback can translate into measurable service improvements.
Building on the Simplicity of Smiley Button
The strength of FeedbackNow's Smiley Button lies in its simplicity. With three recognizable response buttons, passengers can express their satisfaction in seconds, helping airport teams monitor sentiment across facilities and service touchpoints.
FlexBox builds on this approach by introducing six configurable response buttons and the ability to ask more specific questions.
The expanded options allow airport teams to capture a wider range of responses and better understand the experiences behind their satisfaction scores.
As Marseille Provence Airport explained:
"The new solution makes it possible to better characterize sources of dissatisfaction and more precisely identify gaps in perceived service quality."
Rather than capturing dissatisfaction as a single response category, Marseille Provence Airport's FlexBox configuration allowed passengers to express different degrees of dissatisfaction. This helped teams assess the severity of concerns and identify where operational attention could be most valuable.
The benefit is a more detailed view of the passenger experience, providing teams with additional context to guide service improvements.
Turning Detailed Feedback into Meaningful Action
Marseille Provence Airport's experience illustrates how this additional insight can support operational decisions.
Following the introduction of FlexBox, passenger responses highlighted significant dissatisfaction relating to odors in a monitored area.
The team used that information to investigate potential improvements, evaluating several treatment approaches before identifying and implementing a suitable solution.
Following the intervention, Marseille Provence Airport reported:
- 75% fewer negative votes associated with odor-related feedback.
- Nearly 15 percentage points of improvement in satisfaction for the corresponding indicator.
Marseille Provence Airport's findings highlight the operational value of this approach:
"The results allow us to more effectively identify the causes of dissatisfaction and implement appropriate corrective actions."
Rather than treating negative feedback as a general indication of poor service, the team could focus on a specific concern, test solutions, and monitor subsequent responses.
This is where more detailed feedback becomes particularly useful: helping operations teams move from recognizing dissatisfaction to understanding what needs attention and measuring the results of their efforts.
Understanding How Passenger Feedback Evolves
Introducing a new feedback interface also creates an opportunity to better understand how passengers engage with satisfaction measurement.
During Marseille Provence Airport's transition from Smiley Button to FlexBox, the team observed changes in voting patterns.
Overall voting volume declined by approximately 50%, with the reduction concentrated primarily in positive responses. Green votes fell to roughly one-third of their previous volume, while negative voting volumes remained relatively stable.
Marseille Provence Airport suggested that this difference may reflect how passengers interact with the two devices.
With the 3-button Smiley Button, registering a positive experience is often spontaneous. With FlexBox, an explicit question and additional response options may prompt passengers to consider their answers more carefully.
Satisfied passengers may therefore be less inclined to stop and vote, while those experiencing a concern continue to provide feedback.
These observations are specific to Marseille Provence Airport's deployment and may differ across environments, device configurations, and passenger populations.
They also highlight an important consideration: when the way feedback is collected evolves, participation patterns and reported satisfaction metrics may change too.
Understanding those differences allows teams to interpret their new results appropriately and make the most of the additional information available.
Making the Most of the Transition to FlexBox
Moving to FlexBox offers airport teams an opportunity to refine how they measure, understand, and respond to passenger experiences.
To get the greatest value from the transition, teams should consider how the new response options align with their operational priorities.
This starts with choosing questions that reflect the experiences they want to improve, whether that involves cleanliness, waiting times, facility conditions, or other aspects of the passenger journey.
It also means establishing an appropriate reporting baseline.
Because FlexBox introduces a different response scale and may influence voting behavior, historical Smiley Button satisfaction scores may not be directly comparable with new results. Reviewing response distributions, voting volumes, and passenger traffic where available helps teams interpret changes accurately.
Equally important is ensuring that the additional detail captured by FlexBox supports clear operational processes.
When feedback identifies an area of concern, teams need to know who is responsible, which corrective actions are available, and how the results will be evaluated.
By connecting more specific feedback with operational ownership and follow-through, airport teams can build a stronger approach to continuous service improvement.
A More Informed Approach to Passenger Experience
The transition from Smiley Button to FlexBox represents an evolution in how airport teams can understand passenger satisfaction.
Smiley Button provides an immediate measure of how passengers feel. FlexBox builds on that foundation, offering additional response detail that can help teams better understand dissatisfaction and focus their improvement efforts.
The experience of Marseille Provence Airport demonstrates the practical value of that evolution. By identifying a specific service concern and using passenger feedback to guide and evaluate corrective action, the team recorded measurable improvements in satisfaction.
Marseille Provence Airport's findings reinforce the value of the transition:
"FlexBox has become a valuable decision-making tool that supports continuous improvement in service quality."
For airport operators, the opportunity is to make every response more useful, connecting passenger sentiment with the decisions and actions that shape the experience on the ground.
With more detailed feedback, teams can move beyond measuring satisfaction to understanding what drives it and taking meaningful steps to improve it.
Discover how FeedbackNow FlexBox helps airport teams gain deeper passenger insights and turn real-time feedback into measurable service improvements.
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