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Air Canada Signage Network Keeps Employees Up to Date

Ubiquitous digital signage at major airports informs and entertains the traveling public—but what about airline employees? The world’s 14th-largest commercial airline answers this question with Air Canada News (ACN), a broadcast-quality, bilingual digital-signage network that the airline recently piloted (no pun intended) in its Montréal In-Flight Service Crew Support Centre and In-Flight Service Training Centre

Air Canada Signage Network Keeps Employees Up to Date

Mar 25, 2008 12:00 AM,
By John W. DeWitt

Air Canada’s bilingual digital signage network provides the airline’s cabin crews in Montreal with broadcast-quality entertainment along with realtime updates of flight data and other important company information.

Ubiquitous digital signage at major airports informs and entertains the traveling public—but what about airline employees? The world’s 14th-largest commercial airline answers this question with Air Canada News (ACN), a broadcast-quality, bilingual digital-signage network that the airline recently piloted (no pun intended) in its Montréal In-Flight Service Crew Support Centre and In-Flight Service Training Centre.

“ACN … gives us a modern and more innovative means of communicating with our cabin crew,” says Nathalie Lemyre, Air Canada’s general manager, customer service innovation and planning.

Air Canada’s mobile crew members don’t always have computer access, so getting late-breaking information to them can be a challenge, according to Maria Porco, a spokesperson for X2O Media, which provided software and implementation for the network. Not only does the signage solution provide important reminders (in French and English) to staff in an appealing way, Porco says, it also lets Air Canada staff send updates in realtime when there are issues that need immediate attention—for example, if the reservation system goes down, staff can receive immediate updates on how to handle customers.

“The greatest impact of ACN is our ability to tailor our message to varying cabin crew interests,” Lemyre says. “By mixing information that is naturally of interest to our crews—such as weather information and human-interest pieces—with our own product and service information, we’re better able to capture their attention and convey our message. We believe that arming our crew with up-to-date information will have a positive impact on the quality and consistency of our customer service.”

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Air Canada Signage Network Keeps Employees Up to Date

Mar 25, 2008 12:00 AM,
By John W. DeWitt

X2O Media implemented ACN based upon its Xpresenter digital signage software platform, which uses Microsoft PowerPoint and graphical “smart templates” to facilitate data feed integration and ongoing dynamic content updates. X2O’s implementation team integrated various data sources to the Air Canada templates, according to Porco, including weather for cities that Air Canada flies to; flight information including departure times and gate information; and company indices such as stock price, On Time Performance, and Customer Service Index targets and results. Duocom Canada installed the network’s screens.

Air Canada staff members are able to continually update ACN content using the Xpresenter system and a custom, highly simplified Web control interface provided by X2O that allows realtime updates of PowerPoint presentations, videos, and crawling ticker information.

“Air Canada has various departments producing content that needs to be communicated to its flight crew. Much of that content is repurposed for the digital signage network,” Porco says. However, much of the information fed to CAN is automated—for instance, internal company indices are automatically extracted from existing emails without the need to re-type the info into the templates.

The International Travel Catering Association recently honored Air Canada Network with its Mercury Award in the Systems and Processing Category. Based on the success of its pilot, which began in November 2007, Air Canada currently is considering a rollout of ACN to other facilities.

For more information, visit www.x2omedia.com.

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