Travel retail staffing and experiential agency specialist Blackjack Promotions has launched a new accessible travel retail training program aimed at training its brand ambassadors on how to offer service and advice to passengers with accessibility challenges.
The bespoke training is being launched to coincide with Purple Tuesday (November 12), a day dedicated to changing the customer experience for disabled people.
Drawing on its own in-house resources, Blackjack is running an accredited disability module in a half-day workshop to cover all types of disabilities. The idea will be to set up ‘train the trainers’ in key airports to ensure that they can help share and spread the message within their own field teams.
Four in five disabled customers say businesses could do more to be accessible and more than half (56%) agreed that improving staff understanding about different disabilities would encourage them to spend more.
Jason Miles, managing director of Blackjack Promotions, said, “Giving retail staff the confidence to understand how they can recognise both visible and hidden disabilities and make small changes to their service and approach will make shopping in an airport environment more accessible and enjoyable for disabled people – and we, as an industry, should all strive to be better at this.”
Purple Tuesday involves organizations of all sizes and from all sectors taking decisive, practical actions to meet the needs of disabled customers and calls on all organizations to make changes to improve the customer experience for disabled people. It has been developed by disability organization Purple, which works with businesses to improve the customer experience for disabled people.
The first ever Purple Tuesday, in November 2018, saw more than 1,500 pledges to make concrete changes and improve the customer experience for disabled people. These included commitments such as: staff training, digital audits, better signage and training of frontline staff in basic British sign language.