FBO Tip of the Week: Develop a Contagious Company Culture, Part 1 of 3
/By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson
Aviation Business Strategies Group
A spirited and contagious company culture is one of the most important elements in running a successful FBO operation. It's an essential ingredient in delivering a great customer service experience because it sets the tone and feeds the passion of the operation.
Customers can sense and feel a company culture. It can make them feel warm and fuzzy or be a complete turnoff.
By definition, company culture is the "way of life" within an organization. It's exhibited by the behavior and demeanor of the employee stakeholders and expressed in the way the customer service experience is delivered.
As part of our Don't Forget the Cheese! customer service training, we are often asked by our FBO clients to help them analyze their company culture and then offer leadership training to their managers and supervisors to facilitate change.
One of the tools we use to analyze company culture is to conduct internal and external SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. Through this process, we can gain valuable insight into what's working and what's not.
If an FBO has an excellent track record of establishing long-term, profitable customer relationships, they are probably doing a lot of things right.
On the other hand, if an FBO is experiencing one or more of the following, then it's in need of a cultural makeover:
- Unusual or abnormal customer churn/defection.
- Lack of consistent repeat customers.
- Few or no customer recommendations.
- Employees feeling disenfranchised/not part of the process.
The character or tone of a good company culture needs to be contagious. It starts at the top and, through the process of observation and osmosis, resonates down through the organization where it is absorbed due to continual and consistent exposure.
The reality is that great company culture does not magically appear on its own. It's up to FBO management to set the stage and create the proper environment for a desired culture to take root and flourish.
In part 2 of this series, we'll review the key elements in developing a contagious company culture.
About the bloggers:
John Enticknap has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience. Ron Jackson is co-founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group and president of The Jackson Group, a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.