Measuring Your FBO Customer Service Experience

What’s Your CQ™ (Customer Quotient)?

In the recent series on Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, we talked about what makes a customer loyal (Are You the Restaurant Owner?); the perils of competing on fuel price (Do You Feel Lucky?); and finally, how to deliver the best customer service experience (Don’t Forget the Cheese!)

Now it’s time to measure the effectiveness of all your good work to improve the Customer Service Experience!

Just as a good measure of one’s intellect is the Intelligence Quotient or IQ test, at Aviation Business Strategies Group (ABSG), we have developed the means to test your FBO’s Customer Quotient or CQ™. The results of determining your CQ™ is a good measure on the overall effectiveness of your FBO customer service initiatives.

The Customer Service Survey Tool

The first step in the process of understanding your CQ™ is to develop an accessible and meaningful customer service survey tool. By accessible, we are talking about the convenience of the customer’s access to the survey.

Obviously, you should have it in a printed form and accessible at your customer service desk and perhaps in the crew lounge. For the printed version, make sure the survey is formatted so it can be easily mailed, including a No Postage Necessary Business Reply indicia.

For further convenience, put up a survey box near the exit to the ramp where customers can drop the completed printed survey so they don’t need to carry it with them for mailing at a later date.
In addition to having the survey available at the locations mentioned above, consider including it as part of a customer receipt envelope or holder, similar to the kind of money holder you get when you cash a check at a bank.

Lastly, make the survey accessible online through your company Web site. Just make sure there is a space for the customer to enter the date of service and perhaps a customer transaction number if there is one on the receipt. This will help you determine the validity of the information.

Make the Survey Meaningful

Here are some basic tips to make the survey easy for the customer to fill out and meaningful to you as a true measure of the customer service experience.

1. Keep it simple and logical. Don’t overthink the questions.
2. Make the questions relevant. Ask only questions about the service experience.
3. Keep it short. If you have more than five or six questions, your response rate will be way down.
4. Make sure you ask the ultimate question: “Would you recommend our FBO?”

The last thing you should do is put together a point value system for each question so you can convert the results into a metric that can be plotted over time. For instance, say you wanted to measure the following where 1 is a low score and 10 is the high score:

• Quality of line service: Rate 1 to 10 points.
• Friendliness of staff: Rate 1 to10 points.
• Cleanliness of facility/restrooms: Rate 1 to 10  points.
• Pilot amenities: Rate 1 to 10 points.
• Passenger amenities: Rate1 to 10 points.

With this section of your survey, you could have a potentially high score of 50 points if your customers rated all these items at 10 points each.

Now, let’s throw one last question into the mix. It’s really the most important, so we give it a value of 50 points. Yes, it’s that important! It’s either yes or no. All or nothing!

• Would you recommend? Yes/No?
  • Yes = 50 Points.

  • No = 0 Points.

The Sum of All Parts

In a perfect world, your customer service experience could potentially score 100 points. In keeping score over time, create a chart using the data obtained for the first five questions.

You may want to do a chart on a weekly basis at first. However, creating a monthly snapshot over a 12-month period will probably give you the best idea of the way your customer service experience is trending.

Then, do a separate chart to keep track of the Would you recommend? question. State the results as a percentage of the amount of customer service surveys returned.

The last thing you may want to do is post the results for all your employees to see. Follow-up with an employee team meeting and encourage feedback from both your customers and your employees regarding how to improve your customer service experience.

©The terms/phrases “Customer Quotient™” and “CQ™” are propriety in their intended use and considered intellectual property of Aviation Business Strategies Group.

Ron Jackson

Ron Jackson is co-founder of ABSG and president of The Jackson Group, a public relations agency specializing in aviation and FBO marketing. He has held management positions with Cessna Aircraft and Bozell Advertising and is the author of Mission Marketing: Creating Brand Value and co-author of Don’t Forget the Cheese!, the Ultimate FBO Customer Service Experience.

Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part 1: Are You the Restaurant Owner?

As part of the FBO Success Seminars we conduct for the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), we discuss how to attract the right kind of customers and how to keep them coming back. 

While my business partner, John Enticknap, reveals in his blog posts the methods and tools used in building a more profitable FBO, I’ll be writing about the often overlooked but equally important process of building long-term profitable customer relationships.

The following is the first installment:

Part 1: Are You the Restaurant Owner?

The lifeblood of any FBO is building loyal customer relationships. The success of these relationships can be measured in two ways:

Are they long-term, and are they profitable?

Studies on consumer behavior show a loyal customer:

• Keeps coming back
• Is willing to pay more, thus providing better margins
• Loves your FBO and tells other pilots, aircraft owners/operators
• Lowers your customer “churn” rate — you don’t have to replace a satisfied loyal customer
• Boosts your long-term revenue and prevents profit erosion so you outperform your competitors

In the end, the effort we put into building these kinds of relationships will pay high dividends year after year, so let’s examine the process.

Company Culture and Service Deliverables

Every FBO is unique in its approach to delivering its own brand of customer experience. You should have an idea of your company culture, which is the tone and demeanor by which your customer service is delivered.

Are you warm and fuzzy; cold and unapproachable; or somewhere in between?

Your customer service deliverables are the things you do every day to ensure a great customer service experience, including a provision for the safety and security of the customer and its aircraft.

And it’s not just having these policies and procedures in place. It’s how you choose to carry out the delivery to your customers. Thus, your corporate culture dictates how you deliver services to your customer.

Draw from Your Own Experience

Observe the workings of your favorite local restaurant — not the chains. If you frequent one particular restaurant, chances are the host or hostess knows your name, and the server knows your favorite drink and meal. “The usual, Mr. Jones?”

Chances are the owner or manager is on site and makes the rounds to the tables, checks on the quality of food and service, and personally thanks the customers for their loyalty.

And chances are you have a consistent dining experience and recommend the restaurant to your friends.

Another experience to draw from is when someone moves into your neighborhood. Chances are you or someone will recommend the following:

• Favorite barber/beautician
• Favorite car mechanic or service station
• Personal doctor/hospital system
• Favorite grocery, hardware store or clothing store
• Plumber, electrician, pest control company
• Church or social club

Why Do We Recommend?

Never underestimate the power of recommendation. We do it all the time without really paying much attention to the impact it has on our lives and the decisions we make.

For most of us, when we recommend a product or service, it’s really a way of validating our own process of selection. We all think we make good choices, and having someone else follow our recommendation is affirmation — it boosts our ego, makes us feel good!

We recommend product and service providers because:

• Their product or service is excellent
• We’ve always had a good experience
• We trust them; they offer good value
• They boost our ego; they know our name
• They may even know our children’s names, their birthdays
• We might even consider them a friend

That’s how we should view and nurture every FBO customer relationship we cherish. Know each customer has the power to cast a vote, the power to recommend.

An Investment in Time

Building long-term customer relationships is a process. It’s an investment in time. It’s hands-on customer care and a commitment to understanding a customer’s needs, wants and desires.

At the end of the day, ask yourself, are you the restaurant owner?  Have you made the rounds to the customer lounges, asked if everything is all right, thanked the customer for the business? Have you taken the time to check your FBO for cleanliness, listened to how your employees treat a customer and walked the flight line?

Lead by example. If your employees see you do this, then chances are they will also take ownership — ownership of the customer service experience — thus helping build long-term profitable customer relationships.

Ultimately, you should be able to go up to any customer and ask the question, “Would you recommend our FBO to other pilots, aircraft owners/operators, and schedulers and dispatchers?”

If the customer is hesitant to answer the question and doesn’t say yes right off the bat, you have some work to do.

Next Blog: Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part II: Do You Feel Lucky?

Ron Jackson

Ron Jackson is co-founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group and president of The Jackson Group, a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and CSR training. He is the author of Mission Marketing: Creating Brand Value and co-author of Don’t Forget the Cheese!, the ultimate FBO Customer Service Experience.