FBO Insight: Part 2 - Perception vs. Reality, Take the Blinders Off!
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As a follow-up to our last blog post: “Do you know what your employees are thinking?”, where we listed 19 questions to probe what FBO employees are truly thinking, we are now ready to peel back the onion even further as we discuss the final two internal survey questions to ask employees in order to gain their savvy insight.
These two final questions are designed to be an exercise in perception vs. reality where we ask 26 employees to rate a constant set of FBO attributes.
In question 20, employees rate the attributes in terms of overall importance in running a successful FBO. In question 21, we flip the table to ask the same employees to rate the identical attributes, only this time from a customer’s perspective based on their own “insider knowledge” of how their FBO really performs.
We’ve had clients who thought they had an excellent perspective of what their employees were thinking, only to find out it wasn’t reality. The results are from one of our FBO a case studies.
Perception
20. In your opinion, how important are the following in running a successful FBO?
(In this case study example, there were 26 employees responding to the survey. So for the first attribute, “clean facility”, 21 employees rated this attribute a 5-Highly Important, two employees rated it a 4-Very important, and three gave it a rating of 3-Moderately Important, etc.)
Reality
21. If you were a customer, how would you rate your FBO on the following?
(In this follow-on question, employees were asked to rate the same attributes based on their “insider knowledge” having interacted with customers.
Note: These two rating charts usually tell the story with regard to how well an FBO actually delivers their brand of service. In some cases there is a discrepancy between what the employees think is important in running a successful FBO (perception) and how well they think their FBO performs (Reality).
The majority of employees in question No. 20 perceived each attribute as being highly important in running a successful FBO. Conversely, in question No. 21, the same employees felt their FBO fell short in performance on delivering the same high standards.
Clearly, this FBO facility has some work to do with its employees to help bolster confidence in delivering the best possible customer experience. It’s time to take the binders off!
© 2025 ABSG/TJG
Please leave any comments you have about this blog post below. If you have any questions, please send us an email: John Enticknap, jenticknap@bellsouth.net, Ron Jackson, ronjacksongroup@gmail.com.
ABOUT THE BLOGGERS: John Enticknap is the founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group (ABSG). He has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience and is an IS-BAH Accredited auditor. Ron Jackson is co-founder of ABSG and president of The Jackson Group (TJG), a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.