Use Good Customer Service Ingredients, and the Proof Is in the Pudding

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A loyal, happy customer remains a customer for a greater length of time. So you should be tracking your customers to make sure they are coming back to your facility every time they travel to your destination. You can use a flight tracking service to monitor incoming flights.

Your line service personnel should become familiar with regular customers’ aircraft registration numbers and be alert when tracking inbound flights to your airport and surrounding airports.

If you haven’t seen a regular customer in a while, pick up the phone and call to learn why. If your line service personnel notices a regular customer going to a competitor, again, pick up the phone and find out what you might have done wrong.

Source: Strativity Group, in partnership with Customer Service Experts.Research shows that most unsatisfied customers won’t tell you there is a problem before they jump ship. They simply change their buying habits. So you need to know why they made a change and why they became unhappy with your service.

Loyal Customers Lead to Financial Rewards

As the chart indicates, a happy customer is a loyal customer and stays with you for a longer period of time.  A satisfied customer also tends to spend more and, thus, take on more fuel at your facility.

And oddly enough, a satisfied customer does not need incentives or discounts to continue being loyal. In fact, they do not mind paying a small premium to be treated well.

In the end, the payoff for delivering a truly memorable customer service experience is a contingent of loyal, highly engaged advocates who will recommend you at the drop of a hat.

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Lessons of $1 Hot Dogs Help FBOs Cut the Mustard

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Recently, I read a sidebar article about Dollar Hot Dog Night at the Rangers’ stadium. On Wednesdays when the Rangers are in town, they cook some 65,000 hot dogs for hungry patrons. At a buck each, the promotion attracts a lot of families to the game, and the conies are quickly snatched up!

The Art of the Deal

I’m sure you have your favorite sport, and if it’s baseball, you know how a hot dog with your favorite beverage tastes on a warm summer night around the diamond. It hits the spot! But something else is going on at the ballpark.

In the article, the writer asks a university professor for his opinion on why a $1 hot dog attracts so many to a game when patrons can have all the hot dogs they want for a lot less money by buying them at a supermarket and eating them at home.

His answer, posted in the Dallas Morning News, is what spurred me into writing this blog post.

According to Ernan Haruvy, a management professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, a perceived deal, such as the $1 hot dog, depends on several factors, including:

  1. Your physical surroundings
  2. The customer’s mood
  3. What the customer believes is a fair value for the transaction

OK, that all sounds logical because the customer is at the ballpark; therefore, the surroundings are fun. Secondly, because a day watching baseball is better than a day at work, the customer is probably in a pretty good mood. And lastly, $1 for a dog that usually costs $4 seems like a relatively fair value.

But what does this have to do with an FBO?

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Reeling in Customers: Either Fish, or Cut Bait

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I have returned from a much needed vacation to the Canadian outback where I enjoyed a week of fishing with no phone, TV or newspaper.

Every year, I travel to the far western reaches of Ontario for our annual fish camp outing that has been a part of my family tradition since 1961, when my father first went with his buddies to the same waters we fish today. I started going with my dad in 1984, and now his 16-year-old great-grandson, my grand nephew, is representing the fourth generation to wet a line in these great Northern waters.

On this most recent outing, I started to think about writing a blog post based on the similarities between fishing for dinner and casting a net for new FBO customers.

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Coaching Provides Valuable Seasoned Advice

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At some point in our lives, we all need a little coaching to get through the task ahead of us.

I remember when my dad took the training wheels off my bike and encouraged me to keep the handlebars straight as he ran alongside on my first solo ride.

High school football and baseball coaches shaped the way I performed on the field and taught me valuable lessons about life along the way.

As a student pilot, my instructor coached me through turns and stalls and built up my confidence for the eventual solo flight.

After a couple of decades of developing marketing plans for companies such as Cessna and Fairchild Aircraft, I had the opportunity in the year 2000 to create a public relations campaign for the grand opening of a Mercury Air Center location in Burbank, Calif. My client was John Enticknap, who served as president of the 21-location FBO chain. 

I didn’t have a lot of experience in the FBO business back then, but under John’s tutelage, I’ve been spending the last 11 years soaking up his vast knowledge of the FBO business.

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Deliver Great Customer Service by Practicing Your Craft

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Recently, I was reading a newspaper article about the practice habits of professional golfer Vijay Singh, and I thought this would be a good basis for a blog post on delivering the ultimate FBO customer service experience. Perhaps this seems a little disjointed, so allow me to explain.

Whether you follow golf or any other sport, I’m sure you’ve run across articles and have heard TV announcers remark about the successes and failures of professional athletes. Frankly, I like to learn about the elements of success, rather than the failures, so when I read this article on Singh, it reminded me of his breakout year in 2004.

As you may recall, Tiger Woods had vaulted to the top of the world ranking and looked invincible. Then came Singh, playing like a man possessed, and he eventually replaced Woods as the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world, at least for a period of time. He openly admitted that his goal was to become the No. 1 golfer in the world, thus replacing Woods, and he knew it would take long hours of practice.

Even Madison Avenue took notice that year. Singh appeared in a TV commercial where he was shown practicing putting on a frozen lake in Alaska while native Eskimos looked on in bewilderment.

And what was the message the commercial was trying to drive home? What made Singh so successful?

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FBO Marketing, Part 1: Low- and No-Cost Promotion

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Did you know there are ways you can market your FBO with little or no out-of-pocket expense?

At our NATA FBO Success Seminars, we examine various aspects of marketing for an FBO. One of the most popular sessions is Marketing and Communications for Any Size FBO.

Many FBOs that attend our seminars believe they can’t compete with the big FBO chains because they don’t have the money and resources. To that, I kindly say, “Bunk”. There are plenty of ways you can “shake hands” with your customers or potential customers without breaking your budget or robbing your kids’ piggy bank.

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FBO Customer Expectations: How High Should You Set the Bar?

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Is the level of customer service expectation set high enough at your FBO? Does it meet or exceed the standards of the industry, or are you doing just enough to get by?

Recently, I was reading a customer service-related blog titled: “Did You Know You’re Competing with Apple?” The premise piqued my interest. Could it be possible the level of service a customer expects to receive at an FBO can be properly compared with the expectation of service offered by the top brands in their respective industries — companies like Apple, Virgin America and Amazon?

I was hooked on the notion. So I read on, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Customers who walk into any FBO have already been exposed to the highest level of customer service possible because they are all consumers.

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Measuring Your FBO Customer Service Experience

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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.

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Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part 3: Don't Forget the Cheese!

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“Here is a simple but powerful rule, always give people more than what they expect to get.” – Nelson Boswell

In the quest to build long-term profitable customer relationships, we can’t overlook the basic foundation of delivering exceptional customer service. At the end of the day, if you can’t walk up to a customer preparing to depart your FBO with confidence and ask the question, “Would you recommend us?” then please read on.

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Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part 2: Do You Feel Lucky?

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We’ve all seen Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry scene when he aims his seemingly empty .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world,” in the face of the bank robber and taunts, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well do ya, punk?”

FBOs shouldn’t have to feel lucky when putting together their marketing plans to attract new customers, yet during our NATA FBO Success Seminars, I often sense the frustration FBO owners and operators verbalize when we discuss this very subject.  

Over the years, FBOs have tried all sorts of things to attract customers. Wine, steaks, bobblehead dolls, free this and free that. Sometimes they get lucky, but mostly they’re just shooting blanks!

Many FBOs, when facing seemingly stiff competition, have done the unthinkable to attract customers. They resort to lowering their price of fuel beyond reason. Yikes! 

To be sure, an FBO should always manage its fuel price in order to be competitive and as a component to provide a customer value proposition (CVP). However, nothing good happens when you subjectively lower the price of fuel just to attract customers.

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

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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.

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