FBO Tip of the Week: How to Measure Your Customer Service Performance

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By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson
Aviation Business Strategies Group

There are many line items you can measure in an FBO operation in order to assess how your business is trending. By setting simple benchmarks for tangibles such as fuel sales, fuel margins and maintenance productivity, you can set up an electronic dashboard for daily monitoring. (See our previous post: FBO Tip of the Week: Keep Your FBO Operations Simple.)

However, how do you measure an intangible like your customer service performance?

The obvious answer is to initiate a customer service survey. But not all surveys will help you benchmark your performance and, perhaps more importantly, ask the right questions.

As part of our Don’t Forget the Cheese customer service training program, we recommend FBOs initiate a measurable customer service survey using the following criteria.

  • Keep the survey short. Ask the customer to rate no more than five service areas or attributes. It’s our experience that pilots will more likely respond to surveys that appear short and easy to complete.
  • Rate each service area or attribute from one to 10 with 10 being the highest.
  • We suggest customers evaluate the following:
    • Line Service
    • Customer Service
    • Passenger Amenities
    • Pilot Amenities
    • Cleanliness of Facility
  • Also ask just one really tough question: Would you recommend us? Yes or no?

We advocate you place a value of 50 points on this question alone. Why, you ask? Simply, a customer recommendation should not be taken lightly, and for most customers, this means they are putting their reputation on the line. Also, if a customer says, “No,” to this question, you should find out why. This will help correct a potentially negative situation and assist in repairing a valued customer relationship.

Now, when you receive a completed survey, add up your points. The perfect score is 100.

For convenience, we recommend placing this survey on your Web site. We also suggest you include a printed survey with your fuel invoice and place a completed survey box/receptacle next to the facility door leading to the ramp.

If you want to benchmark your progress, do a monthly tabulation. Also, you may want to establish an historic benchmark by inviting past customers to take the survey.

Besides the obvious benefit of finding out what customers think, a customer service survey also sends a positive message to your employees that customer service is important. Therefore, make sure your employees take part in this program, and always provide them with survey results.

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.