Service recovery
Let’s say today your are flying on a private jet.
You organised everything as per standards, your customers are in a good mood, the weather is fantastic and the aircraft is perfect.
In Business Aviation there’s always a star-alignment that makes things working.
If one of them moves the wrong direction, the whole mission is compromised unless you are a good solution finder!
What can go wrong?
It’s necessary to have a plan of action to put in place when things are not running the right way.
This can happen for any reason: slot, delay, operational issues, awful catering, aircraft technical issues and so forth.
I give you some example: I few a jet with microwave defect and no oven.
It was impossible for me to warm up any food at all.
Obviously, I requested a cold catering but there was a misunderstanding with the catering company an they delivered some dishes that were meant to be heated up.
I eded up having 1/4 of the catering I planned to have, and was forced to find a creative solution to make my customers not starving, at least.
A more complicated one: the pilot of the Business Aviation – just like commercial airlines’s pilot- do fall in all regulations of authorities such as EASA, FAA, GCAA etc.
And we also have to comply the constant-changing Covid regulations!
It happened that we were planning a crew change in London.
One of my pilots had to leave and another one was taking over.
He was positioning from home with commercial airline.
He had some troubles due to weather and, consequently, slot.
To cut the story short, he missed his connection to get ito the UK.
As a result, he couldn’t arrive on time and we were not legal to perform the flight with the Private Jet.
In conclusion, there are million of things that can get wrong and we all must be extremely flexible and try to make it right.
Cooperation
The key is team work.
All the departments that compose the Private Jet Operator Organisation are working together to fix what gets wrong.
Dispatch department will mix up the scheduled of the aircrafts and take another jet to cover the flight that cannot be performed.
Crew control will find a solution when is needed to swap crew members anywhere in the world.
If present, catering department will organise a cadeaux, or anything possible to do a proper service recovery.
And when it comes to service?
Service recovery can (I should say must) be done on the spot.
On this matter, the flight attendant is the only one who can realise about the situation and take initiative.
Moods changing, body language, atmosphere: they are all signals that you must observe and take into consideration.
VIP flight attendants are the front line of the customer’s hospitality and are also the ones who can best figure out what’s going on and fix it.
Be creative with your service recovery!
And feel free to do whatever is in your power to make it right.
Can you gift a bottle of Dom Perignon to a disappointed customer who arrives late to his business meeting due to weather conditions?
Of course you can!
Whatever you have on board is for your customers.
Use it wisely, to get a positive outcome.
When it comes to service recovery, your creativity must have no limits.
A fellow colleague once had a flight from America to Europe, departing very early in the morning.
The catering company misunderstood the delivery time and did not deliver a single items.
Nothing was open in the surrounding area and they didn’t know what to do.
Customers where informed about the problem and asked if they want to wait for the catering or take off on time for a 7 h fights with just a little of food available.
They decided to go anyway because of some appointments they had that same day in Europe.
My colleague suggested to the operation department to organise catering upon arrival for them.
He sheared the same catering order he did for the flight and they called the caterer and planned accordingly.
Once they landed, a sumptuous meal was waiting for them in the lounge and the situation had been saved.