Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part 3: Don't Forget the Cheese!
/In part one of this three-part series, Are You the Restaurant Owner? we talked about what makes a customer loyal and taking a hands-on approach to customer service. In part two, Do You Feel Lucky? we discussed the perils of lowering the price of fuel to attract new customers.
The following is the third installment:
Part 3: Don't Forget the Cheese!
“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.
At Aviation Business Strategies Group (ABSG), we have analyzed various customer service training programs that help teach the basics. Many new customer service employees are not that familiar with general and business aviation and need a good understanding of the FBO business basics as well as the airport environment and flight operations. Mostly, these basic training videos and interactive teaching aids do a very good job of instruction on the mechanics of the job.
However, if your goal is to provide The Ultimate Customer Service Experience, you need to take your customer service training to a whole different level.
The Origin of “Don’t Forget the Cheese!”
While I was working my way through college, one of my jobs was at a restaurant that primarily served hamburgers. We always did a great takeout business, and one day a loyal customer stormed back into the restaurant with his sack of hamburgers in hand.
“I can understand not putting in napkins or forgetting the salt and pepper,” he huffed. “But when I order a cheeseburger, it would be really nice if there was cheese on it.”
Needless to say, we were all embarrassed, and the owner came out and apologized for the oversight and the inconvenience it caused. A few minutes later, the customer left with cheese on his cheeseburgers and a couple of coupons for a return visit.
Later that day, when we had a shift change, the owner pulled everyone together and made his point about carefully checking a customer’s order, especially the takeout orders. Lesson learned, as they say.
Then, as the first shift started to leave, a buddy yelled back to the cook and said: “Hey Charlie, don’t forget the cheese!” That comment kind of lightened up the mood and became our battle cry for the rest of the summer.
This experience stuck with me over the years, and when it came time to develop an advance customer service program for one of our client FBOs, it just seemed natural to brand it: Don’t Forget the Cheese!©.
Key Elements to Great Customer Service Training
There are several necessary elements in developing a good customer service program for your organization. Here are few:
- Make it memorable. By branding a program with a memorable phrase, it promotes buy-in from the employees.
- Make it fun. Let’s face it, customer service training can potentially be very boring.You can liven up the atmosphere with a little tongue-in-cheek humor to keep everyone focused and awake.
- Make it relevant. Include some real-life customer service experiences that happened at your FBO. Use these in role-playing sessions.
- Use three-dimensional teaching aids. For our Don’t Forget the Cheese! © on-site training, we have fun by introducing a variety of cheeses and of course crackers as well.
- Make it sustainable. Does your current customer service program have any legs? In other words, are elements built into the program to serve as occasional reminders that make it sustainable over time? After the initial customer service training is complete, most employees operate in the halo effect of something new. However, that halo can fade over time, so make sure you have a vehicle to keep the elements of your program top-of-mind.
The Fundamentals
The use of Cheese in our proprietary customer service training course also serves as key reminders to CSRs, as well as other employees, to practice exceptional customer service. Here are just a few of the fundamentals to great customer service:
- Smile. Remember to say, “Cheese,” to yourself, as if someone were taking your photo. Even when answering the phone, put on a smile and the customer on the other end will sense they are talking to a happy person.
- Add a little extra when delivering customer service. Because cheese is often used as a condiment, it represents the added touch, the little extra that puts a smile on the customer’s face and makes them keep coming back.
- Remember a customer’s name. In the FBO environment, adding cheese can be as simple as remembering a customer’s name. Most people react positively to being called by their name and are impressed when you remember. Are you the restaurant owner?
- Go the extra mile. Going the extra mile could be something as simple as showing the customer where the pilot lounge is located instead of pointing in the general direction.
For our sustainable part of the Don’t Forget the Cheese! program, we use Cheese Bites© that are little reminders of some of the principles of good customer service. These are sent periodically to employees electronically by e-mail or through the use of social media by the FBO.
If you would like to share a customer service tip, please send them to me, and I’ll publish them in a future blog post. Send them to Ron@thejacksongroup.biz.
©The terms/phrases Don’t Forget the Cheese! and Cheese Bites are proprietary 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.