One Metric Changed How We Managed Customer Satisfaction During Rapid Growth

11 minutes ago

5 min read

When you're growing fast, the customer who's waiting to hear back from you is the first one you lose, so we gave everyone one number to protect.

In the spring of 1990, the scheduled air carrier pulled out of the Anchorage to Honolulu market, and there we were with a business built on getting Alaskans to Hawaii and no non-stop flights to put them on. So the next summer, we took the extreme risk of chartering our own jets, and I'm not talking about little private jets. We started with a DC-8 that first year, and later chartered wide-body L-1011s and 767s, and we had to pay the full cost of every flight, whether it had passengers or not.

It worked, and it grew fast; before long, we were carrying thousands of people a year between Alaska and Hawaii. Then feedback started coming in from the travel agents who sold most of our tours, and it wasn't good.

When we switched from buying seats on a scheduled carrier to guaranteeing entire planeloads, we had to reorganize the whole company and fundamentally change how we ran it, but the service side didn't keep up. Our travel agents, our primary customers, told us they were dissatisfied with our service quality, and we had higher-than-normal employee turnover, which only made the problem worse because new people were learning on the job while the phones kept ringing.

Truth is, our culture had been built to get every penny of revenue it could, without much thought for the impression we were leaving with the travel agents or the traveling public, and that works fine for short-term profit, but it does nothing for the relationships that keep you in business for the long haul. We tell the whole story of how that changed in The Toughest Cultural Shift We Ever Made and Why It Changed Everything.

Growth doesn't create your service problems. It just finds them faster.

Where is your growth putting the most strain on your customers right now?

So we created a guest satisfaction department, and we built systems to deal with guests' concerns quickly and efficiently and to track every one of them statistically. And we started with one simple goal that everybody could understand, from the newest reservations agent all the way up to us: every guest concern would receive an acknowledgment within 48 hours.

That was it. Not a fancy dashboard, not a dozen KPIs, just one number that told us whether a guest with a problem was being heard. Our second goal sat right behind it, to get the best outcome that was possible and reasonable on every concern, so the greatest number of those guests would still be potential repeat customers.

A guest who hears back from you quickly is still your customer. A guest who's waiting is already shopping.

If one of your customers raised a concern today, how long would they wait to hear back from you?

Tracking concerns statistically changed how we looked at them. The watchword throughout the company was "take the systems approach," which meant a problem didn't just get solved and shelved, every problem became an opportunity to look at the system behind it and correct it so it didn't happen again, and the other motto was "do it right the first time."

And when the data kept pointing at the same place, we acted on it, and in some cases that meant ending a relationship with a supplier who couldn't consistently deliver quality to our guests. You can't see that kind of pattern when complaints live in somebody's memory; you can only see it when they're written down and counted, which is the whole idea behind Leveraging Metrics to Improve Customer Satisfaction Starts with One Thing: Listening.

Solve the problem, and it comes back. Fix the system, and it stays fixed.

Which customer complaint have you solved more than once this year?

When you're the owner, a customer's problem has a way of finding its way to you, because you're the one who knows how to fix things, and that's exactly how an owner ends up stuck in the middle of their own business. With a clear standard, a department built to meet it, and the data to show whether it was being met, we didn't have to touch every concern ourselves. We could look at the numbers, trust but verify, and let the team do what they were trained to do, and that's a big part of how we built a business that ran even when we were an ocean away.

You don't delight customers by answering every call yourself. You delight them by building a team that answers it the way you would.

Which customer issues still land on your desk because nobody else has a standard to follow?

This Week’s Exercise

Find out how long a customer actually waits today to hear back after raising a concern. If nobody knows, that's your first answer.
Set one response standard everyone can remember and write it down. In my course I suggest acknowledging every complaint within 24 hours, with the goal of resolving it within 72.
Start a simple concern log: the date, what happened, when it was acknowledged and which system was behind it.
At the end of the month, look for repeats and fix the system behind them, not just the incident.

Podcast Spotlight

What if your business could grow without taking over your life?

In Episode 061 of Purpose Driven Success with Mo Salami, Ral West shares the story behind building Hawaiian Vacations into an eight-figure travel business serving more than 30,000 passengers annually before its acquisition by Alaska Airlines.

Ral reveals the lessons she learned about building effective systems, developing leaders, creating a strong company culture, and moving from being an overwhelmed operator to a true business owner.

If you're ready to grow your business while reclaiming your time and freedom, this episode is for you!

Listen Here: Episode 061: From Operator to Owner: Building Systems for Business Freedom with Ral West

Final Thoughts

Back in 1991, we took on the risk of chartering our own jets, and the growth that followed tested every part of our business, but it was our service that cracked first, and it was our travel agents who told us. One number, 48 hours, gave the whole team something clear to protect, and tracking every concern showed us exactly which systems needed fixing. And through all of it, our definition of a valuable final product never changed: a tan, happy guest stepping off the airplane back in Anchorage, ready to go to Hawaii again with Hawaiian Vacations.

So this week, pick the one customer service number that matters most in your business, write it down, and share it with your team at your next meeting.

Are You Still the One Everyone Turns to When Something Goes Wrong?

You want your customers taken care of. But that shouldn't require you to personally handle every concern or make every decision.

In my one-on-one coaching, we create a strategic roadmap for what to eliminate, delegate, simplify, and systematize so your team can take greater ownership—and you can reclaim more freedom.

Reach out to me and tell me which customer issues still land on your desk. Let's explore whether working together could help you build a business that serves your customers without consuming your life.

To your success,

Ral West

Livin’ the Dream