As a pilot for 43 years and president of Voyager Jet Center, Rich Ryan knows what it takes to create excellent customer service.
Ryan leads by example and demonstrates the level of effort and commitment it takes to deliver the customer service that Voyager Jet Center, a private aircraft company, is known for.
“I think when the employees see the president pitching in, whether it’s picking up a piece of trash, flying an airplane or cleaning something, I think they know that I’m committed and therefore they should be committed,” Ryan says.
Attention to detail by all 60 of Voyager Jet’s employees allowed for $25 million in sales last year.
Smart Business spoke with Ryan about how he keeps customer service the focal point of his business.
How do you keep your employees motivated?
I’m a walkabout manager. I am in every department every day observing, showing my face and asking people how things are going. That’s a management style that’s worked well for me. Make yourself visible. Make yourself visible to the customer and to the employee. Don’t hunker down in your office, get out and about.
I also have an open-door policy. People aren’t hesitant to speak with me, because I see them every day. If you’ve ever been to a presentation by a senior executive to his staff, at the end invariably the lecturer will say, ‘Any questions?’ and people are reluctant to speak openly. So the follow up is, ‘If you have any questions that you don’t want to say now, I’ll be available in my office for the next half hour and you can talk about it.’ If I address the employees as a whole, I usually end up in that arena. Some people just don’t speak well in front of a group of people, yet they may be perfectly lucid in a one-on-one conversation.
