Consider opportunities
That open-door attitude transcends beyond Chemla’s employees and applies to customers and the external marketplace, as well.
Fortunately, Chemla travels a lot. He gets to travel across his global ma
rketplace weekly — meaning he also gets to experience the services that his company provides. Maybe you can’t do that en route to a business meeting, but the point is that you do find a way to see things from your customers’ perspective.
“I could describe to you every seat of every airplane in any airline,” Chemla says. “We know very well which hotel is good, which hotel is not good. Because of our buying power and because of our reputation, we know the room number that our client should have when they walk in [any] hotel. We know which cabin they should have when they go to a cruise ship. So basically, it’s knowledge. That’s what makes you very different [than competitors] is to have the knowledge of what you’re providing your clients.”
Who knows, you may even encounter a business opportunity when you’re playing your customers’ role. For example, during a recent trip with one of his executive vice presidents, Chemla left the airport, got lost and landed in a new line of business.
“I got out of the airport and the driver did not know where he was going,” he says. “I said to myself, ‘If this was one of our clients, we would be the ones responsible for it.’”
So Chemla opened ALTOUR Limousine, providing reliable ground transportation for his clients after they get to their destinations.
In addition to taking on the perspective of a client, you should also learn the client’s preferences. Chemla tracks how his customers travel so he can keep offering them the most reasonable services.
“In general, we know where the clients have been before. We know what they like to do,” he says. “We know if they prefer land, if they prefer sea. We have their experience, we have their profile, we know what they like. And based on that, we make sure that we offer them the best possible package vacation.”
Then, he follows up to make sure that the experience was up to par. Although he does conduct some surveys on ALTOUR’s internal customer service, the key is that Chemla doesn’t wait for customers to bring feedback to him.
“When they come back from a trip, we call them to see how the trip was,” he says. “We ask questions and that’s when we know, in general, what really happened. No, we don’t wait for them to tell us.”
By staying actively in touch with customers throughout the process, you can also encounter other opportunities through their requests.
“We realized very quickly that our clients were using private jets a lot,” Chemla says. “Unfortunately, on private jets, very often you have multiple brokers. So you don’t really know the type of equipment you’re getting. You don’t really know the service you’re getting or know the airplane either.”
Because it was a service that complemented and expanded what ALTOUR already did, Chemla decided it made sense to step in and provide it. So two years ago, he started ALTOUR Air, the company’s own private jet line.
“This is on line with our business, but it is not our core business,” he says. “We [opened] that to make sure that our clients were getting the best possible service, and we wanted to make sure that the quality of the type of equipment they were using was at the top.
“[Those] businesses are not my core business, but they help me to provide to my client the service and the quality that they expect from us. When we feel that the service is not there and when we feel that the control is not in our hands and that we cannot get the proper service, then we decide we have to try and go alone. … So the measuring stick, if you wish, is experience with other vendors. When they cannot provide what we expect, then [we] provide.”
What it really boils down to is that you’re willing to consider any potential opportunity you find to improve the customer’s experience. Even if it doesn’t work for your company, it may lead to something else — even if that just means a better understanding of where opportunities are.
“When the train passes by, you have to jump [on],” Chemla says. “If you miss a train, [you can’t] be sure that it’s going to pass again. It’s not to miss any opportunity and to look at all of them. Keep the door open to any opportunity that’s not exactly in your line of business because these may lead you to something else.”
How to reach: ALTOUR, (800) 878-5847 or http://www.altour.com/
