The Customer Centric Pledge for the Travel Industry
1. We admitted we were powerless over our past behavior in focusing only on WHERE and WHEN the customer was traveling—that by focusing on just the 15% of travelers that fly that our future revenues had been limited for our stakeholders.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our customer focus to the whole traveler, that drives as well as flies to their destination, whether on business or for leisure and “life” travel.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves as companies and our reliance on both the status quo and the cash cow. I [we] have vowed to adopt a long term, sustainable business model that is multi-faceted – beyond booking fees and transaction oriented commissions.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our self-centered and product-centered viewpoint. This includes admitting that there are more than 100 cities in the US and the other 88,900 cities have travelers coming to them every day for things other than vacation travel (8% of total trips) and business travel (25% of total trips).
6. Were entirely ready to brainstorm how to get from where we are in our focus to true customer centricity, removing these corporate defects of character.
7. Humbly asked our customers to forgive us our shortcomings and learn more about what they (and their end customers) really do when they travel by car and how we can shift our efforts to make that easier.
8. Made a list of all ways that we have focused instead on our own products and services and our profits, to the exclusion and sometimes to the detriment of our customer (B2C) or the customer of our customer (B2B).
9. Made direct amends to our clients that need a drive market solution, by shifting our focus away from WHERE and WHEN they are traveling to WHO they are traveling with, WHY they are traveling, WHAT they like to do when they are on this particular type of trip and HOW they are traveling.
10. Continue to take a “focus” inventory and when we are wrong promptly correct it.
11. Seek continuous input not only from our customers, but from our front line that support the customer and from the consultants in the industry that get hired to “fix” the problems when it is often too late.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we vow to carry this message to the rest of the air-centric travel and tourism industries, and to practice these principles in all our product, program and technology development affairs.
If you are ready to not be “anonymous” about this and care to learn more about the drive market opportunity, click here to register for a free copy of our short white paper Why is the Drive Market so Important?
