A New Era Begins

I think the common thread through my experience is strong customer focus. That is the thing that allows me to do this job. I have always thought about the customer," said Mark Paolucci, Cessna's recently appointed senior vice president customer service. "I always ask, 'What's the benefit for the customer?' If we aren't benefiting the customer, we probably shouldn't be doing it."

He has been in the position of senior vice president customer service since August 21, 2006 and overlapped with Ron Chapman in the role until October 2, 2006. Paolucci will also assume Chapman's position on Cessna's senior leadership team.

Paolucci joined Cessna in 1979 as a design engineer in the liaison engineering group. As a liaison engineer Paolucci and others worked with each functional department within Cessna to identify and resolve production problems. Paolucci was also intimately involved in the Citation 650 model start up. During that assignment, he shepherded the first 650 through production, flight test, and completion.

He transitioned to marketing, in the role of contract administrator for special missions aircraft. He has also worked in both special missions/government sales and commercial sales. He was named vice president of international sales in 1994 and vice president of Citation sales in 2002. Paolucci holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aviation technology from Central Missouri State University.

Coming from an engineering, marketing, and sales background to the product support and service arena doesn't seem to intimidate him. Asked if he thought there would be skepticism about his lack of maintenance background, Paolucci replied, "I don't know if I can accurately answer that. But I have a degree in technology, my work in engineering allowed me to support building, delivering, and troubleshooting airplanes and their systems. I have that aptitude. I can reasonably understand the issues. They hired me to lead the organization. I have a broad enough background to do that."

The initial feedback has been a warm welcome and not viewed as a negative by Cessna customers. "Internally I think some may feel 'he may take a sales and marketing approach.' But why is that any different than any other business approach?

"I don't feel that a marketing and sales approach and customer service are mutually exclusive. I will bring my own unique capabilities and strengths to the table. I don't want to undo any of the good things," he said.

He added that he feels his strengths are his customer focus and the ability to listen and see all sides. "I believe there are three sides to a coin. Your side, their side, and the truth," Paolucci said. "I can search for the common ground and find a solution that is good for both the customer and the company. That takes creativity and persistence. You can't give up thinking about problems."

Raise the Bar?

Paolucci's responsibilities include customer support, field service, parts distribution, the Citation Service Center network, and oversight of the authorized service center network. With such an extensive area of oversight, the challenge to maintain the level or raise the level of service would be daunting for anyone.

"I recognize the challenge. To a large degree, the opportunity to fail is as high as the opportunity to succeed. I would like to maintain the same profitability and growth, while at the same time add to the focus," he said.

Paolucci's background in international sales may be helpful in new initiatives, as well. "The other thing I would like to do is to set strategies to help our international customers more than we do today. I think that is one reason I was chosen for this position. I have insights on painpoints for international customers," he said. "It's an increasing side of our business, and the thrust of our attention will be there."

The staff that has supported Chapman will continue to support Paolucci and is in transition with him. "As the leader in this department I will rely on people to do their jobs. My job is to provide them the tools they need to do that job. I feel, as a leader, most of the job is supporting the people who work for you," Paolucci said.

So far he felt the transition had gone as well as could be expected. "I spent the first weeks learning from Ron and this organization, meeting with people I will work with," he said. "I have tried to accelerate the getting-to-know-each-other period and to learn as much as I can." Paolucci acknowledged that there would be challenges in the next six months.

He named what he felt would be the three biggest challenges. "The first is change. People resist change, but we will change. Second will be balancing my desire to provide customer satisfaction with the desire to remain profitable. And third will be coming out quickly with proven success," he said.

Defining Vision

Paolucci said that first on his agenda would be defining his goals for the support division. "In the next 40 days I will be defining my vision for the team-what I like and don't like, my style. Then I will begin communicating those thoughts to the entire organization and my direct reports."

In terms of any major changes or projects within the organization, he said there were none to be announced at the time of our visit in late September. "Ron has done a very good job of predicting the need for growth and putting in place plans that have already been executed and plans that have not yet been executed.

"Hopefully, I will be as able and competent as my predecessor to predict the future and at planning for growth," he said. "With experience, I'll gain the ability to manipulate the numbers and expand based on the direct and indirect relationship of those numbers."

Developing People

Paolucci is a strong supporter of training and will encourage those working with him to pursue more training. "I try to learn all the time and try not be closed minded. I think that is a way of life at Cessna, for the entire company. I will concentrate on those that I deal with directly.

I want to provide them the opportunity to learn, be creative, and if they fail, know that it's OK to fail. Hopefully if they fail, they will fail forward, not backwards. We'll just need to pick ourselves up and move ahead. I will encourage them to try new things and pursue professional growth."

As for his relationship with his boss, Jack Pelton, CEO of Cessna, he said, "We have a good relationship. I don't think he would have asked me to do this job if we didn't. We communicate well.

"We are looking at the growth of this company and looking at an increased international presence. We want to maintain profitability, develop our people, and introduce new products and services."

Opportunities

One of the biggest areas for improvement, according to Paolucci, is the inspection process. "It's a complicated process," he said. "Our goal is to resolve problems in a timely manner; if you don't, people aren't going to be happy."

But he said that he will work to fix or improve the process by looking at the root design. "Sometimes the industry implements technology quicker than we have the ability to troubleshoot it. We are taking steps to build better aircraft with a very high degree of troubleshooting capabilities," said Paolucci.

During the course of our discussion, Aviation Maintenance asked Mark Paolucci how he plans to handle some of the issues that are common complaints of any OEM, and specifically about comments by Cessna customers in the Aviation International News Product Support survey that came out in August. Here are Paolucci's answers:

When asked about variations in the level of service at service centers from location to location:
"There is some truth in that statement. They do vary from location to location. All I can do is continue to develop processes that are repeatable. Once they are developed, they can cascade down to each center. Communication is different for each person. We have people investigating that. In our surveys, the communications question is raised. In addition, we have recently introduced a new way of managing a customer visit. The customer is assigned a tech rep and a customer service representative to facilitate the interface with the service organization-someone who is making sure the customer's needs are understood and then keeps them informed of the progress on his aircraft."

Invoicing problems:
"Invoicing problems are something I want to tackle right away. We want to be responsible and accountable.

Why do factory owned service centers charge more:
"I feel we are more thorough than many independent shops. My prior experience tells me that we have a high degree of experience, we know exactly which stone to look under, and that we may be more expensive, but you will get more value. For example, there are cheaper solutions to RVSM [reduced vertical separation minimum], but here [at the factory owned service center] you get more value. We have a very thorough and robust solution."
Rogue Parts:

"We see a large amount of no fault found (NFF) associated with high technology. We have the high technology parts but not the technology to troubleshoot them. We have instituted a policy that once we get a part back three times then it is effectively destroyed."

Parts pricing:
"It's the cost of regulation in the industry. {The expense comes] when you have to comply with as many regulations and the volumes are as low as they are."

Parts availability:
"We always want to have all the parts our customers need 100 percent of the time. Do we always? No. But we do have 95 percent availability due to proper forecasting. Our parts people are really good at that. What I want to get better at is having the parts in the right place."

Surprises about the new position:
"The amount of paperwork involved. I had forgotten how to manage that aspect. And eventually I would like to shift away from it as much as possible."

What will you miss about your old job?
"I will miss the people I worked with the most. I will miss the excitement of closing deals. But I'll be focusing on the international side and hope to see those customers again. I think I am addicted to travel. I was worried that I may not be traveling as much. But Jack [Pelton] said, 'I want you out there traveling.' So in the last five weeks that I have been transitioning, two of those I have spent traveling."