Bombardier renews their customer service efforts and appoints James Hoblyn to help lead the charge. Mr. Hoblyn shares his outlook with Aviation Maintenance.

AM: What does Bombardier mean by "customer experience"?

Hoblyn: Last November, we launched a renewed effort to improve our customer experience from purchase through to delivery and in-service support. This initiative involves employees across our company and touches virtually every facet of what we do, dramatically improving how we interact with our customers on a daily basis, from how we respond and work on the telephone to on-site AOG support worldwide. It’s an all-encompassing effort – the manner, the tone in our voices on the telephone – these are just as important as providing the support itself.

AM: Why did Bombardier create your position?

Hoblyn: Service sells airplanes, as the saying goes. We felt that we needed a single point of accountability, representing all of the many support, service and maintenance functions we provide from different departments located in different cities across our company. We recognize that customers are buying much more than an aircraft, they are purchasing an experience. We want to ensure that customers benefit from this relationship and enjoy the experience – including the purchase and aircraft specification phase, all the way through to training and support. We feel that post-delivery support is a priority so we are focusing specifically on services and maintenance at this time.

AM: Tell me about your movement within Bombardier and how your background prepared you for your current position.

Hoblyn: I’m a mechanical engineer by training, and joined Bombardier in 1998. Most of my Bombardier career has been within the business aviation unit although I led sales operations, marketing and asset management within Bombardier’s regional aircraft unit. And I must say that airline customers are just as concerned and pre-occupied as private operators regarding support, service and reliability. I’ve been responsible for program management, sales support, marketing and for the contracts side – areas where interfacing with customers is all-important. Most importantly, perhaps, – after managing a fleet of Bombardier business jets in Europe and running our group of flight demonstration aircraft in Wichita and Hartford – is I’m able to provide the perspective and insight of an operator. I understand customer issues, their concerns and their needs.

AM: How are you reaching out to the customer?

Hoblyn: Based on feedback from our customers and employees, we are making progress with four top-priority initiatives: We are ordering and stocking the top 25 high-demand parts for all production models. While this initiative is not complete, we are seeing a positive trend in off-the-shelf fill rates and have received encouraging feedback from many customers. New integrated state-of-the-art customer response centers started operating in Montreal in February and in Wichita to provide customers and our field service representatives with a single point of contact to resolve major AOG situations on a 24/7 basis. We recently launched Parts Express, an additional tool to deliver parts and fly technical support teams to in-warranty customers in critical AOG situations throughout America. To create this service, we allocated shares in our Flexjet factional ownership program for a Bombardier Learjet 45 aircraft. We are overhauling the way we communicate technical and operational information with our customers. We will host two annual maintenance and operations customer meetings and will also host improved workshops at various industry events including PAMA, EBACE, LABACE, NBAA and the Dubai Air Show.

AM: How do you see Bombardier’s customer service reputation changing because of your involvement?

Hoblyn: At the risk of sounding clich – it really is a team effort – no single person can do this on their own, it’s impossible. Recognizing this, Bombardier decided a top priority is to improve the customer experience across all of Bombardier Aerospace. With each passing week, we continue to improve processes, systems and behaviors – from purchasing, engineering, manufacturing and assembly to sales, contracts, interior completion, training, service and support. It’s a monumental challenge; however, this culture change is starting to have a positive impact. Feedback from our four customer advisory councils – Learjet, Challenger 300, Challenger 600 series and Global – indicates we’re heading in the right direction. So I know we’re making progress, and we’ll do whatever it takes to overcome any obstacles and detours that try to knock us off course.