Congratulations to Fiji Airways for being awarded the Skytrax 4-Star rating and for earning the “Best Airline Staff in Australia Pacific” commendation!
We are delighted to share these milestones achieved by Fiji Airways with our colleagues and readers around the world. These recognitions are the well-deserved result of the airline’s unwavering commitment to providing high quality products and services both in-flight and on the ground.
These industry awards and achievements are a testament that nothing is impossible when all employees Work As One to create a culture of obsession for service throughout the organization, inspiring everyone to take the next step up.
These record-setting achievements are not earned overnight. These are the result of a four-year journey launched when Mr. Andre Viljoen, Fiji Airways Managing Director and CEO, declared boldly the company vision: “To be the most desired, most flown, most profitable airline in the South Pacific”.
To achieve this vision, the leadership team set “6 Strategic Objectives” that included financial, connectivity and service quality measures. Their most distinctive measure was having all 1,400 team members in all departments embark on a massive service education program including “Train the Trainer” and service improvement workshops to “Work as One to Take the Next Step Up”, improving customer experience and enhancing the service culture.
And it worked! In 2017, Fiji Airways announced a fourth year of successive record-high profits and customer satisfaction scores. The entire team in Fiji Airways Group has surpassed all agreed metrics for growth in revenue, passengers, and networks. They have efficiently navigated through a challenging operations period during during which cost control was crucial. 86% of the airline’s 1,384 staff completed Phase 1 of the Uplifting Service and Service Excellence programs. All employees learned to embrace the meaning of service excellence as “Taking the next step up to create more value for external customers and colleagues”. This inspired collaboration leading to perfecting the service basics, delivering creative service improvements, and demanding service excellence from each other as service leaders and teams.
Fiji Airways reduced customer complaints by 66% in 2018 while increasing compliments by 22% compared to the previous year; while the domestic airline, Fiji Link, also increased compliments by 74%. 183 members of staff were recognized for “Stepping UP” their service to customers and colleagues and were awarded Bronze Stars, while four outstanding staff members were awarded the Silver Star.
From Service Education to Service Improvements
In 2018 – 2019, Fiji Airways ramped up even more service education for all their employees. They increased the pool of Uplifting Service Leaders from 20 to 56. Uplifting Service Leaders included General Managers from different functions Stepping Up to educate and drive change. These Uplifting Service Leaders not only conducted UP! training programs, they also facilitated Application Workshops where team members addressed service problems and applied appropriate service tools to generate new ideas for service improvement. More than 200 Application Workshops were facilitated by Uplifting Service Leaders and line managers across all functions to solve a myriad of service problems to create more value. All to enhance customer experience.
In summary, this relentless effort to improve every aspect of the airlines product, service and organization’s culture bore sweet fruit. This 4-Star rating and award serves as an endorsement and an affirmation that Fiji Airways is indeed World Class. Echoing Mr. Andre Viljoen, this means we can say that everybody working in Fiji Airways, onboard and on the ground, YOU are World Class service provider delivering World Class service. Bravo!
Fiji Airways has reached a milestone in the company’s history and will continue striving for service excellence as they today’s “desired” quickly becomes tomorrow’s “expected”. Service excellence is a lifelong journey, not a single destination.
Uplifting Service is privileged to partner with Fiji Airways in their journey of building a culture of service excellence. We are so happy to say YOU DID IT! Congratulations again!
Unleashing Unbelievable
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