Summer 2006

WestJet is Canada's leading low-fare airline. In its ten years of operation, it has pioneered low-cost high-value flying in Canada, and expanded its routes to serve 33 North American destinations. WestJet was named Canada's most respected corporation for customer service in 2005, marking the third year running that WestJet has earned that honor.

WestJet launched ResponseTekCEM in July 2002 at the core of their Customer Care Division (CCD); they wanted to be sure that their guest experience information would be leveraged into improvement initiatives and actions by the business. To accomplish that goal, WestJet’s vice president of Guest Services, Rosanna Imbrogno, implemented the WestJet Guest Experience Matters (GEM) committee. The GEM committee steers WestJet’s entire Customer Experience Management program.

WestJet has always centered its business practices on “guests” (WestJet never calls them customers) and believes that if you get the guest experience right, the revenue growth and market share will follow. Their meteoric success would indicate that this philosophy and their business model works.

The GEM committee reviews the customer experience information gathered in ResponseTek to identify and evaluate trends that can be used to define improvement opportunities in their business. Several practices increase the GEM committee’s value and effectiveness:

• Cross-functional committee make-up: WestJet uses a team consisting of the directors of the various departments of airline operations (In-Flight, Airports, Reservations, etc.). This ensures that when conducting root cause analysis on guest issues, WestJet has all relevant voices represented in the conversation. This eliminates the need for multiple reviews and accelerates identifying issues and defining improvements.
• GEM committee support resource: WestJet assigned a business analyst to support the GEM committee. This individual analyzes and prepares the data to be presented at the meetings.
• Meeting frequency: The GEM committee meets at least monthly to review the inbound experience information. WestJet identifies and reacts to possible issues faster, which enables the airline to remain more agile and flexible than their competitors who review customer satisfaction quarterly or even annually.

Implementing a Customer Experience Management steering committee is a best practice that can help your organization leverage the experiences and insights of your valued customers and turn them into specific improvement initiatives and actions that will yield real business value.

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