Other airports look to us to see how we do things, how we work with our tenants, how we get projects done. I don’t take credit alone: an award like this comes from working in partnership with our airport tenants. That’s what we’re all about here, so it’s truly an honor.” FBO Customer Service Representative Excellence Award: Kristine Ross Krissy Ross—Supervisor of Customer Service at Pentastar Aviation in Waterford, Michigan—is the recipient of the inaugural FBO Customer Service Representative Award. “Our executive leadership team kind of tricked me,” Ross said. “They were having one of their safety meet- ings and asked me to join, and I was kind of joking about it like, ‘Oh, what committee am I being volunteered for now?’ and then our president Greg Schmidt made the announcement that I’d been nominated for, and won, this new award. I was in complete shock, just knowing so many other amazing customer service representatives in our industry. To be honest, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.” She was nominated by Robert Sarazin, Vice President FBO Services at Pentastar. “Krissy strongly believes that the best way to lead is by example,” wrote Sarazin. “She exemplifies this quality not only as she is training and mentoring new employees, but also in her daily activities as she is consistently finding creative ways to be able to say ‘yes’ to our customers — fulfilling their needs and ensuring it remains easy to do business with us. Since beginning her career at Pentastar Aviation over 30 years ago, Krissy has mastered the art of anticipating customers’ needs and wants. This characteristic is a quality that is quite often mentioned in our customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys allow us to calculate a Net Promoter Score where our FBO consistently scores very high marks.” Like the rest of this year’s award winners, Ross was quick to share credit for the recognition. “I work with one of the greatest teams out there and we’ve always had great success in industry surveys,” she said. “I’m not a firm believer in just handing down rules, ‘my way is the best way’ and all that. I like to get down in the trenches with the whole team together to work out what makes sense and what doesn’t; and, it turns out, we work really well together.” Ross’ first introduction to the aviation industry came while she was waiting tables in a restaurant after high school, when a group of her customers had just returned from a flight and suggested to her that she consider a job as a flight attendant. So, she took some classes at Southeastern Academy of Travel and Tourism, got a job, and… “You’re going to think this is funny, for a story in Aviation Business Journal, but when I tried the flight attendant thing, one of the first things I realized is how much I don’t like to fly!” admitted Ross. “So, now I’m basically a flight attendant who stays on the ground: I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else. I started out working as a ramp hostess, then eventually came inside to work the front desk and just kind of progressed through every customer service job here. I’ve been a supervisor for 20 years now.” Ross enrolled in the very first NATA CSR Workshop, and believes it’s a ‘must’ for anyone in the industry. “I wish every customer service representative and line technician could do it, because it was really enlightening, and it was a tremendous opportunity to work in teams with people from across the industry, do some network- ing, and, for me, help mentor some of the newer people coming into the industry,” Ross said. “We really got to Continued on page 26 Aviation Business Journal | Summer 2019 25
