Over the last month, we have established that every organization has a customer service culture.  There are four service culture profiles that we covered: Insider’s Culture, Technical Culture, Market Culture, and Customer’s Culture.  Every department or organization, from airports to hotels, has a unique service culture that is a blend of each of these profiles. 

In most organizations, one profile may be more prominent than the others.  The key to a successful operation and happy customers is finding a balance among all four cultural profiles.  Aviation-related organizations tend to stress the Technical Culture, which depends on the technical knowledge, skills, and abilities of their employees.  But such an emphasis often overlooks the relational aspect between people (inside and outside the organization) that so often differentiates excellent companies from simply average ones.

Truly excellent organizations consciously seek to understand themselves, and the service culture profiles are an effective way to do that.  With this understanding comes an honest assessment of cultural strengths and weaknesses, which in turn leads to purposeful improvements that create a lasting competitive advantage.