Ground Transportation Podcast
Take your transportation business to the next level.
Kenneth Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blain of PAX Training share the secrets of growing a successful and profitable ground transportation company. On this podcast, you’ll hear interviews with owners, operators, investors, and other key players in the industry. You’ll also hear plenty of banter between Ken and James.
Learn how you can grow revenue, train your team, drive higher profits, and boost owner income. Subscribe today!
Ground Transportation Podcast
The Death of 5-Star Service: Why 'Good Enough' is Killing The Industry
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Are you losing your highest-paying clients because your chauffeurs are acting like rideshare drivers?
In this episode, Ken Lucci and James Blain tackle the alarming decline of five-star customer service across the ground transportation and hospitality industries. They share frustrating real-world travel stories and break down why settling for "good enough" is blurring the line between luxury black cars and everyday Uber rides. To capture the massive corporate airport market, operators must ditch the dull AI bots, mandate pilot-style checklists, and get back to basic chauffeur etiquette. In this episode, you'll learn...
- Why the top 3% of travelers represent a $20.2 billion airport market
- How to fix the "pre-pissed" passenger experience by getting in the back seat
- Why relying solely on AI bots is frustrating your best customers
- How pilot-style checklists guarantee a consistent and flawless luxury ride
- Why the owner is never too big to call customers for direct feedback
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
02:14 Turnpike Fan Encounter
04:15 Five Star Service Slipping
10:43 Why Service Keeps Declining
13:11 Customer Rage And Training Gaps
15:35 Chauffeur Booking Nightmares
18:40 In Car Service Falling Short
22:03 Fixing Standards With Training
24:58 Uber Black And Low Entry Bar
30:18 Service Standards Slipping
30:55 Pyramid and Checklists
32:29 Marketing Flywheel Breakdown
33:35 What Wow Service Looks Like
35:40 Industry Reputation Risk
37:11 Owner Follow Up Matters
38:17 Process Over Guesswork
41:23 Servant Heart Story
44:18 Chauffeur Etiquette Lost
48:27 Airport Market Opportunity
52:57 Future of Private Transport
54:51 Get in the Back Seat
57:20 Conclusion
At Driving Transactions, Ken Lucci and his team offer financial analysis, KPI reviews, for specific purposes like improving profitability, enhancing the value of the enterprise business planning and buying and selling companies. So if you have any of those needs, please give us a call or check us out at www.drivingtransactions.com.
Pax Training is your all in one solution designed to elevate your team's skills, boost passenger satisfaction, and keep your business ahead of the curve. Learn more at www.paxtraining.com/gtp
Kathy Hilton, Paris Hilton's mother, drove her in and out of home shopping network in Tampa. She was doing some face creams and she stayed at the Hilton, which was one of our properties. And I drove her a few times and she used to smoke these European skinny cigarettes.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, the little toothpick looking ones.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, slims.
SPEAKER_03And she said to Rick, her husband, I don't have any more cigarettes, and I doubt the hotel's got them. So I dropped her off at Home Shopping Network. I know she was going to be doing three or four shows. I called my office and I said, Shelly, I need to get Kathy Hilton some cigarettes. Do me a favor, call around. I'm near the Hilton Caroline. Call around and figure out who's got these European cigarettes. So she's like, Ken, if you have time to go across to Howard Franklin, there's a smoke shop right in that hotel. I said, Done. Nice. I go there and I get her four packs. She thinks eight bucks a pack.
SPEAKER_02So you're in it for 32 bucks now.
SPEAKER_03In it for 32 bucks. I go back and they're on the back seat in the middle in a little gift bag. And she said, What are these? I said, Mrs. Hull.
SPEAKER_04He said he needs cigarettes.
SPEAKER_03I took care of that for you. She said, Why four packs? I said, Because you're on your way to Europe after this.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAX Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Ken and James.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. I am blessed today by being with my partner in crime, James Blant. James, where have you been?
SPEAKER_02Oh, jeez. As we can see, you're in a hotel room. I've done my time in the hotel room.
SPEAKER_03I am in an undisclosed location. I cannot confirm or deny.
SPEAKER_02Doing those deals, man. That's you know, I'm out doing training, you're out doing deals. We're living the life.
SPEAKER_03You know, the funny thing is, we don't slow down like MA attorneys. You can't find an MA attorney as of August 1st. You know, July 15th, they start getting scarce and they start saying, Well, I'm not available in August. You know, I've got this going on. We don't slow down. So it's pretty interesting. Can I tell you a story before we get started? Yeah, I want a story. Story time. Okay, story time. So I drove up from Maryland to Massachusetts for some family uh celebrations, and I was on the New Jersey Turnpike. This is Sunday, and I was wearing my t-shirt, my ground transportation podcast t-shirt. I love it. Wait a minute, that John gave me and didn't give you. Our producer, John, gave it to me, made me a special ground transportation podcast mug, so you know who his favorite is. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01I do have a mug.
SPEAKER_03Okay, but you don't have a t-shirt. I I go into stop in New Jersey, you know, at the service centers. I forget which one it was. But at my age, quite frankly, to go 100 miles, you're gonna stop three times anyway, right? So, anyway, so I'm walking through the New Jersey Turnbike Service Center, and I look over and I see guys that and there's a bunch of black issues in the parking lot, four or five of them. And I look over there and I know there's a bunch of chauffeurs. All of a sudden, I hear Mr. Lucci, Mr. Lucci, Mr. Lucci. And some guy starts chasing me. And I was the chauffeur. Please come over, please come over. So I go over to the table. And these guys, all five of them, are like it was an Elvis sighting. It was, I was kind of embarrassed, but it was actually pretty funny because I was wearing the t-shirt. We saw your t-shirt, we saw your t-shirt. So I sat there for a few minutes with them, and I said, Guys, you guys are all off duty, right? They're like, Well, we're in between trips, and we've got, you know, we're going back over to Newark. I said, Okay, do me yourself a favor, do me a favor. You know, shirt tails, tuck them in, get those ties on, make me proud out there. So, anyway, it was funny as hell. Cars looked good. The guys looked a little weary, though, which brings us into kind of what I wanted to talk about today. You've been on the road like a madman this summer.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03And so have I.
SPEAKER_02And I'm leaving again, right? This is in between recordings. I'm here in the studio and I'm right back out.
SPEAKER_03So I am really disappointed in the condition or the state of five-star service in this country. You know, I stay at Marriott's, stayed at a W, stayed at a Rich Carlton, stayed at a standard Marriott, and I've been really disappointed. I sent John some screenshots from one of my stays at a hotel. John, can you pull up the uh laundry cart? Okay. This is in a main elevator vestibule. That cart. Now, I went out in the morning, got my dunkin' donuts, came back, zoomed in the room, went out for lunch. That cart was still there. Okay. Now, John, turn to the dish, please. This next one is unreal. This is a plate that lived outside in the hallway for three days. Okay.
SPEAKER_02The rats didn't come carry it off eventually?
SPEAKER_03No, it wasn't in New York either. It was a wonderful, you know, suburban.
SPEAKER_02There's your problem. If it was New York, the rats are big enough they could carry it off.
SPEAKER_03They would carry it away and take it to a pawn shop. Probably was two days. Okay. And on top of that, you go into hotels today and you notice the service area doors are wide open. Right? So, what is your opinion? And then we're going to share stories about chauffeur services as well. What's your opinion of the condition or the state of five-star service? Am I just having some bad experiences, or are we permanently in a new world order here? That three-star is now replaced five star, and it's the best we're going to get.
SPEAKER_02God, I wish three-star replaced five star. I'm going to pull up, I'll actually pull something up this time. So, this is a slide that I presented in Las Vegas earlier this year. I've also pulled it up at several of the clients that I've gone to visit to show to their team. And I would tell you that this is now outdated information, right? But when I wrote it, it was customer service across the U.S. had declined three years in a row. It's going to be four or five at this rate, right? But three years of service declining. Fewer than one in 20 companies consistently put the customer first and how they operate. I think that's what you're seeing. I think personally, for me, one of the things that I've seen when I stay at hotels is room service is now like every other day. They're still understaffed. Customer wait time is up, inconsistent service, having to repeat yourself. One of the things that is driving me absolutely insane is that now everyone you call has AI right on the phone. And the problem is that they have whatever generic AI they bought, and no matter what you tell it, it can't help you. It drives me up the wall.
SPEAKER_03I'm going to stop you there about AI. Listen, I use ChatGPT on occasion, and I have found it to be something that you can use for an outline. Yeah. But to me, it's a dull blade. Okay. It's a dull blade, and it's not a sharp knife. You have to sharpen it up, like in a lot of cases. And I've used it for graphics. But it's not to me. I don't think it's there yet. And this agentic AI thing, what's your experience with it? I don't think it's there yet.
SPEAKER_02I think the best thing that I've seen that explains it is I was watching a video the other night of a guy that does coding. And he goes to clients, and they're always like, Oh, it's all right, we'll have AI code it. And he goes, Okay. So do you know what to tell it? And it goes, Well, yeah, that we want this program. And he goes, Great. Do you know how it's going to work? And they said, No. Do you know how it actually does what it does behind the scenes? No. Okay, so I'll tell you what. Me having done this for a living, I will outsource to AI and I'll tell exactly what I want and all the niches and how I do it and every little thing it needs to know to do the job perfectly. And then you have yours tell it to just do what you think you want, and we'll see who gets a better product. And to your point about the dull blade, right? It's not a subject matter expert, it is someone that you can have doing the work. It still needs to be directed, it still needs to be managed. You still have to have the subject matter expert to direct it. So I'm kind of with you on that. Yeah, it's a dull blade. I think of it more as a force multiplier.
SPEAKER_03I like that idea, but on a gentic agents, one of the things that I've seen on it when I've seen AI customer service experiences, to me, every operator should look at from how the phone is answered, how fast emails are answered, how fat chat bots are answered. If you're depending solely on chatbots, you're losing business. You you've got to use them as a force multiplier and you've got to intervene quick. On the phone, customer service on AI agents. I gotta say, I've been extraordinarily frustrated on the phone with them. And and oh, they suck. Wait a minute. Wouldn't you think that if you dropped the F-bomb or said you suck or get me a live agent, it would send you a live agent?
SPEAKER_02No, because half the time you're like, you suck, and it says, I'm sorry, you want to do what to my what? Like the problem it have you ever seen, and I don't know that we can pull it up, but have you ever seen the Scottish elevator skip? No, let's not pull it out. So so it's appropriate, I promise. But basically, the whole thing is these two guys with a really thick Scottish accent get on an elevator, and they're trying to 11. Hold on, maybe if we say it with an American accent, eleven, right? And they're I feel like that half the time. Like I'm talking, it doesn't hear half of what I say, it misunderstands the rest, and you have to argue with it to actually get a human. So I agree.
SPEAKER_03Let's go back to hotels. Look, from my customer service experience on both the chauffeur side and the hotel side, lots of parallels. Yep. No use of my last name, no eye contact, no smiles, barely looking up from their phone, barely looking up from their computer. Is it just because you and I travel a lot, or do you think it's because the average person is seeing the same thing?
SPEAKER_02I think we've got a couple different things all happening at once. And one of the ones that came up for me, I was in Louisiana with a client. We were working on their training program, and I had been frustrated by the Marriott's. So I stayed at a Hampton Inn. I went to the Hilton properties. There's a Hampton right there, looked really nice, it'd just been renovated. And I was sitting in the lobby reading a book and I was waiting for food. I was sitting there reading a book, relaxing. And the guy at the front comes up and he goes, Hey, did I check in last night? Are you here for the staycation? And I said, No, you know, I'm here for and he goes, Well, can you tell me about what you do? After what became a really lengthy conversation, I found out that this guy working the front desk was making 30 grand a year, couldn't afford to pay the bills he had, wasn't happy with the work he was doing. It was one of those things where he was looking for a change of pace and he was looking for a better salary. And I think you've got a couple things that have happened in a perfect storm. One, I think the world is getting more expensive, whether you like it or not, insurance is going up, fuel is going up, everything's going up. So that's happening in people's personal lives too. I don't think that the salaries at the hotels are keeping up. The other thing is that when you stay at a Marriott, that doesn't necessarily mean they're all corporate-owned and operated.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I agree. That's a very good point. The inconsistency depending upon where on the service, you know, where on the network you are, I think it's a problem.
SPEAKER_02And we see the same thing in our world, and people don't think about it. So if you get someone that's ordering car service for the first time, they're not thinking about the fact that there's tons of different companies and that they might all be working together. You see the same thing happen with affiliate work. If I'm flying out of Kansas City and I call up Bruce over at Leader and I say, Hey, I need you to book me out and I need you to do this. I might ride in four or five different cities, but I'm kind of dealing with all the operators there, even though I'm under that umbrella. Marriott is a franchise situation. You can stay at a different Marriott in every single city. There might even be the same brand within Marriott, but you might have a different owner at every single one of those hotels operating it slightly different.
SPEAKER_03But if you're if you want to talk about brand consistency and brand equity and and continuity of service, you've got to make sure you drill that to your franchisees. Can you please talk to me about the national customer rate survey? I think I maybe have taken that survey, but because I really national customer rate survey.
SPEAKER_02Here is the big deal. What we are seeing overall, and this we started seeing this coming out roughly the same time that AI comes out, which happens to be 2020. No, we're not going to talk about COVID, but around the time that AI starts coming out, we start seeing rises in frustration. We start seeing issues. Now, this was happening years before, especially when they started doing IVRs, which are the interactive virtual agents that you would get when you call in. So as all of this has happened, people have gotten increasingly and increasingly frustrated. The most interesting part to me is when you start digging into this one, it's not so much the frustration rising on one side, but you see it happen on both sides. So if you start looking at food service, the number of instances where you're having a customer in a barista or a customer and someone in a McDonald's or even someone at Chipotle, the number of actual instances where food's getting thrown, people are coming over the counter, all that is actually increasing. That's what I'm finding the most interesting is that none of that's changed. Everybody on every part of it is frustrated with the service levels. I will tell you, one of the things that we saw coming out of COVID was that people were hiring staff, not training them fully. So in my world at PAX Training, we did not come back as quick as the actual chauffeur services industry, the bus industry, you know, NEMT, all the industries that we serve, because these guys run a hiring spree and they were just tossing people out in vehicles.
SPEAKER_03But they even have time for training them.
SPEAKER_02The problem with that is that's like one of my favorite sayings about being healthy, right? You can make time to be healthy now and do healthy activities now, or you should make time to be sick later. That's kind of the same thing. They were in a hurry to get staffed, and then what happens? Six, 12 months later, my phone is ringing off the hook with got accidents, we've got incidents, we've got problems, we've got, and we don't know where it's coming from. Great, tell me about your training program. You never reactivated us. Well, you know, we had to hot foot and get everybody out there. I think that has happened a lot. Universally, I think that's affected all of these universally. Yep. So I think that's where it is.
SPEAKER_03So this summer I think I've used short services probably, I don't know, 15 times, and I've had to book myself. Now I'm gonna give you let you in on a little secret. I book with my clients, but I also book non-clients because I don't want to be comped. I'm not one of those people. Okay, I had some interactions that I swear to you, both making the reservations and in the vehicles that were excruciating and cringeworthy. Let me give you some examples. So I call to make a reservation, call the company that I have used before, and my account must have popped up. Let me tell you why I know that. Because when the time came, he said, Do you want to use the card that ends in such and such? Here's the problem. Number one, he never ever used my name. Never said, Welcome back, Mr. Lucci. Okay, so let's back up a step. That he obviously knew because again, he didn't ask me for my full card. He absolutely knew that I had traveled with him before, never welcomed me back, never used my name, not once. Okay. He was he was over I could tell he was an overseas operator because there was a little bit of a delay, and he was excruciatingly every minute of a six to eight minute phone call telling me which slots of the reservation he's working on. Okay. And he didn't even say, is your cell phone number still 727-638-3388?
SPEAKER_02So he didn't confirm your number.
SPEAKER_03No, Ms. Belucci, would you happen to be traveling in on American? Are you coming from from Salisbury, Maryland again? It's just not nothing conversational. It was all transactional. The other piece of that that I found was what bothered me is he's telling me that my pricing is subject to FIFA surges. Really? Are we still doing that shit? I mean, no. No, no. I'm I'm literally flying in. Apparently, they had FIFA games, and he said, let I think you're subject to FIFA searches surcharges, FIFA pricing, because we have FIFA that week. I have a problem with that because if I'm an existing customer, yeah, what it's like your restaurant week example. Why you why are you punishing me? Okay. At the end of the conversation, he absolutely did not repeat the data, never told me, never said to me, Do you want to do you want to meet curbside the way you did last? Do you want an inside meet and greet? Never confirmed any of that or told me about the tech. Okay. I got email confirmations and I get emails with every driver status, which is what you and I talked about before. Oh, by the way, that was excruciating. I got the call done. I have to be honest with you. I didn't use that company on my way out of the city. I used somebody else.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Let's talk about the chauffeur experience. I get no text message that the drivers are on the way, okay, which I think is a real, a massive problem. And we've talked about that. It's a recurring problem. We have only have four reservation systems in the industry now, and they're all owned by the same company. God love them, and they're doing a great job. But how about we literally try to get the uniformity? Again, when I got home, I saw the email confirmation, email driver was on his way, email status is every step. I'm not looking at any of that. What I did get is a phone call from the driver. Okay. And a text message from the driver who God love him. English was probably his third language because the text messages were all misspelled. It was, but he was trying. He was trying. Okay. And the in-car experience was no better. He pulls up to curbside. No, first of all, this is why I don't like anybody to know who I am when I travel. Because I don't want them to say VIP. He pulls up to Well, you want to get the average chauffeur. You're not trying to get the absolute best. He pulls up to curbside. Okay, pops the trunk. Doesn't get out. Okay? Ride share. This is the rideshare driver. Okay. So the biggest issue that I'm seeing as far as service delivery in car service experience is totally blurring the line. Totally blurring the line. And I listen, I will tell you, it was not a one-off experience. The guy on the way out of town from the other custom company, unfortunately, he didn't know who I was, but his service cues were much better. I flew into another city, curbside, paper sign. Okay, is this not 2026? Paper sign.
SPEAKER_02Was it a nice paper sign, at least? I mean, was it nice? Because I've seen some wrinkled ones.
SPEAKER_03Paper sign. Name was spelled right, but then the chauffeur says, Lucy, not even Mr. Lucy, doesn't introduce himself. He's wearing a dark blue dress shirt, and he took it upon himself to tell me that he didn't work for the company. Okay, that he this is his car, and he works around the city himself.
SPEAKER_02So he's going out of his way to make sure you know he's an I.O. Correct. Yeah, I'm not sure. What do you gain from that? I guess my question, I'm trying to get in the headspace of why he would do that. That doesn't make sense to me.
SPEAKER_03So my message to the industry is I believe this to be true. The market share of Schauford is not going up. If companies are growing, it's because one existing client group is shifting to another company. And it's not as though we are increasing the numbers of people who are using Schauford services. When is this gonna stop? When is the industry again, have what I expected for five star service, white glove service, white tablecloth service? Is it now we're just gonna settle on three star service? But we're gonna pay for five star service.
SPEAKER_02Look, there's one question, and it's the single most important question, and it really gets the heart of the matter. And that's is it that these people didn't know how to provide five-star service, or is it that they chose not to provide five-star service? Because I can tell you right now, I'm not trying to make this a sales pitch for me or PAX or anything like that, but when you can go and you can get training for someone, and it's literally cheaper to get them ongoing training than it is to have a Netflix subscription. I don't know that there's an excuse for it. I can tell you right now, the whole opening the back and not going to the back, I struggle to decide whether it's they are not doing it out of a bad habit or out of, you know, hey, I open the back and they get there quicker than me. Or are they doing it because that company has never trained them? And I will tell you right now, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about ongoing training, and the reason that at PAX we do weekly training is we bounce it every single Monday. It's either customer service or it's defensive driving and safety. And I can tell you right now, the biggest problem that I see is that companies will tell us, oh, this isn't rocket science. We've already trained them once and then we've let them loose. Well, great. You trained them once, you rushed them through it, you got them on the road, you didn't touch all the points, and now you're assuming they're gonna be able to just knock it out of the park for the next 20 years. It's funny.
SPEAKER_03I um rereading three books Why made the Risk Ritz Carlton Gold Standard, right? The second is the Disney Way, okay, and the third one is I had him on the podcast, John DeJoyus Customer Service Revolution. I travel with this. Okay. In the Disney way, over the weekend I was reading it before I left, and there's a chapter in there. Walt Disney used to say, if we lose the details, we lose the experience. If we lose the details, we lose the story. I honestly believe that we're not teaching the small details. And I'm ashamed to say that people view, I'm gonna give you the answer to your issue. People view you as an expense, which they should be viewing you as an expense as an investment, okay? And they should be inspecting what they expect. Right? We all know I'm a Dunkin' Donuts fan. Okay. I walk into a Dunkin' Donuts and I get infuriated because I get the same thing everywhere I go. I get two egg, they call them burritos. And when people are in a hurry, they throw them into the microwave, they're terrible. But when they make them crispy with the egg, okay, they're good. So there's a consistency problem there, okay. In our world, there is, I think there's a few things. Let's just talk about the chauffeur. I honestly think that there is a mindset ever since Uber Black came in that good is good enough.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Good is good enough. You know something? If I was gonna be a chauffeur ever again, the funnest time I ever had in my life was my own SUV with my own laptop. And you know something? I probably could do the job that I do now from my SUV. Because we have all the retained clients in the world. I just pull over and take my Zooms and I could literally do all okay. I don't care if I'm a single car operator today and I do Uber Black and then I do a network job or I do a job for a large regional, right? Because let's face it, a lot of the operators have great in-house fleets, but then they're augmenting with single-car operators. A lot of them are. But is the fact that single-car operators are working not only for the five-star white tablecloth restaurants, but then they may be taking the in between, they may be doing uber black work. Is that the problem? Is that the problem?
SPEAKER_02I think the problem is the entry point, okay? And what I mean by the entry point is if I go out and I buy a black SUV, right? GM doesn't care, they're not gonna discriminate, and they'll sell the suburban to whoever. I can go buy a suburban, I can go start doing Uber Black, then I can start telling all the people in town that I'm an I.O. and I'm available. I can tell you right now, I know which of my clients are actually gonna say, Hey, what are you doing for training? How do we know you know what you're doing? Most people, probably the 90%, are gonna be like, Oh, great, what's your availability? Tell us what kind of vehicle do you have. No one's gonna try and say, Well, you know, how's your service? And so you end up with these people that on that entry point, they never got trained. My other favorite thing is I only hire guys with experience. Yeah, you hire guys with experience because you don't want to train them. As a result, the other guy who didn't train him and just tossed him on the road, you're inheriting everything that came with that. And so I genuinely think a problem that we've got right now is they're kind of kicking the can around. And in this call I had with the state association, one of the things that came up was we only see people that are going to do things like high-level training, you know, working on their safety program, stuff like that. When an insurance company comes in, when it's part of an RFP, when there's a requirement, it's not because that's the baseline and we want to give the best service possible. It ends up being, well, someone required me to do that. And as soon as that requirement goes away, all of a sudden all of that work, all that effort drops back down. It comes right back to what you said. This is something that is an investment, but because it's not the sexy thing, because it's not the marketing, because it's not how people think they generate their revenue, because it's not what people think influences profit, they tend to worry more about getting clients, and then they don't worry about how they're gonna keep them, right?
SPEAKER_03On so many levels, you're you're right. You're right. They focus more on the point A to point B. And I get it. You know, there's no way I could ever be a chauffeur operator in New York. I just couldn't take the driving, right? I couldn't take that city. No, I don't even think I could do it in Boston anymore or even in Tampa where I used to work. But I think that the mechanics of the industry or the logistics of the industry and those challenges have overshadowed the true story, the real story, is they're not hiring you because of the logistics. They're expecting it. They're expecting you to get from point A to point B. But what they really are demanding, and and they it's the it's the way you're going to capture much more revenue than if you're an Uber Black driver, is they're demanding five-star service we're not providing. It's the no-eye contact of the chauffeur, it's the totally misservice cues, not using my name. It's when you get in the vehicle not confirming this is a true story. I use it in another city, I go on vacation, and I had been in that city before, okay. And then that city before, I was stayed in another hotel. It was a speaking gig.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I know exactly where this is going.
SPEAKER_03So the next time I come into town, okay, they mistakenly put in took you to the wrong hotel. They put the wrong hotel, the last visits hotel. They left it in. So I, being this persnickety curmudgeon that I am on customer service, as soon as he put it in the drive, I'm like, okay, missed the service cues completely. Didn't ask me about audio, didn't ask me about climate, didn't offer me water, none of it. And then he didn't confirm where we were going. We drive out of the airport, and I said, Hey, dropping me off at the JW, right? Oh, oh no, I had you go into such and such. I'm like, nope. Okay, I'm not lying. I know where I'm going. Anyway, he missed the service queu completely. I look up and there's a big, you know, golf ball-sized divot in the windshield, which probably wasn't nice. Okay, but my whole point is I just think people's definition of five-star service has completely changed. And I'm I am bullshit about continuing to hear about the pandemic. It costs you nothing to teach your people how to smile. You have to make it muscle memory. And it just completely, to me, it again, I think it's a focus on logistics. I think they're struggling on many things, but I think they've completely, completely abandoned the idea of service etiquette, chauffeur etiquette, service cues, etc.
SPEAKER_02One of the things that I see a lot that people miss is that this is all stuff that needs to be a checklist item. One of the things that we always talk about, we always talk about at PACS the pyramid of success. And the whole idea of the pyramid of success is really simple. And that's that you are building your way up towards how you want that to be. So you've already hit on some of the key things. Look, the first impression, if they're not on time, if they're not dressed and acting like a chauffeur, if that vehicle's not there, the first impression's toast, right? I can tell you right now, the things that you've told me that strike out on the vehicle are they're not getting out, they're not doing that right. So you haven't even gotten to the drive yet, and they've already missed those cues. And again, I'm a checklist guy. I live and die by my checklist. So for me, this is a huge thing. Then you get into the drive. Okay, did they actually prepare? Do they know where they're going? Can they actually get me there safely? If anything there goes off the rails, it doesn't matter whether or not you're going to perceive that they gave you good customer service because you never created the experience. What you've described and what we're seeing happen time and time again is the trip is dying on these first two layers because they never get to the point where they generate an experience. They provide you with customer service. Instead of working on how do I take this guy's experience to the next level, how do I make it so he'd never dream of riding with someone else? Your trip is dying on the first two layers of this pyramid.
SPEAKER_03And I see this as a flywheel problem. Okay. What I see happening is they're spending tons of money on Google PPC. I am Mark Petrie from Limo Market are on. And before the call, we always lament about Mark, how many leads you providing Ken? We're killing it on leads. We're killing it on this, that, the other thing, but they're not following up, or they're using a bot to do the service. They're doing using a sales funnel, and they're not really reaching out. I'm like, trust me, I know it. I have the same thing on kind of like on the finance side. They don't want to look at their financials. But anyway, I think it's a flywheel problem because you're not you're you're paying for a lead, you're not you're not dealing with the client at a five-star level on the phone, right? You're dealing transactional, you're not providing fantastic service from a technology and tracking mechanisms, right? So your service experience is a problem there, and then the in-car experience is just good enough. It's not five-star. I haven't been wowed this summer at all. I was wowed coming out of Miami.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03Lennon Frog's company. Oh, all American. All American. Wowed me. The chauffeur was right out of central casting. Okay. He was a former Miami detective. I asked him, and he, I don't know if he knew who Lennon made the reservation, but I said, Lennon, please let me pay for this. Anyway, right out of central casting, absolute service cues, the vehicle was impeccable. The same thing happened to me in Vegas this year. I'm gonna not mention the company, but the chauffeur was ex-military. Okay. Every possible service cue was met. Okay. We got into traffic in Vegas, and he was apologetic to me. And I said, nothing we can do about traffic, man. Don't worry about it. But my whole point is that I think the rule now is just good enough, and the exception is the wow. And I think it's the reason why these companies are not growing, and I think it's the reason why the market share in the industry is not growing.
SPEAKER_02I think you've got a couple things going on there. I think the first is to a certain extent, we have created a pendulum. Because if you are still getting five-star service, if it is still out there, when you leave that five-star service, you leave wanting more, right? I'll give a big shout out to Alex. When I was in Vegas, I rode with his company out to get to the hotel. Once again, great service. They nailed everything, great experience. On the way back, I used a different company, immediately regretted it. Yeah. But I think what happens in these is that, you know, look, if everybody's service level was bad, at least you'd all be bad. The problem is we're at a point where we're almost at like a 60-40. You've got 60% of the service is not where it should be, 40% is. But what we're fighting is what I brought up very early on, and that's that when people think about car service, when people think about us, they think about the limousine industry. So, for example, I mentioned my wife who does our marketing for us. Her bad experience in Vegas, right? If she wasn't in the industry and she was just an exec out there, that one bad experience, she'd never book black car service again. She'd be done. She'd go try Uber or Lyft. Because in that client's mind, a lot of them can't tell the difference they see the difference.
SPEAKER_03And that's the death knell of the look, it's an industry problem. It's a death knell in the restaurant business, it's the death knell in the hospital, the hotel business. Okay. There are so many hotels now, so many different brands. If all you're doing is sending me an email telling me about my rewards because of the book, the rooms I booked, it's not going to hold me. Okay. No. It's not going to hold me. And I I I just look at the experience that that that I have at Marriott. I'm very loyal to Marriott because I have a American Airlines credit card, because American Airlines is, you know, where my tell me how you feel about American Airlines. Well, American Airlines is is you know my little my little regional airport, so it is what it is. But then I have a Marriott card, and my sister is a Marriott fiend, and she's got the level above me. So they they try to treat her like gold. But I I think our industry, the flywheel issue is the the other aspect of it is no one is asking. I mean, people are sending out a lot of a review requests, right? Right, potentially after the ride, but there's nobody is sending out any any semblance of a thank you note. No one is communicating and saying, listen, I'm the owner of Ambassador Limousine. I just want to check and see how your ride was. I think people would be floored, right? Don't want to bother you. I'm the owner of ambassador. I saw you took a ride. Okay. I know one guy that does that. Okay. And he runs one of the best companies I've ever seen. And in the vehicle, there's a laminated card that says, Hey, you got a problem? This is my number. Okay. But I worry about the industry because the total available market on airport passenger growth is almost like a hockey stick.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03But our market share is not growing, and it's not the price.
SPEAKER_02In my world, this is a checklist problem. Okay. Because at no point have we talked about anything that was out of order. Okay. When you're talking about, you know, coming in for me, we think about the greet. You've got to nail the greet, you've got to get them in the vehicle, you've got to get your overview, you've got to get them situated, then you've got to worry about the drive. Then you've got to nail the drop-off. Then you've got to reset the vehicle. None of this is rocket science. But look, the guy that drives the aircraft, right? The pilot and the co-pilot, right? The first officer that are taking us everywhere do this every single day. They get on that same type of plane. If they're working for Southwest, they only buy 737s. But guess what? They have every single time they say it's muscle memory and it's the checklist. It's the checklist, and they have to run the checklist. I see failures to create systems and failures to create checklists. And look, I I implement and I help people put checklists in for a living. That's part of what we do. Our training is huge on learn your process, stick to your process, follow it. But what we see time and time again is that these guys don't ever fall into that groove and run that checklist. And so I think it's beyond that. I you would think, but every time that we've gone to a company that's had these issues, the second we get them on the checklist and we had them start following the checklist. Oh, they have to improve. I think to your point where it's deeper than that, is it's the mindset, right? And this is gonna sound horrible, but if you go to AA, the first thing they have you do is admit you're an alcoholic. You have to come to terms.
SPEAKER_05How do you do that?
SPEAKER_02Look, we all have people in our lives that have had rough things happen to them, and we've all had to support them through it. And one of the things about that is you got to learn what they're going through and how you can help them. Hey, I appreciate you helping.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate you helping me through my problem, Jim.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, we're gonna leave you there. But here's the thing, though, and the reason I brought that up is the lesson there is that those are people that have found that drinking is a problem in their life. They're admitting to themselves they need to change and they're looking for a way to change. What we see instead is they won't admit there's a problem, they won't admit the service needs to be fixed. And a lot of times, just like someone who's not ready for a change for something negative they need help with, they're not seeing it. They can't go to the mirror and say, hey, I'm here. So they're not ready to accept change and put it in place.
SPEAKER_03Look, you're hitting upon a bigger issue that could be an episode, which is there are just a lot of there's a lot of mediocre small businesses out there. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03I think as far as our industry is concerned, I think it goes beyond that. I think the owners are so overwhelmed with running the businesses in some cases that they make it a lesser of a priority where it should be to me, safety and service have to be number one and two, like the opposite sides of the same coin. I think that I worry about whether people in this country now have the servant heart. Meaning I used to I used to love trying to anticipate the client needs. Quick story Kathy Hilton, Paris Hilton's mother.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't know that you've told us one.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful lady, by the way. Beautiful lady. Drove her in and out of home shopping network in Tampa. She was doing some face creams, and she stayed at the Hilton, which was one of our properties. And I drove her a few times, and she used to smoke these European skinny cigarettes.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, the little toothpick looking ones.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, slims.
SPEAKER_03And she said to Rick, her husband, I don't have any more cigarettes, and I doubt the hotel's got them. So I dropped her off at Home Shopping Network. I know she was going to be doing three or four shows over. I called my office and I said, Shelly, I need to get Kathy Hilton some cigarettes. Do me a favor, call around. I'm near the Hilton Carroll on. Call around and figure out who's got these cigarettes.
SPEAKER_02Who can come bring them to you?
SPEAKER_03No, no. Who's got these European cigarettes? Because I don't want to go from place to place. So she's like, Ken, if you have time to go across to Howard Franklin, there's a smoke shop right in that hotel. I said, Done. Nice. I go there and I get her four packs. Eight bucks a pack, four packs, right?
SPEAKER_02And so you're in it for 32 bucks now.
SPEAKER_03In it for 32 bucks. I go back and they're on the back seat in the middle, in a little gift bag. And she said, What are these? I said, Mrs. Holman. I took care of that for you. She said, Why four packs? I said, Because you're on your way to Europe after this. You're not going home. I don't want you to have to worry about that. And Rick said, Ken, four packs. Better more than not enough. But she really was extremely appreciative. Okay, so what did that take me?
SPEAKER_0132 bucks.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but the hotel reimbursed me. I wasn't even looking for that. My whole point was she really remembered my name after that, Ken. You know, I know you own this company, but really next time we'd like you to drive us. She gave a compliment to the manager of the Hilton. My whole point is service cues are one thing, anticipatory, anticipating their needs is something a different level. I hate to say it. We're not even hitting the simple cues. Stay off your phone, make eye contact, always answer with a yes, always confirm the small details. And I just think that from our perspective, We have to recognize that if I think more people are skewing towards what I'll call the black car level than the executive chauffeured level. And I think we do that in our apparel.
SPEAKER_02I think we're skewing towards rideshare, in all honesty. One of the trips that always has stuck in my mind was one of my very first black car trips coming back from that show in Vegas. What matters in that story is that chauffeur looking in the rear view, reading me, reading my mood, knowing what I was at, and then turning the music down a hair. I cannot tell you how many chauffeurs I've ridden with that either A want to have a conversation even though I don't, and they feel like they have to, they're listening to whatever they want to listen to on the radio. I've literally been in a vehicle with someone else and a chauffeur having a conversation, and this guy has the balls to turn the radio up so he can hear the music and drown out me and the person in the back talking to the point where I was just like, You gotta be kidding me.
SPEAKER_03Listen, I mean, when we drove, we drove back in the day, we drove for some of the largest lawyers in Florida, and we used to carry their briefs, we used to carry the boxes, and we would say to the chauffeur, when they get in the car, do not say it a damn word. Okay, because they're gonna be on the phone. Don't listen to anything, don't comment on inflection. Make sure you understand something. We've signed a confidentiality agreement with this, so have you. And that's why this company uses us. And look, I mean, I can tell you many times where I was driving members of the Yankees team and the manager, and they were talking about trades behind me, right? Or you know, in New York, Wall Street guys talk about stock all the time. Oh, yeah. At the end of the day, we've lost the chauffeur etiquette as an industry. We blurred the lines, and the problem becomes if you finish what you just said, which is we're skewing towards ride share, what's the ultimate conclusion of that?
SPEAKER_02I would like to expand this even further because I think this applies just as much to shuttle, just as much to bus and motor coach. I will tell you right now, there are two bus experiences. Look, I like to rent cars, that's one of my things. I'm in this business because I love this business. I also love driving, so I end up riding these shuttles all the time over to the rental facility, and there's two that stand out amongst all of the rest of the time. One, the guy literally had a button-up shirt with a tie, and he had a nice kind of sweater over it. Sure. And he was listening, he had it very low, but he was listening to BBC News. This guy would have looked just as home driving me in Mercedes as he did driving this. And he was polite, he was nice, he was helpful. He liked what he was doing. He loved what he was doing. The other one, the guy looked like every other driver, but I can tell you right now, what made him special was he saw the service cues. I was in California, it was Ontario Mills Airport. My grandmother lives right at the foot of the mountain out there, so I always go see her first. So I went, was going to get the rental car, and he noticed that I was rolling my golf clubs behind me. So as I'm getting ready to get off, he says, Hey, give me one moment. It's a little bit of a step down to the curb. Let me help you out. Just wait two seconds. And he rolls out the ramp so that instead of having to pick the clubs up and fight them, I can literally walk and roll down and just again service cubes, literally, just a little thing, but it's all in the details.
SPEAKER_03And you had people that to me had the servants' heart, and let's not go down the road of everybody demanding a tip everywhere you go now. But if you have the servant's heart and 25% at that, right. If you have the servant's heart, okay, you're gonna do well. I worry that we are heading towards an intersection where the service delivery is going to be, as you said, so close to rideshare black level, rideshare SUV level, that when decision time comes up, and the first thing that goes when there's a bad economy is the higher level purse. That okay, the industry's gonna suffer. And I'm just gonna dispel a myth out there. The total available for market for airport service of just the top three percent travelers, the top three percent travelers of the top 50 airports in the United States is 20.2 billion dollars.
SPEAKER_02And that's billion with a B.
SPEAKER_03That is almost four times the size of the entire chauffeur, sedan, and SUV market, which is seven billion dollars in the United States. Don't get me started on global. The total available market for airport is quadruple what we're doing now in all of Sedan SUV. Don't tell me the top 3% is taking Uber or Uber Black, because they're not, but they will see no appreciable difference if we don't step up our game in technology and get back to true five-star white glove, white tablecloth to make some metaphors. 100%. And it can't just be, oh, well, listen, Ken, this is a network trip. You better really be on cue. Okay, because the networks do secret shopping, and the networks, I think, takes much more seriously. But at the end of the day, if you're blurring the line, oh, Ken, it's only Sedan and SUV, I'm really focusing on my minibuses and motor coaches. That's the entry level. The airport ride is the entry level to all of the other corporate services, groups and meetings, high-touch meetings, meetings and events. And at some point, if the disruptors try to enter the charter market or try to enter those other markets, we've lost that client group that sits in the back of the car. Those are our decision makers for the rest of corporate travel. So I think it's a big thing. I don't think I'm overestimating it. Maybe I'm just noticing it because this has been a massive summer of travel.
SPEAKER_02I think the big thing for me, and when I first used that slide I pulled up at the beginning, we were with my limo. And big shout out to Jay, big shout out to Mike. I've been out there twice already, right? They had me come out, they had me speak to their team, they keep everybody up to date, they keep everybody doing what they're supposed to be doing, and they get it. They understand it's they do get it. The first time I used that slide was when I was presenting for them, and I said, Hey, this is what you're up against, right? And the term for me that I use is, hey, dude, they're pre-pissed. You might have a customer that had a horrible experience on the plane, they got delayed, they got kicked back, they got whatever. By the time they get to you, they might be pre-pissed. They might be upset, they might be having a rough day. Your whole job is that you got to give them a service level to where they get out of the vehicle feeling better than when they got in. I don't care if it's a flight, I don't care if it's the bride and groom that it's delayed on their wedding. My hope was that as the year went on, we might start to see the overall tide turn in the industry. What I think we're seeing is I personally think we're getting to a point where it's getting worse. When I travel, I've had some dietary changes and I've had basically all my favorite things, you know, your gluten, your dairy, your cheese, all things we love have all been pulled out of my diet. So what I can eat when I travel is starting to get really narrow. And so I've got maybe four or five casual dining restaurants that are my go-to's if I know I'm gonna get something to eat, have it at the hotel, and work through the night. Even at that point, what I'm seeing is they're not even consistent in the food delivery, they're not even consistent in the food they're generating. And what we're seeing is overall, business consistency is going down, services going down, and I think most importantly, something is going to have to give. And I think unfortunately, what that means is you start now being in competition with people you never thought you were in competition in, like you said, because your customer can't tell the difference.
SPEAKER_03But I see an opportunity for those that get it. To me, you either get it or you don't, or you don't. And it's an opportunity for those to get it to rise above and to understand that five years down the road, this is what you're gonna have. You're gonna have autonomous vehicles, you're gonna have Uber level service, right? And then you're gonna have what I call the private transportation networks. All right. By the way, those who keep calling themselves limousine companies in five years from now, don't do that. It's private chauffeur services or private transportation. It will become something where the wealthiest zip codes, yeah, they will use Uber and the others around the 20 miles, 20 minutes, $35, whatever it is. But if you're smart, your private transportation services will be able to give a cut of service. So it will be like Federal Express efficiency with Risk Carlton level service. That's the opportunity. If we keep going the way we're going, we will be in oblivion and we will be in a price war. A price war with the TNC black level service. And I don't believe the top 3% of the people don't go to the cheapest hair salons, they belong to the best country clubs, they go to the best restaurants, they still drink the best wines, etc. They always will. In the history of man, there has always been a top level that demands more, but they also don't put up with subpar. I think there's a big opportunity for those that get it. You hit the nail out of the head with my limo. There's many others we deal with, both of us, that absolutely get it. The devil is in the detail. And that's what I hope happens. The rest of the industry realizes that that's what we need to not only thrive, but to grow market share. The rising tide lifts all boats. Otherwise, we're all gonna be working for TNC platforms down the road.
SPEAKER_02I think as we close this episode out, what I would say is my last piece, and I think this is where we leave it, is that you have to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and you have to figure out how to see your company, not how you see it, not how you think it is, through the eyes of it through the eyes of the customer. We say it all the time, and I'm gonna take this straight out of the packs training, and I'll leave us here. Get in the backseat. That is one of the biggest things that we tell chauffeurs time and time again. Doesn't matter what you do, get in the backseat. Because unless you see it through the passenger's eyes, you're never gonna know if it's ready for the passenger. You're never gonna be able to deliver the service till you see it through their eyes.
SPEAKER_03So I think as we close out this episode, the other thing I'll tell you is you, as the owner of the business, need to get as close to the front line as you possibly can and get feedback from your frontline people, make sure they're happy. Happy people deliver happy service. And the other thing is the owner of your company. I don't give a shit if you run the biggest network in the world. You are not too good to pick up the phone and say, My name is so-and-so, I'm the owner of such and such. I just wonder if you take 30 seconds. How did we do for you this month? I see that you traveled to Kansas City. Give me an idea, just recollection. Is there anything we can do better? Okay. I love surveys, but at some point, service is personal. And I think if you really, really want to improve your service as a small operator or large, you have to get close to your front line and you have to speak to your customer. And if you don't want to bother them on the phone, email them and say, Could I please set up a three-minute call with you? Ask the permission of the EA or talk to the EA and say, do me a favor. I just want to make sure everything is okay. Here are some things that I'd like to make sure that we're doing right and inspect what you expect. It's the reason why Chick-fil-A has delivered perfect, perfect consistency. It's the reason why Ritz Carlton does. If you travel and you see those companies that focus, you'll notice everything is the same wherever you go. And we need to get there as an industry.
SPEAKER_02So, look, we just answered the question we started with on how do you fix this, how do you solve it? And the answer is get in the back seat and see it through your pastor's eyes. And I think with that, I don't know there's anything left that we could provide a value on how to fix it other than to do that. So, with that in mind, get in the backseat, see it through the pastor's eyes, and we will see you guys on the next episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Looking forward to it. James, thanks for being here on a co-hosted episode. I've missed having you around.
SPEAKER_02Hey, it's my favorite part of the week is when you and I get to do this, buddy.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX Training and to contact James, go to PaxTraining.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the Ground Transportation Podcast.
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