'Loyalty is when you've thought about leaving, but choose to stay'

Born in Hong Kong, educated in Canada (where he majored in Robotics) and the US (where he obtained a master’s degree in Business Administration), posted the world over from Bahrain to Bangkok and married to a Filipina from Cebu, Paul Loo knows how world travelers and jetsetters are wired. And having lived among people of different races, color and creed, he also has more than a basic idea of what makes them loyal — whether to a spouse or to an airline.

Paul Loo is currently the general manager of Cathay Pacific Loyalty Programmes (CPLP), a subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, which manages The Marco Polo Club and Asia Miles — the airline’s 3.45 million-strong member base. Paul was in Manila recently for the launching of the Cathay Pacific-American Express credit card. I asked him during the launching to define loyalty and he smiled, “Loyalty is not because you stay but because you’ve thought about leaving and you choose to stay.”

In other words, one is loyal when, put to the test of whether one should stay or go, one chooses to stay, “even if he or she can go.”

Loo, who also manages the airline’s loyalty marketing strategy and Customer Relations team, uses this personal definition even at work. “True loyalty, you have to work on it all the time. Passengers will stay with you not just because of what you offer but because of the kind of service you provide but also whether you can create an emotional attachment with them. With all this, you can really get loyalty.”

Asked to elaborate on “emotional attachment,” Loo, 40, simply says, “Some members of our Marco Polo Club have been with us even before I was born.” One becomes a member of Marco Polo after one has accumulated a certain number of flight miles.

Loo also likes to look at criticism from a passenger as a sign of the emotional attachment the airline has with that passenger. “If you just look from the outside and you wonder why they complain it will be so hard for you to understand. But if you know them well, you realize they complain because they are emotionally attached to Cathay and they care. They share, they want us to be successful. That’s what I call emotional loyalty.”

Another reason Loo seems tailor-fit to court loyalty is his experience, as a Cathay management trainee, with the airline’s lost and found section at the old terminal in Hong Kong.

It was not a job to be envied, because, “every customer I saw came to me because of trouble!”

Passengers with lost or missing luggage are not the most sweet-tempered of God’s creatures, and they usually vent their ire on the person behind the counter.

Loo thus learned his “doctorate” in Patience 2.0 at Lost and Found.

 “It would be magic to perform if you can turn the trouble into a good impression. First, by delivering the missing bag. Or if you can’t recover that immediately, helping the passenger to feel at ease, helping him resolve the problem at hand and making sure the bag will be delivered once it is found. That will impress him.”

Of course it helped Loo that the airline has a batting recovery average of 97 percent. “Everything we promise, we deliver but there comes a time when you can’t perform — failure always happens in one way or another. Human error, systems error, so to be better than the average, you do more than just delivering the basics. When things fail, you must be good in service recovery. When people have an issue, they want to complain, they want to talk, so the last thing you want to do with them is to argue. You first listen to them, understand the issues, showing you’re sincere to help and do your best in helping them resolve the problem. Speed is very important because people would be pleased when they see that their complaints are getting a response.”

Of course, the opportunity to earn someone’s loyalty doesn’t only come in times of trouble. It comes, too, when he’s having a good time. “We have in our program 20 airline partners and if you order our airline tickets you can redeem more than 600 different items. Anything from simple things like an NBA basketball — one of the most important, most popular redemption items we get in the Philippines. We’re now going to have a signed jersey from Kobe Bryant and Lebron James. I’m sure they will be popular here. You can also use your mouse to redeem free hotel accommodation, wine and dine, cosmetics, electronics, iPod, iPhone, things you can think about, we got it.”

What’s the most popular item redeemed?

“Definitely air tickets and access to the airport lounge. The iPod is also very popular,” Loo, a father of two, says. Aside from designer bags for jetsetting kids, the loyalty program even offers redeemable items for pets — like dog and cat food!

Loo thinks that what also makes him effective not just as a loyalty manager but also as a person are the typical Filipino traits he learned from his wife. They met when he was posted in Cebu to launch the first of the airline’s direct flights to and from the city.

“I think we extremely complement each other because for me being born in Hong Kong, I’m into efficiency, effectiveness, I’m very impatient, I want to get everything done right away, I could be extremely task-oriented. She’s a good balance of me, reminding me of the human side and to be positive about life and to have a good balance between work and life.”

Even after the Loos moved from Cebu to Hong Kong, the Philippines is constantly in Paul Loo’s radar.

“From the loyalty club point of view, the Philippines is among our top five markets (the first four are Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US and Canada). We have 170,000 members in the Philippines alone. Worldwide we have 3.45 million. I think it’s a combination of how strong the Cathay brand has been in the Philippines and how the Philippine society has been very supportive of us,” Loo points out proudly.

It’s Loo’s job now to keep the valued Philippine market loyal, and with pointers from the wife and his own hard-to-match experience, the market will be LOO-yal as well.

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