SUNDAY TIMES 100

How do you fix customer service? One woman has the answer

Ethos Farm provides airports with expertise, training and staff to help make flying a better experience for everyone

After working with Ethos Farm, LaGuardia won the best new terminal award from leading airport rating company Skytrax
After working with Ethos Farm, LaGuardia won the best new terminal award from leading airport rating company Skytrax
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
The Sunday Times

The experience of travelling through LaGuardia airport in New York was notorious — so bad that the American sketch show Saturday Night Live wrote a song about it, and when Joe Biden was vice-president, he likened it to being in a “third-world country”. So when a new terminal opened at the airport last year the owners were determined that it wouldn’t be only the building that changed.

They hired the London-based Ethos Farm, set up in 2016 by Sally Alington along with co-founders Mathew Garner, Josie Barton and Lauren Walsh, to write a strategy for better customer service, create a training plan for everyone working at the airport, and hire customer service staff to work alongside airport employees to ensure the changes happened.

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