GroundLink Is a Market Reactive Company

Founded in 2004 by Alex Machinsky, GroundLink is a global provider of transportation services. It operates in 172 countries, where it has revolutionized the taxi, limo, and airport shuttle car service market by using software to aggregate, manage, and provide availability to a network of 45,000 suppliers. It's an incredible accomplishment to be serving 5,000 airports through exclusive partnerships with companies like JetBlue, Royal Caribbean, and Amadeus.

GroundLink's obsession with customer care produced growth rates of 50 percent, year after year. The company was so hot, in fact, that it raised $20 million to expand and keep up with its almost $30 million in revenue.

Then, in 2008, the recession knocked corporate travel to its knees, causing GroundLink to immediately see a 25 percent decrease in revenue, a virtual free fall. Okay, this is a test: What do you do if you're GroundLink?

Whatever you came up with as a solution, I'd bet you didn't guess, “Take inspiration from the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man.”

Yet the GroundLink solution was to always say, “Yes!”

After exhaustive brainstorming by the management team, everyone agreed that saying yes was radical, but certainly not passive. The Yes Campaign, simply stated, was: “We will say yes to anything the customer asks for.” If the customer wanted a discount, GroundLink's sales reps said yes. If the customer wanted an upgrade, they said yes. If the customer wanted something special (no matter how bizarre), they said yes.

Furthermore, GroundLink didn't wait for the customer to ask. The folks at GroundLink started posing questions like “What can we do that would be special for you?” “How can we improve your trip?” The customer response was almost immediate. Within 60 days, the company had gone from a 50 percent decrease in revenue to a 25 percent increase in revenue.

Now that the recession is in the recovery phase, GroundLink doesn't have to offer the deep discounts of 2008, but the company learned which kinds of over-the-top services created loyalty in bad times and good.