Service Seaborne style
Marcy Heistand puts hands and heart into her job
Maura Curley
Crucian native Marcy Heistand celebrated her six anniversary at Seaborne Airlines in June 2009. During her time with the company, Seaborne has grown from a small seaplane based operation servicing St. Croix and St. Thomas to a very busy regional airlines with seaplane and wheeled service between the Virgin Islands and to San Juan Puerto Rico.
During this growth, Heistand has helped establish a level of service for passengers that well exceeds what consumers have grown to expect from an airline.
Heistand, who went to college in the states, began her Seaborne career in training and customer service. Currently she is director of sales and service and a member of Seaborne’s executive echelon - the top tier among Seaborne’s 120 employees.
But don’t expect to find Heistand lying back behind a big desk.
Heistand puts both hands and heart into her daily responsibilities, which include supervision of 12 reservationists and troubleshooting some of the 4,000 calls, which come in on the reservation lines each week. She’s also the point person for training personnel about new fares, and working with stations managers in St. Croix, St. Thomas, San Juan and Virgin Gorda regarding scheduling changes.
Heistand interfaces with every Seaborne staffer, from the CEO to the ramp personnel who load baggage on to the planes. Heistand observes that” Seaborne is its people.”
She asserts that each person is crucial to operations, adding, “ We can’t make it all happen without each other.”
Heistand says Seaborne is like a family, and she’s enjoyed training the next generation of Seabornites, developing entry level personnel and watching them grow to managerial positions.
And she always has the Seaborne consumer on her mind.
“ We want to provide the absolute best service we can.” she emphasizes. Sometimes weather related delays makes that challenging, when passengers, are anxious, and calls flood into the airlines from frequent flyers, their families and friends for updates.
“ We work hard to get the flights out,” she says.. “But passenger safety is always our priority… We want to run the most successful airline in the Caribbean. To do that we must be the safest airline.”
Heistand acknowledges that her days are sometimes filled with challenges, but when she finds a solution the satisfaction outweighs the stress.
One such incident shines in he mind.
During a time when high wind and rough water grounded planes, one passenger, a kidney transplant patient, needed to get from St. Croix back to St. Thomas to take his medication.
Nobody else was flying, and he didn’t know what to do.
As the good gods would have it, Heistand’s husband is also a kidney transplant patient. Heistand called her husband’s doctor, who called in a prescription to a St. Croix pharmacy. Seaborne picked up the prescription for the passenger, paid for his dinner and drove him back to his hotel.
“That’s a normal day on the seaplane,” Heistand observes, with a chuckle.
When it was pointed out that airlines tell passengers they have no responsibility for weather related delays, Heistand says ” We weren’t’ obligated to do anything. But we just really care about our customers.”
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