Quality Service Drives Sales
A strong service department is the key to customer retention. While a good sales team will sell the first widget, repeat sales are almost always a result of the level of service provided by an organization. At Messer Cutting System, this is not only the opinion, but a core value driven home to each employee.
Customer expectations are continuously growing as the world has become accustomed to instant gratifications and Messer Cutting Systems is extending different paths to excel in each of these opportunities. The 2023-2024 goals are all focused on the customer experience, and the service department is the first point of progress.
To stay competitive in the market, Messer Cutting Systems is investing in CRM programs and service management solutions to provide an improved customer experience. These programs will allow for a more automated process in many areas of the department to include further transparency and enhanced communication with the customers. To complement this addition, Messer Cutting Systems has also hired extra staff and created additional positions such as a process improvement manager, a field service supervisor, a phone support supervisor, a human resource manager, and a new service manager. With the additional roles, Messer Cutting Systems appointed a leadership development consultant group to ensure the success of new and forming leaders to include existing leadership. The service manager, alongside the process improvement manager, has been tasked with taking a bird’s eye view of the organization to streamline many of the different divisions with the use of Six Sigma methodology. CEO Scott Kessler believes that poor processes cannot be fixed by new software, and strong processes are necessary for success.
Staffing shortages have plagued all businesses over the last few years. Combating this issue caused a revamp of the companies’ offerings and packages that would be necessary to reel in talent. The success of this change was quickly noticed as the field service team doubled in size within six months.
Although this is far from the overall goal, it has a significant impact driving the changes of our field team to a more regionalized approach. With a regional team, the expected results are to build relationships through repetitive interactions, vast knowledge growth of specific machines, and unique customer expectations, as well as shape accountability.
Employee training is another strong focus of the customer experience project. Sometimes it can seem counterintuitive to remove customer-facing staff to provide training. This is especially true when shortages of staff combined with increased levels of customer requests place the response time in an unfavorable manner. Taking this step backward allows the development that will leap the service team forward in the future.
The challenges before us will not be fixed overnight.
Understanding the impact these situations have on our customers has elevated this project to the top of the list. Only by taking a perspective of long-term solutions will provide the desired outcome for Messer and its customers.
Article: Metal Center News, The Cutting Edge Fall 2023, November.
By: Travis Pfile, Service Manager Americas