Q. How do you remain honest with customers about what you can and can’t provide?
I try to be as upfront as I can and tell them, ‘These are the issues. Here’s what I’m trying to deal with; this is what I can do. What does that do to you?’ In some cases, we may have to work overtime, or we may have to bring in some people on the weekend or do something really costly to meet their needs, and I have to understand, OK, is it really necessary to do that or not?
We try to work through whatever the issue is. That goes back to the partnership thing. If you develop the relationship enough that they view you as a partner, then they’re more apt to say, ‘OK here’s my real problem; this is the issue.’ Tell me what the issue is and we’ll do what we can to deal with it.
Q. How do you monitor customer satisfaction?
That’s a difficult one to do. To me, I make sure that I’m visiting or communicating with the top-level people of the other company. That’s more of the discussion I have with the other presidents: How are we doing from their perspective?
I do it more on a one-on-one. I have a few number of customers so I can do that.
A lot of times I am very specific about what the issue was, and have we solved that to your satisfaction, did we change whatever to make the issue improve.
Q. Do you have any final advice on maintaining customer satisfaction?
To me one of the things is hire good people and trust them that they’ll make good decisions. I’m a smart enough guy to know that I have to have people making decisions every day to run this business successfully. I try to instill that into our people and it goes to customer service.
If my inside sales guy senses that we’ve got a customer that has a problem, he’s going to go out to the production guys and he’s going to try to get them to change. In most cases, they work those things out without me ever getting involved. And I don’t need to get involved if I have good people.
I’ve always said there’s nine ways to skin a cat, well I say that because I tell my people, ‘This is the goal, this is what we’re trying to accomplish here, and you guys are the best at doing that.’ I try to empower those people to make decisions. You do that by trusting them.
The other thing is you have to have an environment where they feel safe enough to do that. If everybody is trying to [cover themselves] all the time, that’s a waste. I discourage that when someone is trying to cover their hind end because a mistake was made or a decision went bad, because I know the worst decision is no decision. Make the decision, and if it’s wrong we’ll fix it. I don’t cut somebody’s head off because they made a bad decision.
Over time people become comfortable at making decisions, which allows you then to react to the short lead times and the customers’ needs because they can make those decisions that need to happen very quickly, and they don’t have to wait for the boss’s boss to get involved, they can do it. That’s how we can respond to our customers quickly.
How to reach: Global Body & Equipment Co., (330) 264-6640 or www.cncmetalproducts.com
