Late one night, a desperate customer
called Field Packaging Group LLC to
request an order. Most of the company’s 70 employees had long since gone
home, but Marty Field, Field Packaging’s
president and managing partner, was still
there and was more than willing to get his
hands dirty to fill the customer’s request.
“I knew how to drive a forklift,” Field says.
“We had to find the product that was in the
warehouse. I dug it out and put it on the dock.
It was ready for the customer to come
and pick it up that night.”
Such dedicated service to his more
than 300 customers has propelled
the corrugated box manufacturer to
2006 revenue of $25 million.
Smart Business spoke with Field
about how to always say “yes” to your
customers while never overpromising.
Q: How do you provide superior customer service?
You get business for a number of reasons. If you’re not competitive, you’re
not going to get the business. If your
quality is not acceptable or superior,
then you’re not going to retain the
business. So that leaves service.
Our mantra is that our service to
our customers must be superior to
our competition. We must have an
atmosphere where customers do
not hesitate to approach us to ask
for the unusual or the unreasonable. We must say ‘yes.’
So how do we do that? By having
excess capacity. We have excess
capacity because we have invested in new
and better equipment that operates well. We
invest in upgrading and updating and a lot of
maintenance in our equipment so that it performs well, and we’ve invested in an efficiency bonus program so that by being
more efficient, we have excess capacity.
If you have excess capacity, then you
have flexibility. Use that flexibility to be
able to always say ‘yes.’
Q: How do you always say ‘yes’ to your
customers without overpromising?
Always do what you say you’re going to
do. You must perform according to the way
you promise.
If something happens, and you’re not
able to perform, then you must communicate with the customer before the missed
delivery date.
You must call them and say, ‘We have a
problem here, and we promised to deliver
tomorrow. Can we have an extra day?’
If the answer is yes, the customer is satisfied. We have not overpromised because
we have communicated with them and
have not disappointed.
Have production meetings every morning
where the plant communicates with the
sales [staff], and the sales [staff] thereby
communicates with the customer. If you
don’t open up the lines of communication
within the company and from inside the
company to your customer base, then
you’re going to overpromise.
In addition, there are always quality problems from time to time. Nobody does
everything perfect. Overpromising is when
you promise to have perfect quality and
you don’t. If you have a situation where
you have a quality problem, it’s the ability
to react very, very quickly and either
replace the product or correct the problem so that the customer doesn’t experience
any internal problems as a result of something you’ve done.
Q: How do you hold employees accountable to your standards?
We pay a bonus based on our efficiencies.
When we started the program, we didn’t
even know what our efficiencies were. We
had to buy a new computer system and
create standards based on what the same
piece of equipment in our plant will do
in any other plant across the country.
We put up chalkboards on every
machine in the plant, and every day, we
update the efficiencies for each piece
of equipment and for the plant as a
whole.
At the beginning of the month, we discuss the results of the previous month
with everybody. If we have some quality incident, we talk about the specific
quality incident.
When I say we hold people accountable, they’re holding themselves as
accountable as we are because they get
compensated for what they do. They
also know what each crew is doing
because it’s all there in public.
Q: What mistakes do CEOs make in running their businesses?
They lose track of what’s required in
the marketplace. In order to run a business, you need to know what the
requirement du jour is — what customers need.
For some customers, price is not an
issue as long as you do superior service.
Other customers, if your price is not
extremely competitive, they’re not going
to talk to you any further.
It’s the ability of being able to understand
what motivates people, both from a sales
standpoint and from an employee relations
standpoint, and filling their needs.
Unless you get out there and you deal
with the people, you’ll never know that.
Spend time in the plant talking with people. Do a lot of entertaining so that you
get to know customers better.
HOW TO REACH: Field Packaging Group LLC, (708) 594-5260
or www.fieldpackaginggroup.com