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What does a window cleaner with half an hour’s training in market research and a managing director born in Wales but speaking with a Scottish accent have in common? The story starts with the results of an independent survey carried out by the British Marine Industries Federation, to review levels of customer care and service within the maritime industry - a survey that in fact revealed a blatant lack of customer care. Winston Phillips, Managing Director of Cosalt International Ltd was so appalled by these results that he decided to covertly conduct his own survey. Having perfected his Scottish brogue, Winston enlisted a ‘willing’ window cleaner - and with a simple script and a short rehearsal, they made a series of telephone sales enquiries to various Cosalt Branch Offices. Their results only confirmed how bad things were ‘at home’, and in many cases worse than their competitors. An opportunity was quickly realised - if Cosalt could offer a customer buying experience that was better than the competition - then they could become the supplier of choice and secure a better future for the business. So, they embarked on an initiative that would totally review everything that they did - everything that did not add any value for the customer would be removed if possible.
The Cosalt International Business
Cosalt International Ltd (CIL) is a leading supplier of safety equipment and protective clothing used at sea and on-shore. Headquartered in Grimsby (UK) with branch offices strategically placed to service the ports of the British Isles - CIL is a diversified business with many thousands of SKUs, sourced from around the world. Products include rope, wire rigging, nets, chandlery, ships stores, lifting equipment and testing services.The CIL market is very price competitive and a quotation is usually required before an order is placed. With a database of over 12 thousand customers, some buying perhaps only a few meters of rope to those re-equipping a vessel for a voyage, the service they receive is paramount to customer retention and business growth. Business Challenges
The surveys revealed that Cosalt’s interface with their customers and prospects was really bad. Customers would be left waiting on the telephone - promises often broken and basic information such as names and addresses not recorded. Customer care and value lay at the heart of the Cosalt initiative, so they embarked on a programme of customer care surveys, using professionals this time! Customer concerns were acted upon and appropriate changes made to processes and procedures. Although the systems being used were still a mixture of computer and manual, CIL firmly believed that it was important to get their records and processes right, before any attempt was made to introduce new IT systems. And staff response to customer requests was really more to do with culture and behaviour - so training and coaching featured highly in the change programme. The results were quite dramatic, and after 18 months Cosalt had moved from a position where they were near the bottom of the league table when compared with their competitors, to a position at the top! With good customer records and a culture of dealing with commercial issues as promised - in a timely and professional manner - the scene was set for embracing new technology. Business Solution
Cosalt now understood the type of application they were looking for. A packaged solution to hold their customer data, sales enquiries, convert enquiries to quotations and orders - with links into inventory, forecasting and finance. A system that could be made to operate the way they wanted to work, at a pace dictated by the customer and without the need for modifications. A system that would support process change and measure performance - IFS Applications was the chosen solution and IFS the implementation vendor. Business processes were modelled in the application using the in-built modelling tool, and key performance indicators (KPI) reviewed and agreed. The data used for assessing performance was a combination of that generated as part of the day-to-day operations, and soft issues like staff morale and skills and training needs. The results presented visually on a dashboard, accessed via a web portal. Winston explained: “we have put a considerable amount of effort into ensuring that our business processes and our KPI measurements reflect a trend that continually tries to eliminate any activity that does not add to the total customer buying experience - in line, of course, with our strategy.”
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