Raising the bar on customer service

Tracy Garrod, who leads a customer services team of five at Made For Trade, explains why quality service is an important part of the company ethos.

The combination of the best products, at the best prices, backed up with the best service were the building blocks to MFT’s success when it was incorporated in 1979, and they still form the company’s mission statement 42 years later.

We have all been in a position where we have received poor service, and it’s not uncommon in the glass and glazing industry. There is nothing more frustrating than being on site and finding a problem only to be fobbed off by the supplier over some trivial item that prevents the job getting done.

While it will be impossible to eliminate site issues completely, especially when we are reliant on courier companies to deliver our items, a 100% customer satisfaction is our target. And it is our ability to deal with issues when they arise that makes us stand out from the crowd.

The key ingredients to this are people, training and communication.

I have a broad background of senior customer service experience from consumer facing companies including Orange, EE and RED driving school. This type of experience is key to providing an award-winning customer service level MFT hopes to achieve in 2021 and beyond.

It is paramount for me to understand the customer journey from beginning to end. It costs nothing to give good service, and it is important to understand that customer service does not start within the customer service team – it starts as soon as someone picks up the phone.

It excites me to look at ways to improve, from our customer interactions and the potential information you can get from listening to people, and really getting to know this great industry.

Product training is another key area in being able to provide top quality service, and MFT operates regular training sessions where the customer service team gain experience of manufacturing and installation of MFT products, so you can almost guarantee the person on the end of the phone knows what you’re talking about, and on the occasion they don’t there are four other team members there to step in and help out.

Communication is another area where MFT offers a little bit more. This starts out during the quotation process, continues through the order confirmation and delivery confirmation processes up to the point the goods arrive at your site. After that any further communication is passed to the dedicated aftersales team. Every enquiry that comes through is immediately issued with a case number that is passed on to the customer so enquiries can be tracked properly.

Most issues are cleared off the system and cases closed with a positive resolution the same day. However, on the occasion that your issue is a complex one a team member will gather details from you about the problem and enter them onto the system where they can be fully assessed by a member of the QC team.

The last part of the puzzle is the follow up. The customer service data that gets gathered on a weekly basis gets fed straight back into the QC and production teams ensuring that MFT’s continuous improvement targets are achieved.