Performance NOW - Food and Beverage
Customer Connection
Often overlooked and somewhat misunderstood is the relationship between the production facility and the customer. While the sales or business development functions have the direct and contractual relationship with the customer the day-to-day operations are maintained by facility personnel. Facility personnel most likely interact with your customer’s buyers, logisticians, quality control team members, and packaging personnel on a frequent basis. The trust that a customer has in your company is frequently strengthened (or not) by the day-to-day responsiveness of the production facility’s personnel. Responsive organizations can build on the daily contact to create expanded business including new product opportunities.
MainStream’s Performance NOW will help you improve your production facility’s relationship with your company’s customers. Critical areas in managing the relationship between a production facility and the customer include customer confidence, quality, technical support, customer service, and an effective facility visit program.
It is important for customers to have confidence in the product you supply to them. Customer confidence is achieved through consistency in quality, delivery performance, price, and communication. The working relationship between your sales representative and the customer is critical. However, it is just as critical for your customer to have confidence in the production facility and the support groups such as logistics, quality, finance, and customer service. If confidence in the production facility is lacking, your customer may disassociate the sales person from the production facility with the belief that while the sales person does a great job, the company cannot deliver. Customers that feel this way will not provide the organization with a steady stream of orders and are at risk of moving their business to another supplier.
MainStream’s Performance NOW will help strengthen existing customer relations and build strong new customer relations by assisting in creating effective internal communications links, focused customer contact and response programs, and customer feedback protocols. Important to this process is getting the technical and customer service team, including the QA manager, R&D director, production managers, logistics staff, and engineer manager, to see themselves as an integral part of the relationship between your customer and the production facility. These team members should initiate and develop ideas and projects that provide a benefit for your customer. Examples include a new pallet lay out that would reduce freight costs, a box design change, or changes to a product’s bill of materials (BOM).
It can be highly beneficial for customers to visit your facility to see their product being produced. This is a critical point for the facility and everyone should be aware of scheduled visits. Customer visitrequire a substantial amount or prior preparation and planning and are a superb opportunity for your customer to get comfortable with your operation and to feel like a valuable member of the team. During customer visits it is important for management to be readily available and to provide any critical data requested by the customer. MainStream’s Performance NOW will help your company improve your exiting customer visit program or establish an effective customer visit program if such a program is currently not in place.
To learn more about MainStream’s Performance NOW contact us today at: