Our Customer Focus Strategy

Our Customer Focus Strategy

Recently, our management team worked together with a strategy consulting company called Peer Place to clearly define the key elements of our Customer Strategy. Peer Place called these elements our Objective Distinctions.

Based on the work we did with PeerPlace, we identified the following six Objective Distinctions:
• Pricing
• Zero Defects
• On-Time Delivery
• Knowledgeable Employees
• Product Variety
• Cost Management

Our management team believes that each of the above elements is critical to our long-term customer strategy. In an effort to find out how well we are currently performing on each of these Objective Distinctions, we utilized a customer and employee comment site to gather feedback. Here's a summary of what you and our customers told us.

Pricing
R.E. Powell and General Transport have done an excellent job of securing multiple suppliers and supply points. In addition, the company has built a strong distribution network. These capabilities have given R.E. Powell the ability to be very competitive with its prices. With this said, many of you feel that our prices are not always in line with our competitors. Sometimes we charge too much or too little when compared to the competition's pricing.

Zero Defects
According to many of our employees and customers, we make our fair share of mistakes. Many of you feel that we are doing about as good a job as most of our competitors, but you are not satisfied with being average. You want to be the best, so we definitely have room for improvement.

On-Time Delivery
Many of our employees were very passionate about this objective distinction. Over the past few years our team has put a lot of effort into making sure that we get the product to the customer on-time. I just looked at our On-Time % Charts for 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2008, our company's on-time % was below 90%. During the first half of 2010 we averaged above 97%. This is fantastic. This is a tribute to our wonderful team of drivers, dispatchers, plant managers, and front office personnel. Great Job Team!

Knowledgeable Employees
Many of you feel that we have very knowledgeable employees. What a surprise? I have to agree with you all, we do have a good, strong base of intelligent, knowledgeable employees. Some of you mentioned that you would like management to be proactive in providing you with additional training and resources that will enable you to better serve our customers. Management appreciates your desires to increase your level of customer service.

Product Variety
We carry a lot of products, but many of our customers and employees did not really know how large of a product variety we currently carry. Some of you think we carry more products then we should. Based on your feedback, we don't need to distribute more products, but focus on being better at distributing the products we are already offer. We also need to do a better job of training all our employees on the products we currently carry.

Cost Management
When we speak of Cost Management we mean the ability to consistently provide our customers with innovative, industry leading costs saving solutions. This is a newer concept for us, but based on the feedback we gathered, the marketplace is hungry for someone to provide these solutions. The feedback we gathered told us that many of our employees and customers see this as an area that we can truly differentiate ourselves from the competition.

So, what do you think? Do these six Objective Distinctions adequately describe the key elements of our customer strategy?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Tony@repowell.net

Tony Christensen

www.repowell.net