Wedge - Excellence in Galvanizing
The Customer Comes First
The programme was introduced not simply to improve the service from Wedge, but
to make the customer ¨the driving force in everything we do.
By making the customers needs the no. 1 priority for every employee, the Wedge
Group is already achieving significantly higher standards for production and service
throughout its galvanizing operations. It is also continuously measuring and monitoring
its performance to make continuous improvement a way of life.
Andrew Haworth, the Groups Northern Region Director, who together with Eastern
Regional
Director Steve Milnes has supervised the implementation of the CFI, explained
that a strategic review of the business was first carried out.
The review identified various key business objectives, such as maintaining the
Groups position as the UKs largest independent galvanizing group and meeting the
customers needs by delivering quality products and services.
¨During the course of that review, one of the main things that we found we needed
to do was focus more on our customers needs. This was shown to be the single most
important thing and it led directly to the Customer Focus Initiative.
¨The initiative is designed to deliver the fundamentals of good customer service
and bring real, practical benefits to meet our customer’s needs. It addresses
a wide range of business areas, including new practices, said Andrew.
Nicky Holmes, MD of Zebra Square, told Wedge World: ¨We found that customers
in the galvanizing sector did not usually get asked for their feedback in this
way, so it helped Wedge to stand out and we received a very high return rate.
There was also a higher than usual ´confidence level in the feedback from customers,
and they were very frank with their opinions.
¨The research demonstrated clearly that what Wedge customers require is a high quality service, fast turnaround times and work being completed on time. There were some regional variations and slight differences from plant to plant. Since carrying out the research we have made presentations to the Wedge Group about the results and thee have been built into training sessions for Wedge staff.
From the customer feedback, measures were introduced to improve aspects of administration/record-keeping, completion of on-time deliveries, responses to customer enquiries, quality of work carried out for customers and other internal processes. Ongoing monthly customer satisfaction surveys, to continuously monitor the companies improvement in service, were just one of the practical measures to be introduced.
He said all the sites were audited after the first six months of the CFI programme and the most recent drive has been to introduce continuous improvement tools and techniques at the Wedge sites around the UK.
The most important innovation has been to set up employee teams at each site ± usually around six people drawn from all levels of the company which are responsible for monitoring customer service and look at key customer focus issues.