Delivering outstanding customer service made easy.....

In today’s tough business environment, if you are going to out-perform the competition then delivering outstanding customer service is a must.

Mulling over this point whilst stuck in traffic heading north from London on a Friday afternoon, I was interrupted by a phone call instigated by our out-of-hours emergency service. How soon could we deliver a product into the depths of the South West as their current supplier had let them down and missed a deadline for delivery? A couple of phone calls later I could relax, knowing the South West team would respond and sort it out.

The next day (Saturday), I received a call at lunchtime from our products business manager who deems it normal to expect calls from his customers whenever needed. This time it was from one of the leading tower crane operators in the UK. A crane rope had been damaged on a construction site in the middle of London. The plea was – ‘we need a rope for tomorrow but ideally today!’

Again a quick phone call was made to the on-call shift manager – who was actually just about to go on holiday. He was able to mobilise one of his team and together they opened up our Harworth production facility and the rope was duly manufactured.

We were just waiting for the courier when another message came through – ‘We need an urgent job doing on site at the inner harbour in Great Yarmouth.’ A quick call was made to the local manager (who is used to receiving requests any time of the day or night including Christmas)and another crisis was averted.

Meanwhile back to the crane rope. The special courier picked the rope up and a little over five hours after the initial call, the rope was delivered to the London construction site at 5:45pm on a Saturday afternoon.

So, how difficult is it to do this? Well if you are lucky enough to have committed employees with a ‘can-do’ attitude working for you, as CERTEX undoubtedly has, then the answer is quite simply – ‘it’s not difficult at all!!!’

One very large test bench

There are many advantages of being part of the huge organisation that is Axel Johnson – one of Europe’s leading suppliers of lifting and lashing equipment – but a particular bonus is the ability to access the facilities of other members of the group.

It was therefore with great excitement that we learnt about a new test bench that has been installed in the Port of Esbjerg by our Danish counterpart Peter Harbo A/S. With the capacity to test lifting equipment of up to 1200 tonnes (pulling force) and dimensions up to 15 metres, it is easily one of the largest facilities of its kind in Northern Europe.

This is particularly good news for us because there is currently an increasing demand for heavier and bigger constructions, which in turn require correspondingly larger lifting devices – all needing accurate testing. Previously, larger pieces of equipment had to be out-sourced for testing so being able to carry out this process ‘in-house’ will ultimately be more cost-effective and time-saving for our customers.

The new facility should have widespread applications in the offshore, wind power, shipping, marine and construction industries and will be able to test all sorts of equipment including: steel wire rope; chain; chain accessories; hooks and rings; crane hooks and blocks; fibre ropes; mooring lines; hawsers; single bouy moorings; as well as lifting beams, brackets and triangles.

As is to be expected, equipment of this size does not come cheap and this facility has cost around 5million DKK. That this sort of investment has been possible at a time when companies in general are holding back on expenditure is undoubtedly down to the size and influence of our parent company.

Having access to shared equipment and facilities like this should hopefully enable us to provide better services for our existing customers as well as reach out to new ones.