The 'Front Line'
Customer Service

'Customer care is more than just delivering the goods - it's about going out of your way to ensure that your operation consistently exceeds your customer's expectations'.

The service customers receive first hand from suppliers can literally make or break that company, particularly for those operating in a declining industry where price is no longer enough to set them apart from the competition. This is the challenge that Tradeteam faces every day.

Tradeteam operates in a declining market. That said, the company has not only retained its customers, negotiating the extension of contracts where this suited the 'new' business profile, but has consistently won new business and increased its market share year on year.

Long term, the only way for Tradeteam to succeed in this challenging market is to offer sustainable, quantifiable value to its customers by regularly assessing their requirements and by taking a proactive stance to developing new and innovative services. Never before has near-to-perfect frontline customer service been so critical.

Every one of Tradeteam's 30,000 weekly deliveries matter and every single one is an opportunity to capture valuable customer feedback. Excellent Customer Service was always a given but now Tradeteam continually backs this up with management reports, performance monitoring, end user surveys and customer feedback. This valuable information can provide customers themselves with a leading edge in the drinks retail marketplace.

The Centre deals with order capture, direct call logging, complaints analysis and pro-active customer surveys. Already, feedback for this service has been very positive and Tradeteam plan to use its capabilities not only to improve service levels to all of its customers but also to introduce market focussed initiatives into the business. In the past 12 months, Tradeteam has surveyed more than 4,000 customers asking them about the service they receive from the company. These 360° surveys generate results that can be used strategically throughout the entire business and also locally at individual customer level.