Always wanted to know how other dealers fit Thermo King equipment? Keen to understand how long it takes them, and the ‘best practice’ procedures they follow?
The new section on the Dealer of the Future website will answer all your questions. It’s called Service Excellence, and clicking on it takes you to a range of ‘how to’ videos that provide step-by-step instructions for fitting units (single- temperature and multi- temperature) to both trucks and trailers.
But before you take a look, let’s provide a little bit of background into the ‘bigger picture’.
What is service excellence?
Put simply it’s a way to maintain our position as the best on the market. That’s why it forms the basis of an important new initiative being prioritized by the Thermo King leadership team – with the aim of enhancing customer service levels across the EMEA region.
Service excellence also brings with it three core ‘pillars’:
- Dealer network excellence
- Operational excellence
- Repair excellence
As for what this means for customers, the overriding message is centered on maximizing uptime. We all know how important this is for transport companies, as well as the costs associated with having a vehicle off the road (which we’ve calculated at €1000 per day). Addressing this issue directly is therefore the simplest expression of the value we deliver, and the commitment we offer customers across each and every touchpoint.
Dealer network excellence
This is an area focused on the coverage and workshop experience available to customers. It’s about ensuring they can interact with any dealer and receive a similarly high standard of capability and breadth of service offering. That means continuing to invest in training courses, certification, and support for your technicians – areas where we’re already making great progress.
Operational excellence
Where the emphasis is placed on the standard procedures, work, and installation practices that shape a customer’s overall service experience. It’s here that Thermo King is looking to:
- Help define and benchmark installation best practices to establish a ‘baseline’ for quality across the dealer network
- Share the outputs to help inspire greater consistency in service delivery
- Protect dealer profitability by providing more detailed guidance on the procedures and time expectations associated with specific tasks
Repair excellence
This final pillar relates to the drive for excellence in the way Thermo King units are serviced and repaired. Again, the key here is consistency and investing in new capabilities to boost our collective diagnostic and response capabilities. This is the world of Connected Solutions, Service Tap, and predictive maintenance. Where the outputs have a direct impact on vehicle uptime, and the delivery of cost effective ‘fixes’ for every single customer.
Building together
Importantly, Thermo King has gone to great lengths to include dealers in developing the service excellence initiative. This was certainly the case when it came to defining installation best practice.
According to Francesco Petrozziello, Service Operational Excellence Manager, “any effort aimed at enhancing a dealer’s workshop efficiency requires we first benchmark what good looks like. That’s why we spent more than twelve months with dealers defining standards and cataloguing their actions”.
“Not that we stopped there”, agreed Pawel Kondol, Senior Operational Excellence Change Agent. “We’ve taken more than two years to develop the concept, to prepare and validate service standards, and to run workshops with large groups of dealers.”
