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Investing in Relationships
This morning one of the drivers on the dock asked if he could have a word with me. Admittedly, my first thought was “oh boy, what now”. As I approached the driver, he thanked me for coming to talk to him. Then, in his thick French-Canadian accent, he went on to tell me what an amazing warehouse team we have. He pointed to specific people and explained situations where they went above and beyond to service him. The driver is a regular operator for shipments to Canada (for a very large customer) and stated that he loves coming to our Avon facility because our team does things that other places would never do. "One time I was late and it was after 5PM. I didn’t think you would be here. I pulled up and the door was open with him standing there waiting for me. He offers to help move pallets around on my truck to fit the loads. Everyone is always ready to help you. Everyone works hard and is very nice." This is not the first time I have heard this type of feedback. Other drivers have shared the same sentiment on different occasions over the years – that our warehouse team just does it right and goes above and beyond. Part of one of our Fundamentals reads, “make a positive impact on someone every day”. There is no doubt the team is doing just that and building strong relationships with our carriers. Ultimately, those relationships extend to our customers by impacting the level of service that we provide. Shout out and thanks to the whole warehouse team in Avon for continually Creating Customer Success and Investing in Relationships!
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Urgent Need of Product
We had a Customer that was in urgent need of a product, specially ordered for them to support a new project. The Customer was pressing for updates daily on the exact time the product would be delivered to them so they could confirm their production schedule. Unfortunately, this inbound container was delayed due to the logistics constraints and bottlenecks in supply chain experienced during the month of March. The container arrived late on a Friday afternoon with the customer needing the material on site ready to run first thing that following Monday. Material was unloaded by our Warehouse team and received in through our Procurement team within hours. To avoid the risk of another logistics delay and to guarantee the Customer received the material on time, our Warehouse Manager drove over one hour and personally delivered the two pallet order on that Friday evening. The Customer received their order early and was able to meet their production schedule as planned!
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Deliver Epic Customer Service
We received an email from our customer at 6:48 am on a friday, advising us that he “has a rough situation this morning”. They were performing inventory today and their tan HT-1000 is completely gone and they had orders they needed to fill in the afternoon. We thankfully had material in stock in Wilmington, MA…The customer is located in Leominster, MA roughly 45 mins away. We were able to coordinate with the warehouse to have the material pulled first am and then we were able to coordinate the material to ship via our warehouse carrier for same day mid-morning delivery to the customer. Customer received the material in time to meet their production requirements and caused no delay’s to their end customers. Our customer was extremely pleased with our efforts and thanked us several times for being able to expedite and need production needs.
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Logistics team pulls strings to maintain customer's production schedule
A customer realized mid-afternoon that their inventory report was inaccurate and their plant was ready to run out of a key coatings raw material. They submitted an order to us for same day shipment on their selected carrier. Although their carrier had already picked up at our facility earlier that afternoon, our Logistics team was able to have the carrier come back in for a 2nd pick up and shipped their order out that afternoon. Material was delivered the next morning, and our customer did not have to alter their production schedule.
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Emergency holiday weekend delivery
On a recent holiday weekend, a customer contacted our Account Manager late on a Saturday afternoon to notify us of an emergency truckload delivery required the following Monday morning. Their production schedule had changed unexpectedly due to increased automotive demand. Based on their forecast, we had adequate material in stock available for shipment. That evening, our Logistics Manager was able to get in touch with our carrier and confirmed that they can have a truck pick up at our facility at 7:00 AM on Monday morning, before our warehouse opens. Our Customer Service and Warehouse Manager each reported to work by 6:30 AM, processed the order and the truck was loaded and in route to our customer by 7:20 AM. The delivery was made by 9:15 AM that day!
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After-hours pickup for same day shipment
A customer placed an order with us at 4:09 PM for same day shipment. We successfully processed the order and had their carrier pick up the order after hours at 5:30 PM that evening. Material was delivered to our customer’s location the following morning, averting a production shut down.
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Sampling Success
One of our salesmen was on a first visit with a prospect account. Our sales rep did not get to meet the owner of the business with whom he had an appointment. Instead, the rep left his card and line sheet with the owner’s brother after giving a brief summary of our product lines. To his surprise, the rep got a call from the owner a few days later and the owner let him know that there was a very important project he is working on with an issue he could not fix. Our sales rep was able to present a particular product that he would recommend that could potentially address his issue he was having. This request came on a Tuesday of the week, and the final formulation had to be presented to the end-user by the following Monday. More importantly, this would have been the last opportunity for the customer to come up with a product as previous attempts had failed. The sales rep put in the sample request for overnight delivery. The product went out on Thursday, but was not received on Friday. Saturday morning the rep gets a call from the owner that the product had not arrived and he was not happy at all. The salesman immediately picked up the phone and started calling Fedex, who let him know the product was delivered and the owner just had to look around. After an hour of searching the sample was still not located. The salesman called Fedex again, and Fedex let him know that the product was actually delivered to a few houses down from the correct address. To much excitement, the customer found the sample a few houses down and he started working on experimental lab trials on 3 PM on that Saturday afternoon. Through cell-phone texting, he communicated with the salesman on how to formulate and the right add-on levels to try. After several failed runs, the right levels were struck and the customer finally got the properties he was looking for - as he proceeded with testing through Saturday night. Sunday morning - he used the rest of the sample to make a 5 gallon pail of the finished product for final trials at his customer location. The customer drove two hours on Monday morning with the pail in hand as the end-user ran the formulation on their spray machines and did several trial runs. This end-user loved the product and after some additional testing, the formulation was successfully qualified.
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Urgent saturday morning delivery
On a recent Friday afternoon, a customer called to schedule an urgent truckload delivery that would be required at their facility the following morning. Our Logistics team was able to schedule our carrier available for a Saturday delivery. Material was picked up by 4:15 PM and successfully delivered on Saturday morning at our customer’s plant.
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Preventing a plant shutdown
This past Saturday morning, one of our key customers contacted our Account Manager to notify us that they urgently needed a truckload of material delivered that day to prevent a plant shutdown. Upon receiving this notification, we immediately contacted our preferred carrier and was able to schedule a truck to pick up in our Avon warehouse later that morning and deliver this material direct to our customer that afternoon. After communicating with our Warehouse Manager, we realized the material had previously been pulled and was on our dock scheduled for shipment the following Monday as per our customer’s original shipment instructions. We went to the warehouse, loaded the truck and the carrier delivered the product to our customer by 1:45 PM that Saturday afternoon. The plant was able to continue producing material through the remainder of the weekend.