Komatsu Australia has extended their current Customer Support Charter (CSC) to all parts of the business, to ensure a companywide focus in the way we interact with our customers.
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According to Chris Cassettari, Komatsu Australia's Director Regions and Global HME, the CSC incorporates Key Performance Indicators to allow the company to measure its effectiveness.
"Our new company-wide CSC encompasses all areas of the business, including new equipment, service, parts, customer support and machine delivery/ preparation," he said. When we initially launched the CSC in 2008, it was a direct result of analysing our 2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey," said Chris.
"At the time it was limited to our parts and service activities, and one of the learning's from the initial rollout was that to be fully effective the CSC needed to include all areas of the business.
"However, the principles outlined in the CSC when it was first launched remain fundamental, and it's now an appropriate time to relaunch a companywide charter that clearly and publicly sets out how we will interact with our customers, and measures our success," he said.
According to Sean Taylor, Komatsu Australia's Managing Director, the CSC sets out our customer support principles about what our customers can expect from us in terms of support, across all processes - from pre-sales to purchase, right throught to service and maintence.
"It covers elements such as committing to rapid responses to questions and inquiries and ensuring customers are kept fully informed at all times.
"It also includes a 'no surprises' approach to quotes and estimates, so that we will never proceed with a job before we have confirmation from a customer, and that if there is a change in the scope of work required, the customer is fully informed and approves that change before we continue," Sean said.
"A key element of the CSC is that it will allow us to benchmark our customer support levels, so we can measure what we are delivering, and see where we need to improve. And for our customers, it will create a 'single face' of Komatsu, so we will always deal with them in a professional and consistent manner.
Komatsu has developed a clearly defined customer support process to ensure the effective implementation of the CSC throughout our entire company. This customer support process establishes a defined escalation procedure to ensure that the full resources of our company respond to customer issues in a timely manner.
In addition, this customer support process ensures that our employees and management at both a regional and national level understand what they need to do so support our customer facing employees meet our commitments under the CSC.
Chris further states that the CSC had been defined by specific philosophies and standards developed by Komatsu Australia, which would apply to all its dealings with customers.
These are:
Responsiveness: The ability to communicate effectively with its customers
Reliability: Customers can always count on Komatsu to do what it says it will do
Capability: Our people have the knowledge, skill and abilities to satisfy customer requirements
Safety: Is paramount in everything we do, with no compromise on standards.
We have developed a common set of standards, based around our CSC statements, which give our people a tangible and clear direction of what is required.
"These standards can then be measured through relevant Key Performance Indicators and surveys of our customers plus we are developing training around the specific standards."
"Our customer survey showed that while we score very highly with overall customer satisfaction across a wide range of areas, our customer satisfaction levels are still lower than we would like them to be," Chris said.
"The CSC is also a recognition that in order to improve customer satisfaction, we need to deliver consistent customer support.Our CSC allows us to define the standards that will enable us to maintain and deliver the highest standards of customer support," he said.
"Ultimately, we aim to deliver levels of service and support that exceed our customers' expectations."