Service Please!

Customer service is often considered a “soft skill’ but it can also be the differential around which a company succeeds or fails. As customers, we make choices around how and where to spend our money all the time. Be it work or personal spend, we probably make considered buying decisions on essentials such as quality, price, extent of range, availability or delivery.

However, repeat purchases may require something more, an ‘added value’ component which is needed to reinforce customer loyalty. That’s why at Strand Hardware, we take customer service seriously.

Operating within a business-to-business environment, we talk to all sorts of prospective customers and clients: from architects and developers to architectural ironmongers and installers. Every person will have different levels of knowledge which may require varying advice and support. Fortunately, we have an experienced team with extensive experience across the business.

And our customer service starts with that first contact, carefully listening to what a customer wants to achieve and asking the right questions to guide them to the best possible solutions. We work within a highly technical industry which makes this process all the more important and we always aim to undertake this in a polite and friendly way. Many of our customers have been with us for many years – some since Strand Hardware was founded more than 30 years ago. These close working relationships are built on trust – underpinned by great customer service.

Our expertise and advice may be qualitative but we set ourselves measurable targets to ensure that we get the job right, at every point. We measure processes and seek customer feedback to ensure we close the loop and build these outcomes into our annual review and evaluation.

In the past year this confirmed that we had:

• No major non-conformance reports (NCR) raised by British Assessment Bureau within our annual audit
• 100% company recommendation rating from our annual client survey
• 100% rating of our products, quality, and reliability – identified as the same or better than competitors through our annual client survey
• Minimal processing errors – below our less than 0.5% orders received target.
• Minimal order packing errors – below our less than 0.5% orders received target.
• A total of ‘all concerns raised’ being less than 2% against all orders received.

We aim to achieve more than a 98% average OTIF for customer orders and during 2022/23, we completed 99.54%

We pride ourselves on our high levels of customer service and we work hard to continually review our processes to ensure efficiencies and compliance which help us maintain ISO certification.

So, if you are looking to buy from a company that you can trust for your specialist architectural ironmongery requirements, you know that your enquiry will be met with a warm welcome and assured efficiency.

To find out more visit - https://www.strandhardware.co.uk/