Customer Focus and using customer insights to deliver a great experience every time is a core strategy for the Salt Group.
Each year we ask our customers to rate their experience when buying from Dominion Salt. What do they value the most and how we are performing. This year we decided to hold off the survey planned for May until August to move away from the major COVID-19 Lock down in March.
We sent out an electronic survey to almost 500 customers and received back >100 replies (23% response). The response numbers were similar to last year but the customers were different to previous years in terms of sectors and individuals we sent the survey to.
The overall result told us that the number Dominion Salt promotors had dropped vs 2019 results and hence our overall score dropped. Possibly a sign of the times or perhaps the difference was the customers we surveyed. However, the results are important in deciding what we do to improve our service. When we analysed the results we found that the most important factors for our customers is Supply Reliability & Product Quality or what we call DIFOTIS – Delivery in Full on Time in Spec.
If we were to break the survey further down into sectors we noticed differences. For example what the Hides & Skins sector want is different to the Food and Agriculture sector. This understanding allows us to manage our service levels for different sectors & customers.
So what to do next?
We have cascaded the results to some staff groups and will now share the results more broadly with our customers.
What we need to do differently to improve our score…
- Improve our systems to ensure we meet our delivery promise.
- Realign our order to deliver promise with our customers expectations.
- Increase our customer visits to the Water Treatment and Agricultural Merchant customers.
- Continue to optimise our product range and improve our product packaging.
As we move forward we will use continuous improvement tools and targeted strategies to improve our customer’s experience which will lead to a hopefully better score next year.
