Introduction continued - Andy Cliff - Straightforward Consultancy

After 18 months at Burlington Air Express, I was ready for a new challenge. I'd run the import air freight department and my team had delivered a really superb and consistent service. I'd also introduced some fresh ideas and approaches to the import team.

One was the introduction of a customer profiling system as I was concerned that our clients tended to have dedicated operational contacts which meant for a really personal service however it led to some of the customer specific information (such as Customs Procedure Codes, Customs Commodity Codes and other unique customer requirements) being memorised.

This for me was an issue, because if they were off sick, on holiday or left the company, we couldn't perform to the same level, and also it prevented us from distributing the workload evenly across the team, so I introduced a customer profile form. It wasn't high tech (remember this was 1988/1989) but it was a really effective and clear standard document which profiled the customer, from the obvious things such as name/address/key contact to the Customs Procedure & Commodity Codes, air freight rates and other customer specifc needs.

This was a real breath of fresh air as we then had all of the info in one place and it also helped with sales and the induction of new customers won by the sales team so we got things exactly right. This was of course when we were being monitored really closely by the client and to be honest, when you're most likely to lose a client if you dont perform operationally, or bill things out at agreed rates.

One other thing we did was to strike up a very close rapport with sales to ensure we were working for each other. When a new customer was gained, sales would provide all the customer specific info and what they had agreed rates and service wise and we would then build our customer profile sheet. The thing we also did was to phone the client to introduce ourselves and advise them who their lead and back up contact was. It also gave us an opportunity to clear up any grey areas or gaps in the info provided by the sales people. Most of the time, the customers were really surprised that we were so proactive and were in contact before their first shipment had even moved but it certainly was well received. This was because, as today, most clients key contact is the sales person they met and got to know however these people aren't providing the service day to day.

All this was very useful experience and to add to that I had built some great relationships with the BAX Global customers which would make my transition into freight forwarding sales much easier, more of that later.