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SPECIAL SECTION OEM services

THE CUSTOMER SERVICE HONOR ROLLMACHINE DESIGN readers nominated the following companies for their outstandingcustomer service.COMPANY LOCATIONBranson Ultrasonics Corp. Buffalo Grove, Ill.Colder Products Comp. St. Paul, Minn.Electro-Sensors Inc. Minnetonka, Minn.Fanuc Robotics America Detroit, Mich and Chicago, Ill.Faulhaber-MicroMo Electronics Inc. Clearwater, Fla.Hewlett-Packard Palo Alto, Calif.Industrial Gas Springs Inc. West Chester, Pa.McMaster-Carr Supply Co. Santa Fe Springs, Calif.National Instruments Austin, Tex.Parker Hannifin Corp. Columbus, OhioPolhemus-Miller Co. Inc. Forest Park, Ill.Quality Circle Assembly Inc. San Jose, Calif.RAF Automotive Solon, OhioSMC Corp. of America Portsmouth, N.H.Springfield Spring Corp. East Longmeadow, Mass.Wavestream Corp. San Dimas, Calif.

The best of the bestIn an age of answeringmachines, voice mail,minimal staffing, andincreased attention to thebottom line, MACHINE DESIGNhas again asked its readersto cite companies that treatcustomers like … well …customers.Patrick MahoneyAssociate Editor

A panel of judges made up of MD readerswhittled the 16 companies nominated bytheir customers for exceptional cus-tomer service down to two. This year’swinners of MACHINE DESIGN’s customerservice awards are RAF Automation inSolon, Ohio (first place) and MicroMoElectronics Inc., Clearwater, Fla., (aclose second). These companies haven’tforgotten why they’re in business.

The fundamentals of good customerservice are constant from industry to in-dustry. Whether a company producesstandard (off -the-shelf) or custom(made-to-order) goods and services, cus-tomers want the same kind of attentionto their needs, explains Bradford Gold-ense, CEO of Goldense Group Inc., abusiness consulting and education firm.

For custom products, however, “Cus-tomer service begins much earlier andincludes such things as customer in-

Originally published in Machine Designmagazine, A Penton Publication

© November 22, 2006, Volume 78, Number 22

volvement during definition, design, andearly alpha/beta build phases;annual/semiannual visits to the cus-tomer; clear means of customer contact;and access to the vendor’s internal sys-tems,” says Goldense.

What is also clear from our survey isthat customers measure service in hu-man terms. It’s the human touch, that is,the service rep who is available 24/7, thecustomer-service person who searchesfor alternatives, or the large corporationthat has people, not machines, answer-ing the phones that keep customers com-ing back.

Dave Korpi of Micro MeasurementsInc., Salinas, Calif., writes: “There’s nocompany like National InstrumentsCorp., Austin. You can call their toll-freenumber and a person will answer, noSTUPID automated attendant telling youthe prompts have changed, soplease listen carefully.”

Another customer sings thepraises of Joe Belanger, a salesrep for Branson UltrasonicWelder, Buffalo Grove, Ill: “Joe se-verely injured his back, sidelininghim for several days. Despite hisinjury, he kept up with e-mailsand made phone calls checkingon our progress. Talking to Joe onthe phone, you could hear thepain coming through. A weeklater, he drove two and a halfhours, bad back and all, to re-solve a problem. He showed up ina bit of pain but got us back onour feet.”

The best companies earn theirstripes when there’s a problem,as evidenced by RAF Automation.The problem (or opportunity)arose when an automatic testingmachine that included two ofRAF’s X-Y Cartesian robots wenton the fritz. RAF hadn’t built themachine and was responsibleonly for the robots. Regardless, acall to the company brought outthe RAF representative the nextday, a Saturday.

“It was a long day but RAF proved it-self a start-to-finish distributor. Theyanalyzed the problem, figured the I/Owe needed, trained us on programmingand operation, and made sure we wereon track unti l the end of the build,”writes the customer. “We’re a smallcompany, but RAF treats us like we’renumber one. I certainly don’t expect ourvendors to service the machines we puttogether. Those guys are awesome.”

Product Manager Dwayne A. Pinnell,one of the judges, observed, “The dis-tributor [RAF] obviously wanted to helpthe customer solve the problem withthe end account. I expect this kind of ac-tion when I’m the customer, but in to-day’s business climate it’s usually theexception rather than the norm.”

Another judge, PeopleMax founderLarry Cole, noted that “RAF exceeded

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The Winners

Todd Hoffman, application engineer, Brian Hoffman,application engineer, and Tim Cape, territory managerfor RAF Automation, Solon,Ohio, exemplify the kind ofcustomer service that keepscustomers coming back formore.

Carol Ervin, customer servicerep. at MicroMO Electronics,delivered first-rate customer

service and knocked weeks offthe customer’s project.

SPECIAL SECTION OEM services

expectations by servicing a ma-chine put together by one of itscl ients, by working on theweekend, and by making asmall company feel as impor-tant as a large account.”

The second-place award re-sulted from one employee’s ef-fort to help a customer out of atight spot. An applications en-gineer from MicroMo Electron-ics had configured a gearmotorfor a customer application.When the customer placed theorder, MicroMo’s customerservice representative, CarolErvin, explained that the gear-motor would have to be manu-factured overseas — a delaythat would knock the projectoff schedule.

The customer, understand-ably disappointed, was pre-pared to accept the delay.Ervin, however, was not satis-fied and offered to search Mi-croMo’s inventory of off-the-shelf motors and geartrains fora possible substitute.

After scouring the database,she came up with several alter-natives, “one of which was suffi-cient to carry us until the opti-mal gearmotors could be deliv-ered,” the customer writes. Theproject continued on schedule.When the new gearmotors ar-rived, the company replaced thetemporary assemblies and con-tinued the project without delay.Ervin’s initiative kept the projectfrom falling weeks behind.

“Great customer servicemeans creating great value,helping customers in ways thatgo beyond the obvious,” ob-served management consultantJohn Brandt, one of the judges.

And judging by their cus-tomers’ comments, all of thenominated companies wouldagree. MD

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The panel of judges

Brad Goldense is CEO and founder ofGoldense Group Inc. [GGI], aconsulting and education firmconcentrating in advanced businessand technology managementpractices. Mr. Goldense is amember of the faculty at the GordonInstitute of Tufts University inMedford, Mass. He holds a BS in

Civil Engineering from Brown University and an MBA inCost Accounting and Operations from CornellUniversity. Brad is a certified New ProductDevelopment Professional [NPDP] by the ProductDevelopment and Management Association, aCertified Manufacturing Engineer [CMfgE] by the SME,a Certified Computer Professional [CCP] by the ICCP,and is Certified in Production and InventoryManagement [CPIM] by the APICS.

John R. Brandt is CEO and founderof the MPI Group. He has spent morethan two decades studyingleadership in effective, purpose-driven organizations. Brandt advisescompanies on adapting to customerexpectations and new markets.

Dwayne A. Pinnell, former vicepresident of the InternationalCustomer Service Association,serves as ISO-9000 internal auditorfor the Cook Composites andPolymers Co. Mr. Pinnell is also aformer advisor of the CCPLeadership Council and CorporateQuality Management Teams.

Larry Cole has a Ph.D. in psychologyand is the founder of PeopleMaxInc., a consulting firm thatspecializes in maximizing people’spotential. He is cofounder ofPeopleSystems Software Inc., whichprovides software to maximizeworking relationships andleadership.

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