It’s an acknowledged fact that a company can only enjoy market success if it has satisfied customers. But how do you achieve this? When exactly are customers satisfied? Well, it takes more than a declaration on the part of the company that it is “focusing” on its customers.
A satisfied customer is the result of correct behaviour throughout the value-added chain, in every department of the company. Although direct human contact with an employee from Sales or Service is often crucial, even this, irrespective of the degree of friendliness or punctuality, will not result in satisfaction if there are shortcomings in other regards.
We are is therefore demonstrating what is being done to ensure customer satisfaction in Bosch Thermotechnik’s Customer Service, Dispatch, Sales/Prices, Product Devel-opment, Field Sales, Internal Sales and Marketing departments, and how customers rate these efforts.
According to scientific studies, these departments with their examples are synonymous with the major criteria for overall customer satisfaction.

Customer Service

Even the best heating appliance can break down. That’s when you need to know that Customer Service will respond quickly.
Junkers service technicians are on call daily to get heating systems going again. And they don’t limit themselves to faults in Junkers appliances. You can count on them even if the problem is somewhere else in the overall heating system.

This is shown by the example of installer H. from Upper Bavaria: he had installed a new condensing water heater and solar collectors from Junkers. When trying to connect to the existing 800-litre third-party storage tank with its own heating circuit control system, however, he found himself faced with a seemingly insoluble problem. After several unsuccessful attempts at commissioning, his customer was also losing his patience. The installer therefore called Junkers to ask for assistance.
Our customer service engineer inspected the system and drew up a hydraulic and control plan tailored to it. Once the installer had carried out the fitting work, and commissioning had been conducted jointly, everything ran smoothly.

Dispatch

Punctual and complete delivery of the heating appliances or accessories is a prerequisite for customer satisfaction. This was not happening entirely to plan at various Buderus branches a little time ago, leading to complaints about, for example, damage in transit.

Stefan Lechner, head of Logistics, describes how the root cause of the problem was tackled, i.e. on-site investigations were conducted. “It turned out that the protective packaging of the small pipes responsible for heat transfer was inadequate. The odd rough jolt was inevitable during the journey via transfer depots and distribution by conveyor belt, and this could result in individual pipes being bent. The problem was resolved, and the service provider was changed. Our customers welcomed our response.”

Since May 2004 supply capability on the basis of stock availability has been measured regularly throughout Germany, whereas only random checks were carried out in the past. Since then problems have been easier to identify, and it has been possible to evaluate the whole range of articles continuously. This approach enables ongoing improvements to structures. In addition to its branch function, the Dort-mund branch, for example, has been operating as a regional warehouse for the other branches in sales region 5 (west) since April 2003. This concentration of resources means greater availability of the large proportion of materials with a slow turnover. The supply capability has improved to more than 98 per cent.

Sales/Prices

It is a mistake to believe that the (lowest possible) price determines customer satisfaction. This depends much more on whether the product meets expectations.
Price plays a part in the form of the price/performance ratio. A high price generates high expectations, particularly if it is higher than competitors’ prices. The customer wishes to see special functions in return, whereas only basic functions are required of a low-cost appliance. However, the quality always has to be right.

For installers the profit margin is more important than the price. The product must be easy to sell to the end user, easy to install and easy to maintain. After-sales service is also essential to the installer.

For the wholesaler, on the other hand, the margin is the most important issue. “The pressure on prices has grown more and more in recent years,” says André In het Veld, head of Sales Netherlands. “The number of suppliers in the heating technology sector has increased. In addition, special functions which were only found at the top of the range a short time ago are now expected to feature even in mid-range appliances. And end users are also checking out the market in much greater detail before coming to a final decision. Quality is very important to them since this means a long service life and no unnecessary consequential costs.”

Product Development

Product Development calls on a range of sources to find out what customers want. It receives information from Product Marketing, commissions market research companies, networks at trade fairs and also accompanies service technicians on their calls to get to know end customers’ requirements directly.
Maintainability, i.e. how quickly and thoroughly the appliance can be cleaned, is important to both installers and end customers. Hubert de Haas, who is responsible for the development of condensing appliances at Bosch Thermotechnik, provides examples of Product Development’s responses to customer requirements.

Nefit is in the process of developing a new heat exchanger which only has to be serviced about every five years instead of annually. One example of the call for speedy maintenance is the development of a new cover on the heating appliance which can be removed with a single click. A way has also been found of separating the heater and the storage tank to reduce weight. “They are two units but in their overall design they work as if they are a single one. Separating them means that one person can install the appliance himself,” explains de Haas. Low-noise operation is also an important feature for customers because the appliances are installed in the kitchen or bedroom in many countries.

Field Sales

Field sales management is an important element for Junkers in achieving its target market penetration and a high degree of customer satisfaction.
Steffen Huber, a group leader in Foreign Sales, knows when these customers are satisfied: “We not only have to have the right product portfolio, we also have to provide particular support for our customers in their reselling activities, e.g. by means of sales campaigns, general and customer-specific marketing back-up and the advance sale of our products to installers.”

Field sales management action is therefore targeted in two directions – making our own products more sellable by wholesalers and thus ultimately meeting our own and his sales targets.
Wholesalers love to see a field sales department which has ideas, exhibits good product knowledge, is friendly and helpful, and offers assistance in reselling. The rankings of customer requirements on the Polish market for example have been identified as follows: at the top came product knowledge, followed by the trust you need to have in the contact person (who must as a result not keep changing), then friend-liness, reachability and willingness to help.
It is particularly in this market that Junkers staff have performed very well since they are regarded as being extremely well trained in terms of engineering and sales promotion. However, field sales management also means finding the right measures for your own operations, e.g. effective route planning for staff, the right targets in terms of products, sales, margins, price limits etc. and, above all, continual checks on the defined parameters.

Ultimately the customer of Junkers, i.e. the wholesaler, is more satisfied, the more successful he is with the aid of Field Sales in selling the products to his customers.

Internal Sales

For Susanne Eberling, Internal Sales Manager at Buderus’s Giessen branch, a great deal depends on whether Internal Sales is able to get through to customers, i.e. installers, with its services and campaigns.
“In technical terms the products are comparable, customers have become more demanding, and business doesn’t grow on trees.” In other words, performance alone is not enough; the customer wants something extra, an added value. In response to this, for example, an offer was run for three months which consisted of providing a stainless steel flue kit for renovating an existing chimney free of charge with each purchase of a top-of-the-range Buderus product, the G115. Since the flue almost always needs to be renovated when a new boiler is fitted, the installer was able to provide this for his end customer in a one-stop offer.
The result of the campaign was increased sales of boilers and flue kits and new customers. But Internal Sales not only supports Field Sales, it also conducts telesales itself. The order managers have been specially trained in this. In addition, regular technical staff development courses covering the entire Buderus product portfolio are available.

Customers are aware of our Internal Sales department’s trade knowledge. A personal relationship of trust has been built up because they have known their contact persons for many years. The strength of this emotional tie is reflected, for example, in the willingness of staff to provide assistance to customers outside normal working hours.

The esteem in which our customers hold our staff is evident in many ways, e.g. the inclusion of staff in in-house trade events, personal expressions of appreciation and small gifts, and invitations to joint leisure activities. Commitment brings its own in-house recompense, of course, for our staff, since their sales successes are rewarded with various bonuses and incentives.

Marketing

The effect of many marketing activities, e.g. advertising, on customers can only be measured indirectly, e.g. via market research or trade awards. In other words, personal feedback on the work of the Marketing department is all but impossible.

Since Junkers sets great store by personal contacts as they enable people to come closer to each other on a human scale but also to find out something about customer requirements, customers are offered attractive events or trips.
A trip to the Portuguese plant in Aveiro went down particularly well. The four-day “discovery tour” contained excursions to the famous sights of Porto and Lisbon in addition to the plant visit. Brief extracts from a few of the responses thanking us for the trip are reproduced below: “There’s only one word to describe the trip you organised: perfect.” – The national culture “was explained expertly and with feeling.” Another participant regrets that “the time went far too quickly” and declares that he “thoroughly enjoyed everything”.
Customers were similarly full of praise for a trip to Zurich which also provided an opportunity for a flight in the old “Iron Annie” or “Antie Ju”, as the Junkers Ju-88 is affectionately known: “This experience will bind us closer to Junkers. And the personal touch shown also deserves a mention.” Another customer declares that “the hours of relaxation gave (him) the strength to deal with the day-to-day problems of work”.