Our Essence is Customer Service

Last month we suggested that one way for catering businesses to weather the current economic storm is to focus on the core or essence of their business. With the Bank of England increasing the interest rates to tackle more persistent inflation; it’s probably right for AC Services to explain ours. It’s customer service.

Customer service! An easy opt out, many may say. After all it’s all part of any front of house business. Let’s for a moment consider that. What we don’t mean by customer service is the waiter asking “Is everything alright” mid-stride heading away from the table. That is a complaints avoidance tick-the-box approach that ultimately pleases no-one.

The Why of Customer Service

Consider for a moment what ACS does. We repair and maintain Rational ovens in the South West of England and South Wales and supply cleaning materials for those machines. Good customer service means different things in each of those scenarios:

• Repair is an emergency. Something has broken or does not work. The impact of that could be large (stops service) or small (there’s a work-around) but it always starts with a crisis call.
• Maintenance is the scheduled servicing of an essential machine so that it continues to run at optimum performance. The when is dictated by its age and normal use patterns and by our mutual schedules for convenience. This might start with a reminder call, machine notification or email.
• Cleaning materials are supplied to aid in the reduction of the first two. They are optimised for Rational machines and are proven to assist in preventing breakdowns or increased maintenance cycles. This is an order to us by phone or on-line.

The Uniting What is Knowledge

What the scenarios have in common is knowledge. Foremost is technical knowledge gained through training with Rational, but also from experience of these ovens over time. Our engineers and technical teams have 60+ years of Rational experience between them. They understand and can cope with ovens of all ages, whether that is in the kitchen or with the remote servicing of newer models.

The second essential knowledge is of the demands of catering businesses. For maintenance visits we try to avoid the peak of service. Although for some clients, we know there is never really a lull during the normal working day.

Thirdly we know the area. Keeping costs down is an issue for all businesses so we schedule our engineer’s routes logically across their local patches. Because they work locally, they understand their clients. Equally importantly they’re able to respond quickly to the stop-service breakdowns by rejigging those routes.

Not Just the Engineers

But that knowledge does not just exist in the engineers, it also sits in our front of house aka our office-based team. With over 30 years of catering and Rational experience between them, they can diagnose and deal appropriately with all inbound and outbound communication.

Apart from our very short initial department selection, this is not an impersonal tele-service operation. We aim to know and understand our clients. The same issue for one clearly needs an immediate repair, while another sees it as something to pick up in the next maintenance booking. Or this time can’t wait, because tomorrow is a prestigious event. Lynne, Denise, Neil and Helen understand the impact it has on your catering business and look for solutions to minimise this.

True customer service is understanding the customer’s needs and efficiently solving their problem while minimising the downtime in their kitchen. This approach drives everything that AC Services does and explains why we have high levels of repeat business and happy customers.

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