Case Lely
Lely | The UC Group team supported Lely when the company was introducing its new-generation milking robots. That way, Lely could handle the accompanying order management and service performance challenges.
Lely | The UC Group team supported Lely when the company was introducing its new-generation milking robots. That way, Lely could handle the accompanying order management and service performance challenges.
Introducing a new generation of milking robots to strengthen the competitive position of Lely, the world market leader in fully automated milking and dairy farm management systems.
The strong growth achieved by this family business over a period of several years is partly thanks to its continued focus on innovation and its ongoing drive to improve and tailor its services to customers’ requirements. But when this growth coincided with the launch of a new automated milking system, a lack of experienced staff and a peak in the workload resulted in an acute lack of customer service capacity.
That’s when UC Group was asked to find a solution.
Short term: to stabilise the team and get the order processing and customer service back to Lely’s target levels.
Medium term: to set up a department on a stable, sustainable basis and that is able to absorb new product launches and continue growing in line with the business.
The initial focus was on stabilising the department and then moving on to devise an integrated approach for achieving sustainable improvements tailored to the organisation, processes and systems.
This involved reinforcing customer service by bringing in an interim manager to take on the role of front office team lead for the duration of the project. It was consciously chosen to appoint a senior person for this role so as to create scope for building a sustainable solution.
Launching the new milking robots made stabilising the position more challenging in the short term because of the additional liaison needed between the various partners in the supply chain. This, in turn, created extra work for the Customer Service Desk. It was consequently decided, in close dialogue with the interim customer service manager, also to bring in a senior customer service professional from UC Group so as to ensure that the sustainable solution could continue to be worked on. The UC team’s rapid availability, experience and specialised knowledge proved to be key ingredients in the project’s success.
Alongside the launch of the new product, a training course on customer focus was arranged to increase the level of service provided. As well as analysing procedures and processes to identify opportunities for further improvements, we launched a project to optimise master data and improve processes in the existing ICT systems.
Our experience in customer service within supply chain environments served as an example for the team and radiated throughout the organisation.
Katja van Rookhuijzen, Head of Customer Service Desk
