Make The Move To Fanatical Customer Focus

Task Force Tips (TFT) helps save lives and protect property by designing and manufacturing equipment primarily used by firefighters, including nozzles, monitors (water cannons), and ball in-take valves.

27% Reduction

They reduced customer count by 27%, creating capacity to focus on the 80s customers with no fall-off in the business.

For more information on this story, contact
Don Morton, President and CEO, Task Force Tips: [email protected]

Goal
TFT has worked with thousands of different dealers over five decades to serve end-users on six continents. While multiple outlets helped create a very successful business, it also led to complexity. Every dealer had its own way of ordering, communicating, and paying. They also placed non-recurring, small orders that could be challenging for TFT’s operations and supply chain teams. Over the last two years, the TFT team endeavored to reduce some of that complexity to allow for a better customer experience for its best customers.

Process
First, TFT classified its customers into “types” based on what they did. For example, did the account manufacture or just resell fire trucks? Are they loose equipment dealers that sell to fire departments or engineering firms that sell to petrochemical facilities? TFT also assigned priority levels to each reseller and identified a select group of dealers that were noted as strategic (“A” dealers). TFT then implemented a “Customer Constitution” that formalized what each type and priority level meant in terms of resource allocation, cooperative advertising, sales support, and discounts. It also formalized a structure of how a new dealer would get added into the system to eliminate potential “workarounds.”

Results
TFT redirected over half of its former resellers to strategic reseller partners. Ultimately, this changed TFT’s relationships with 602 dealers, allowing them to focus on the top 438 dealers around the globe. Now “A” dealers get TFT’s best support, pricing, and business partnering efforts.

The company is now in the next phase of customer product line simplification (PLS) to drive even more business to its strategic dealers. Providing “A” dealers with better customer service will enable them to supply immediate stock and service to those smaller dealers no longer working directly with TFT. This will also help streamline internal operations, from order entry to production scheduling to financial services.

Key Learnings

Define what matters and what constitutes “A” versus “B” customers.
Don’t stop after round one; act, reap the benefits, celebrate and continue.