Published 2 Oct 2023
National Customer Service Week - Day 1
"We are constantly looking for ways we can go beyond what is expected."
#NCSW23 – Interview with Tony Ryan: Chief Technical Officer
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Alongside the products we make, a significant part of the Siderise customer experience is the comprehensive technical and site services we offer freely to the whole construction market. Passive fire protection and acoustics are complex areas of construction, which require collaboration and cooperation from the whole supply chain to be delivered effectively. This is why we strive to go beyond the support that you would normally expect from a manufacturer, to ensure that we are real source of knowledge for the industry to draw from.
How would you define Siderise’s ethos around customer services?
One of our key ethos pillars is ‘customer first’. We aren’t saying this as a clichéd slogan, we actually live this promise through how we develop the business and what we invest in. In fact, I see our business as being very market led - this means we strive to understand the market landscape and evolve our business to meet what our customers need now, and what they might need in the future, putting them first in way you don’t see elsewhere in the industry.
We do this through involvement with numerous trade bodies and associations, as well as maintaining close working relationships with contractors, developers, architects and engineers across all kinds of sectors. This allows us to gain insights into different areas, as well as share our knowledge with the wider industry.
Why are technical and site services such a key part of Siderise customer experience?
Whilst we are a construction product manufacturer, Siderise is very much a service led business that is underpinned by robust testing. We believe that, as the experts in our products and systems, we have a responsibility to support the construction industry with the knowledge and information they need to create safe and sustainable buildings. We don’t just provide services to our transactional customers, but to various construction industry stakeholders, providing support from concept design right through to handover.
We’re constantly looking at ways to improve our offering, and it’s exciting to see new services being added to those we’ve always offered. For example, we’ve recently begun to offer design-led training to specifiers, alongside our regular installation training for installers. This has been very well received and addresses a real need in the market for guidance around passive fire protection, especially in light of the changing legislative requirements in the UK.
How does this holistic approach help you to deliver better customer service?
This holistic approach to technical support sets us apart in the industry and delivers real value to our customers. Many of them work on high-rise, high-risk properties and are at the forefront of the legislative change we are seeing predominately in the UK, with the Building Safety Act, but globally too. We want to support them through the challenges they face and be a resource they can trust and draw on whenever they need. We know we are achieving this aim because of the amount of repeat customers we get who use our technical or site services project after project. This can be anything from seeking specification advice to training their installation teams.
What does good customer service mean to you?
Exceeding expectations. We are constantly looking for ways we can go beyond what is expected, giving our customers not just what they need, but also what they didn’t know they need while maintaining integrity in all we do! Our teams are incredibly skilled and committed to going that extra mile, delivering a tailored response every time. We have incredibly talented and highly skilled people on our team and it’s a pleasure to work alongside them in our endeavours to offer customer service that is second to none. The success of this is reflected in our high NPS score and the relationships we have with our customers.