Problem Solvers

Solutions Are the Key to Customer Service at CHG

When you have to call for customer service assistance, it’s often a last resort.

Maybe you need to dispute high charges on a bill, discuss a warranty for a new appliance that isn’t working, or want to save money on a new service plan for your phone or vehicle. Many times, these calls end in frustration because you paid for services you weren’t aware of, the problem isn’t covered by your warranty, or that can’t-miss deal is only offered to customers in another hemisphere.

Even worse, such calls often require a long wait on hold before you’re transferred to another department or have to speak to a manager who isn’t available at the time.

Sometimes the words “customer service” can be such a contradiction, right?  What purpose do departments like this really serve?

CHG has its own customer service team. But our folks aren’t a bunch of call takers trying to discern why a customer’s gravy may be coming out lumpy.

“Our team is 100 percent about problem solving. Every day,” says Mary Blum, CHG’s director of Customer Service.

In fact, Blum’s team takes few calls from customers hovering over problems on their stove.

“We analyze case-fill rates, shortages, incidents and on-time deliveries of our products,” she says. “We support the Food Service side of the business, the At Home channel, National Accounts and our bakeries.”

Customer Service here at CHG attacks problems on multiple fronts. The Customer Operations team manages order fulfillment, Customer Success manages the health of service provided to our clients, and Customer Data manages order data and maintains key information related to our customers.

Order Management

Clarissa Dawson manages the Customer Operations team, which keeps tabs on orders coming into CHG and products going out of our plants.

“We’re account managers for the customer, on the Food Service and the Retail side of the business,” Dawson says. “We’re trying to make sure our customers are taken care of.”

“It’s about order management. Once the order hits, do we have product? Can we get it on time?  What are key items that we’re sole providers on and what does a customer need? Are we meeting the customer’s expectations?”

Sometimes problems pop up – pricing issues, product availability or short lead times. Clarissa and her team work with plant schedulers to make sure orders are completed on time, with our Distribution team to determine shipment schedules, and with brokers to confirm all details and expectations related to those orders. Challenges are part of the territory.

For example, a national restaurant chain recently requested a significant increase in its order of pancake and waffle mixes and a quick turnaround time. CHG is the sole supplier of those products for the customer. Sure, more business is good business. But now the Customer Operations team had a problem to solve. Could we move up production to expedite the order? Do other plants have product that can be shipped and shared until the new order can be met? Communication was key and Customer Operations had to bring everyone together to develop a feasible solution.

“You have to kind of spread the wealth,” says Blum. “If we have a demand for 200 and we only have 100, then we have to do an allocation plan. Sometimes we might delay an order. Sometimes we may be able to shift production. So, there’s about six different ways we kind of slice and dice and look at things. We always want to make sure that we service the customer with our business needs in mind.”

Information Central

It’s the information age. You can’t slice and dice without data. That’s the focus of Kelly Gonsalves’ and her Customer Data team.

“We’re conducting audits, supporting our order data process, troubleshooting order-to-cash issues, and providing essential reports,” says Gonsalves. “We collaborate with a variety of cross-functional teams to execute projects.”

Purchase orders are the lifeblood of a global food manufacturer like CHG. Customer Data manages our Electronic Data Interchange, which is how 75 percent of orders are submitted. When a distributor such as Sysco submits an order, it shows up in our SAP system minutes later and begins its journey to order fulfillment.

The Customer Experience

The goal of the Success team is to get in front of issues – inventory, delivery, accounting, incidents – and communicate what’s happening to customers.

Recently, CHG produced a maple biscuit as a limited time offer for a convenience store chain. The product, despite original plans, would never see the inside of a CHG plant. Instead, it was produced and shipped by a third party copacker, making it difficult to track in our system.

“Basically, I was having to monitor inventory on something I couldn’t see,” said Leslie Grubbs. “And then, because it was shipped from the copacker instead of from us, the point of sale wasn’t the same as what we submitted in the system. I had to manually monitor it based on third-party information – This is what the warehouse says. This is what Distribution says. This is when it’s going to ship. And this is when it’s supposed to deliver. But I couldn’t see any of it.”

The product was successfully managed, completed and shipped, with a winter storm the only reason for delay.

“We’re not only Customer Service to the outside customer, but also to the inside customer,” she says. “We have to have a good relationship with every department we work with. We need them to be honest with us about what’s happening, so that we can bring resolution and communicate those things to our customers.

Grubbs says the team thinks a lot about process. How can something be done more efficiently? How can we help the customer? How can we save the company money?

“I think, for the most part, people think of customer service as people who answer phones,” she says. “But we are actually very strategic. We’re problem solvers.

So, customer service at CHG is about helping customers.

“We’re trying to make everybody feel good,” says Grubbs. “If something’s not right, we just want to get to the bottom of the problem and say, ‘Hey, we’re here for you. Don’t you worry about it.’”

– Scott Wudel

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