Have you ever asked yourselves why your customers prefer you as opposed to others?
Optimising costs and business processes is important and it is equally essential to have high-level tools and technologies. Reflecting on this issue, however, I realised that there are also other factors that motivate a customer to choose one supplier over another.
Constantly investing in renewing the range of machines is something that we have always done and I cannot deny that this choice – although often financially challenging – has brought us fantastic results. Then there is the reduction of production time (and therefore often of costs) and the improvement of the final quality of our products. Having said that though it must also be considered that in general our competitors do the same. I do not therefore believe that customers who decide to trust us do so only because we have a good range of machines (and I think this opinion can be extended to many other industrial sectors).
And so I will return to the original question:
Why do our customers choose us and not others?
If I think of MICROingranaggi in particular, I believe the correct way to answer this question is: because we are able to offer a complete service. Our service, in fact, includes design, prototyping, production, assembly, testing and quality control; in other words, we are involved in the entire cycle. And a supplier that includes in its offer all these activities is not particularly easy to find.
It is easier in fact to use a design firm. Or a good manufacturer who is able to perfectly produce a custom piece, as long as the initial design is created by the customer (or by someone on their behalf).
Market needs now increasingly focus on the use of companies who offer both products and services, thereby ensuring a single point of contact to manage the entire process, from design to finished piece.
But when it comes to products and services offered jointly, we must – even more so – consider another factor: a customer must inevitably trust their supplier.
And it is trust itself that must be an absolute precondition for a good working relationship.
At MICROingranaggi for example, virtually every work relationship is based on trust; a trust that stems not only from our work but also from what has been and is our business strategy, which is based on solid and constructive principles, and that often takes its inspiration from the needs of customers themselves. When we need to decide what to invest in, for example, we might not simply reach that decision on the basis of a specific customer order but of course we will take it into account.
It is no surprise that a customer chooses to use a supplier because they have full confidence in them. But I believe that in recent years, especially following the Big Crisis, the “trust factor” has assumed even more importance.
After what has happened in the last decade, in fact, customer needs increasingly point towards – in my opinion – using suppliers who are able to convey stability, and not just in the short term but also from a long-term perspective.
