What’s it like to be one of your customers? How does it feel to be responsible for scrubbing and buffing thousands — even millions — of square feet of floors each day? And most of all, what does it feel like to have that huge responsibility, and have one of your main floor machines suddenly break down at the beginning of a cleaning shift? If you’re beginning to feel a horrible, sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach, then imagine how they must feel.

Now, the million-dollar question: Does the worry and stress your customers feel dissipate when they remember that you are their floor machine distributor? Though it’s difficult to be objective, it’s a question that distributors need to ask themselves. As Sanitary Maintenance found out in a series of interviews with end users, customers know when their distributors are familiar with the ins and outs of the floor machines they sell, and to them, that makes all the difference.

“My advice to every distributor is to simply take care of your customers,” says Alfredo Abad, director of custodial services for the University of Denver. “You don’t take care of your customer with gifts or some special deal that’s done under the table — you take care of them by finding out their needs, and working to get them the floor machines that will best meet those needs.”

What Do They Expect?
When distributors demonstrate that they have a command of the nuances and technical aspects that separate one floor machine from another, they’ll have a customer for life, says Abad. “Before I came to the University of Denver, I worked at another campus for 20 years, and I had three really good distributors who really knew floor machines and proved themselves to me over time,” he says. “When I came to the University of Denver, I brought their business with me. They were all close enough to make the deliveries and help with service, so I didn’t want to start over with a whole new distributor relationship.”

As everyone in the sanitary supply industry knows, a quality floor machine doesn’t come cheap, so end users want to know that a distributor won’t leave them high and dry if something goes wrong. For purchasing agents like Michael Smith, who holds dual titles — director of housekeeping and associate director of facilities — at Drexel University, Philadelphia, one bad experience with a distributor can permanently extinguish a business relationship.

“I had an experience one time, early on in my career, when I just took for granted that certain things were covered by the service agreement and warranty,” he says. “I got burned, because the distributor told me only certain parts were covered in the agreement. However, it did teach me a valuable lesson about what I needed to find out up front.”

Needless to say, Smith stopped using that distributor and so did Drexel University. Sometimes misunderstandings are unavoidable, but distributors are wise to carefully explain any and all service agreements or warranties. Better to find out if the machine is really a good fit for the customer and gain a long-term relationship than to give a customer the wrong machine and make a one-time sale.

Many end users also ask to try a floor machine out for a day or two before they actually put down the money for such a major purchase.

“I won’t purchase any new equipment unless I get a demo for a few days,” says Abad. “I’ve had demos break down on me right away, so I need to make sure that the product is going to stand up to the rigorous demands that my staff puts on it. A service agreement is important, but so is finding the most durable machine.”

Service Sells
From an end user’s perspective, there’s something even better than an air-tight warranty, and that’s a distributor who bends over backward to get a customer out of a jam with an exceptional service department.

“I won’t even deal with a distributor who doesn’t have a parts department,” says Smith, who has been involved in the janitorial service industry for 25 years. “If a floor machine or an extractor goes down, it’s usually a matter of getting a part. The distributor has to understand that that’s our lifeline, and they have to be able to get that part quickly.”

Universities and colleges need distributors with competent service departments, but they’re not the only ones. Such distributors are perhaps an even more vital partner to building service contractors (BSC).

“As a contractor, the cost of having a floor machine break down can be tremendous,” says Faruk Atasever, president of UHS Floor Care, an Oakville, Ontario-based BSC. “A contractor really needs to work with a distributor who has a quality maintenance department,” he says. “Not only does it make the customer feel better, but it’s necessary to keeping a contractor’s cash flow going. If even one floor machine breaks down, that can impact revenue.”

Atasever also believes that it’s important for distributors to train their customers in basic repairs and service, so that they don’t need to waste time for every minor maintenance issue. “A distributor should teach customers to make small maintenance repairs, so then the customer can teach other workers to make those repairs, and they can be done on site without returning to the service department and losing valuable time.”

Distributors who train their customers well will often find that their business with those customers will grow. “The more a distributor can be a resource, the more valuable he is to us, and the more we’ll keep buying from him,” adds Atasever.

Help Is On The Way...ASAP
While there are minor repairs that can be taken care of on site, there are also major repairs that require more work for distributors. Regardless, end users need to get their machines up and running in order to do their job. That’s why distributors who can do major repairs, and do them quickly are a godsend for end users.

“Immediate service is very important,” says Atasever. “If something breaks down, I can’t operate the machine and I can’t do my job. I need someone who will show up at 3 a.m. if I need it. When a machine is broken, all I want to see is the service person walk through the door, and I want to know that I’m important to the distributor who sends him or her.”

It’s true that sometimes distributors are sleeping or they just can’t make it to a site at 3 a.m., but when they can deliver and fix a floor machine at an odd hour, it means everything to the customer. “You can’t put a price on having someone who you can call at even 6 or 7 p.m.,” says Abad. “Distributors who are concerned about your business and are willing to come out and fix a machine at night are extremely valuable, so we’ll reward them with continued business.”

Like Abad, many end users clean at night, so that’s the most likely time for floor machines to experience problems. “Our main cleaning shift is from about 6 p.m. to early the next morning,” he says. “If we need something fixed, then I need to be able to call my distributor during that time.”

Smith knows all about needing floor machines fixed immediately. Prior to working for Drexel University, he was director of housekeeping for the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania for 15 years. Every day, he was responsible for more than $250,000 worth of floor scrubbers, and each one had to be available for a different part of the hospital. “My entire floor care program was completely based on floor scrubbers,” he says. “If anything happened to one of those scrubbers, I needed someone to come in and get it running.”

Smith says that certain end users, like hospital managers, can’t afford to wait when a floor machine is being fixed. Unfortunately, some distributors think that a floor isn’t a high priority, he adds. “They’ll say, ‘I can’t get out there for two or three days,’ and I have to tell them that that’s just not good enough when we’re talking about maintaining a university or a hospital.”

Of course, it’s good for end users to have a strategic plan for what they’ll do if a machine breaks down and the distributor can’t fix it immediately. For that reason, some end users who maintain demanding buildings make sure they have backups for all their floor machines — or at least for many of them. This can be a great selling point for distributors.

“We have between 15 and 20 floor machines that we use to clean and maintain about 2.5 million square feet at the University of Denver,” says Abad. “If one breaks down, we also have at least one backup that will get us through for a little while. We still need the distributor to fix the machine as soon as possible, but it gets us through so that we can finish the shift.”

Don’t Give Up! Keep Calling
To most end users, long-term communication and concern from a distributor is just as important as a warranty or even a competent service department.

“I’ve had distributors come in and have a good product — a really durable, efficient floor machine, and they convince me to purchase it,” says Abad. “But after I make the purchase, I never hear from them again. It’s just a one-time shot, and it becomes obvious that the floor-machine sale was all they were interested in.”

In those situations, Abad usually finds out if one of his current distributors knows anything about the new floor machine, and he often purchases it from one of them instead.

“What I really like about my current distributors is that they’re concerned with me getting the products and tools I need to do my job effectively,” he adds. “If my employees are cleaning a building with several floors and no elevator, then my distributor knows not to sell me a battery-powered floor machine for that building, because it will be too heavy to carry up and down the stairs.”

When distributors make regular phone calls to their customers — even just to find out how the floor machine is working — end users take notice, and they realize that their distributor wants them to succeed.

“It can almost be like buying a car,” says Atasever. “I mean, I can easily spend $3,000 or $4,000 on a floor machine, and it makes me feel better if I know that the distributor is still going to be around after I make the purchase. Even if nothing is wrong with the machine, it’s good to get a call and know that I have someone to contact in case something does go wrong.”

For his job at Drexel, Smith now purchases more than just floor machines; he also buys buses and shuttles for the university. “I learned how to find good suppliers from my experience working with loyal distributors in the cleaning industry,” he says. “I learned to find people who know all about what they were selling and who are there when you need them.”




POSTED ON: 3/1/2005