Late last year we conducted a Customer Satisfaction Survey and I wanted to share some reflections with you, our customers, on what we learned.

Swagelok continues to be driven by 6 core values established by our founder, with two of those being Customer Focus and Continuous Improvement. We take your feedback from these surveys very seriously and the overall findings were shared with our Sales and Internal teams to enable us to:

• Promptly address specific action items - 

- Our sales team has been meeting with customers who asked to learn more about a service offering or communicated a service issue they experienced. For example, our Buffalo office manager, Josh Ozug, joined one of our sales associates on a visit to a customer who expressed some concerns about product availability. The meeting helped Josh to better understand the customer’s concerns, directly address them and explain what positive measures had already been implemented.

• Implement any necessary process improvements -

- Not surprisingly, product availability and lead times were top of mind for many respondents. We understand the importance of avoiding down time, thus we have always followed Swagelok’s proactive stocking strategy such as forecasting and placing tubing orders 12 months out. But, following our practice of Continuous Improvement, we are looking for ways to improve availability.

We are now forecasting tubing needs 18 months out and actively placing orders. Last Monday we received 8 cases of stainless-steel tubing from orders placed months ago.

To increase order picking efficiencies for our shipping team, we are now stocking our most commonly ordered tubing on a new rack placed closest to our loading dock. In addition, we purchased 2 large, mobile tube staging units and moved our Scotsman cold saw from the assembly area to the tubing storage area (you can see our progress in the below message regarding facility tours).

We expect these changes to improve product availability and lead times.

• Personally Recognize associates who were specifically identified for providing a Differentiated Customer Experience -

- There were numerous comments acknowledging individual SWNY associates for going above and beyond for customers. All comments were shared across the organization. We greatly appreciate those who took the time to provide these comments as our team takes great pride in providing a Differentiated Customer Experience and such acknowledgement goes a long way.

Net Promoter Score = 85

We are again proud and humbled to have received a Net Promoter Score of 85 - based upon the scores provided for the question, ‘how likely are you to recommend Swagelok WNY’ (a score of 70 is considered exceptional across all industries).

Swagelok WNY has improved this customer rating from an 82 two years ago, which hopefully indicates our focus on customer satisfaction is working out…and, we will keep at it!

Additional Findings

• Customer Service, Swagelok’s Products, Response Time and Knowledge of Associates were the reasons cited most often in providing the above NPS score.
• Product Quality and Availability tied for most important to respondents. This speaks to Swagelok’s commitment to quality and the strength of its proactive stocking strategy.
• Increased demand for trainings – There were numerous requests for tube bending, valve selection, fitting installation, and orbital weld training.....good news, we can help with all of these! This is probably the result of the increasing amount of new hires companies are adding as well as a desire for training refreshers for existing teams.
• Product and Service awareness – From some customer comments it appears you would like more communication on new products and service offerings. So… we’ve created a new interactive line card that provides an ‘at-a-glance’ view of our complete offering of Products, Services and Solutions.

Charitable Donation

Lastly, a thank you goes out to those who participated in the survey. Swagelok WNY donated $10 per completed survey to the below organizations so you all played a part in helping our communities.

• Red Cross
• Salvation Army
• United Way

Thank you for your business.....

~Pete

Pete Jobling

President – Swagelok Western NY

[email protected]

A couple interesting statistics that stood out to me from our Customer Satisfaction Survey - 

1.   The number of respondents not aware of our assembly and on-site services:

·        23% of respondents were not aware SWNY built custom fabrications and assemblies

·        37% of respondents were not aware SWNY provided on-site services



2.   The number of customers interested in learning about our solutions:

·        42% of respondents are interested in learning more about at least 1 of our fabrication solutions

·        70% of respondents are interested in learning more about at least 1 of our on-site services

Our business and our solution offerings are always evolving so it’s likely some customers don’t realize everything we offer in addition to Swagelok products. I see this as an opportunity for us to strengthen the external communication regarding all the solutions available to help improve our customers' fluid systems.

I’m excited to see the number of respondents who are interested in hearing more about our assembly and on-site service capabilities. Over the past year plus we have made significant investments in our fabrication tools and our field engineering team to provide our customers with a greater array of fluid system solutions. With this expertise we can confidently ask customers, “What problem can I solve today?”

If your sales representative has not yet reached out to you, or if you have additional questions about anything, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Of course, you can always find out more about our complete portfolio of products and solutions at https://westny.swagelok.com

~Jeff

Jeff Namy

Vice President, Sales & Marketing

[email protected]

Think of us as your own local strategic resource.

Whether you need an extra set of hands or are tackling a highly complex project, we’ll remove the stress on your team and deliver a fully tested, leak-tight, ready-for-installation assembly.

With an experienced team of engineers and Swagelok-certified technicians, our fabrication and assembly services help customers:

• Streamline processes
• Remove variable labor costs
• Decrease waste and rework
• Improve safety

We approach the process with flexibility and precision - from initial concept, through P&ID, to a plug and play solution backed by Swagelok’s Limited Lifetime Warranty - Swagelok WNY is with you every step of the way.

We continue to invest in new tools and resources to expand our capabilities and improve efficiencies. In the past year we’ve installed an argon purge system, purchased a Scotsman circular cold saw, added Siegmund System workstations and digital inspection cameras.

A comprehensive description of our capabilities can be found on our web site, but here is just a sampling:

• Orbital Welding
• Tube Bending and Coiling
• Panel Assemblies & Enclosures
• Automated Ball Valves
• Sub-Assemblies

If you have an idea or a challenge, bring it to us. It's likely we've already solved it.