Dixie Chopper earned the Most Improved Award in the 2016 Equipment Dealers Assn.’s annual Dealer-Manufacturer Relations Survey Report — the second year in a row the company achieved that recognition.
Chris Vernon, Dixie Chopper’s vice president and general manager, shares what’s behind the recognition.
On areas of improvement and making changes: Our top three areas of improvement were: overall satisfaction, product quality and marketing and advertising support. The managers in each department at Dixie Chopper review the scores and discuss with their teams how to drive improvement. A great example is in marketing. This year, we partnered with Willie Robertson of Duck Commander and built marketing campaigns around that partnership. The dealers responded very positively to the campaign and marketing was one of our largest areas of improvement in the survey.
On rankings that matter most: Besides overall rankings, manufacturer response to dealer needs/concerns matter most to Dixie Chopper. It is important that we listen to our dealer partners and that they know we are listening. Relative to the other brands, this is one of our higher rated areas, which tells me that our customer-facing employees are listening and the dealers have noticed.
On recent significant changes: One of the biggest improvements is the availability of spare parts. When Dixie Chopper struggled a few years ago, this was a big challenge for our dealers. We have improved the availability of parts greatly, which allows the dealers, and us, to focus our energies on serving our customers and growing our businesses.
On initiatives for the coming year: For a company our size, we have a very good dealer portal that helps us transact business with the dealers and communicate information to them. We continue to make improvements to the site and add additional features. A recent example is the addition of an online chat functionality as a way to ask our customer service team questions. For many, this is a convenient and efficient way to interact with our team.
The overall message is that the team here is working very hard to continually improve our service to our dealers and our end users. We greatly appreciate the dealers noticing the results of our efforts and are honored by the Most Improved award.
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