Service Support Specialists Power Up Great Service

One of the key talents of great customer service is flexibility. The ability to quickly react to changing situations is a goal for any business, but it is vital in the service industries, and nowhere more so than in our industry, the foodservice equipment repair industry. When one of our customers calls for service, it has a very high probability of being urgent, which means we need to be both dynamic and agile in our ability to meet the needs of these customers.

One of the ways General Parts Group has addressed this need was by looking at its office-based staff and the different roles they performed. It was important to start here because the success of our customer service is to a large extent dictated by how well our service orders are booked and scheduled. General Parts had been following a very traditional model with most branches having the roles of dispatch, warehouse, and parts. Having consulted with the local managers and office teams, it was decided that one way of becoming more flexible was to merge these three roles into one, creating a new role with the title of Service Support Specialist.

This new role was launched in January 2021 and since that time General Parts has been cross-training, which by itself has been hugely positive. As you can imagine there have been quite a lot of ‘I always wondered why’ and ‘oh, that makes way more sense now’ which from a teamwork perspective is awesome. This process has created a lot of positive energy and has opened the door for our team members to have a broader, more varied, and more rewarding career.  When we need to recruit it has helped here too, as we are able to attract more well-rounded industry people who are looking for a challenge. A good case in point is our new team member (pictured) in Cleveland. Gilberto comes to us from the restaurant supply industry with 12 years of experience. Welcome, Gilberto!

However, this story is not about us, it is about great service. This new role means we can offer our customers better service. This new level of flexibility and training improves our overall ability to service our customers through having a deeper overall understanding of their needs, it also speeds up service through interconnected thinking, and last of all removes bottlenecks.

If you are interested in a career at General Parts, be sure to visit our careers page here; https://generalparts.com/careers/ We are an expanding business and a great home for people looking for career development. We always want to hear from talented people who have what it takes to deliver great service.