Listening to customers—something we’ve always prized at New Pig—takes on fresh meaning in an age when online outrage leads a major brand like Tropicana to pull new packaging within two months of introducing it.

Orange you glad you have such power?

Using means like this blog, Twitter and more, our sizable ears will get even bigger—the better to hear you with.

Image © Simone van den Berg – Fotolia.com

A local customer (call them Company X) called about a spill this afternoon. Customer Service immediately started working with Distribution on an emergency delivery.  Tim in Facilities was even working on getting the order on a New Pig truck until we confirmed that it could ship with one of our shipping partners, Ward Trucking. The Ward Truck got there so fast with the PIG® products needed that the people at the front gate of Company X hadn’t been informed yet that the delivery was coming. A Pigger in our Distribution area placed a call to Company X to please open the gate.

Appreciative emails started flying around here, aimed largely at Piggers in Distribution for making this happen. Ya gotta love this email from Janet in Distribution:

Thanks for all the praise but keep in mind “THIS IS WHAT WE DO” not just for [Company X] but for all of our customers.  Monday, [Company Y] had a spill and needed our product ASAP. We got the call at 3:00 and the product was on a truck leaving New Pig at 3:45. We appreciate our customers and give them all the same New Pig service.

Right on, Janet: THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

I’m renewing my (purely professional) bribe-enhanced call to hear from a hard hatted woman from among our customers. I’m a fan of the push to attract women to trade and technical careers—just in the interest of expanding horizons. No one should rule out a particular career only because of tradition.

As shown in the chart below from the Current Population Survey, before a woman will picture herself in a manufacturing plant, she’ll picture herself in a school, college, hospital, clinic, bank, insurance agency, store, traditional office, resort or hotel. All fine places to work—unless you’d be happier somewhere else.

There’s one of our famous free gifts in it for you. It would only take a fifteen-minute call. I can avoid giving your name and/or company if need be. Email me or just call New Pig (1-800-992-8871 for the switchboard) and ask for Keith.

About this post’s headline: Don’t get me wrong. I’m happily married to a librarian.

But I just read about Hard Hatted Women, a group trying to attract women to trade and technical careers. HHW has high hopes that women will benefit from President-elect Obama’s proposed big hike in public construction.

Surely our customers include some hard-hatted women who are veterans at keeping workplaces running. I’d love to hear from one (or more!) about her work.

There’s one of our famous free gifts in it for you. It would only take a fifteen-minute call. I can avoid giving your name and/or company if need be. Email me or just call New Pig (1-800-992-8871 for the switchboard) and ask for Keith.

Recently I had one of those big a-haaaaaaaa moments while reading Emotions Are the Key to Sales Success, an article by Larry Pinci and Phil Glosserman.

They outline “The 3 Feelings that Motivate People to Do Business … the three feelings, universal to the human experience, that people need in order to feel motivated to do business with someone.” They are:

1. Trust. People feel they can depend on you—that you mean what you say and you’ll do what you say.

2. Confidence. They feel you have the goods, the know-how, the competence, and the expertise to meet their needs.

3. The feeling of being taken care of. They feel you have their interests at heart and that you’ll take care of them throughout the transaction and beyond if necessary.

The real a-haaaaaaaa moment occurred when I thought about some recent comments made by customers about their experiences with the folks here at New Pig. Here are a couple examples:

I deal with many vendors but never get the kind of service from any other company that I get from New Pig … Every time I call, I feel like there is a friend on the other end of the phone.

and this one…

I would come to New Pig to purchase even if it cost me a little more just because of the service rep and how she treats me. I may not be a big account with New Pig, but she treats me like I am.

In both of these examples, an emotional bond has been established which in turn leads to sales and more importantly to customer satisfaction. We truly love our customers, and it is genuine and shows. It isn’t just lip service but the real emotional bond that customers value and respond to.

Hey, if you’re like me and at times baffled by technology, you’ll probably relate to this message. Being of the “boomer” generation (without giving away my age) I often feel like a “singleton.” Singleton in Bloggers’ terms means “objects that exist globally and are the only one of their class.” :)

However, I don’t think I’m alone. Below is a really funny example of someone just like me, lost at times in a technical world. Check it out, it’s tooooo funny!

How does that relate to the New Pig World? Well, when it comes to products, PIG® products are relatively simple to choose and use. In fact in a recent survey of our customers, New Pig was given a 9.5 rating on a 10-point scale for “ease of use of products.”

And for those needing a little more help, we have a staff of PIGGERS here waiting to help. Give us a call today (1-800-HOT-HOGS®) and speak to one of our capable Service Reps. If your question baffles your rep, we have our staff of Technical Service Reps who will be able to answer your question and point you in the right direction.

Signing out now, time to get to work …

I started at New Pig in Customer Service for 9 months taking calls at 1-800-HOT-HOGS®, then I switched to my current job, where I call customers to find out how they’re using PIG® products. I help customers figure out how close they are to qualifying for special pricing programs. I call companies ranging from giants (I called Honeywell today) to not-giants (think Joe’s Construction).

Customers love New Pig. Okay, not everyone. Half of the customers I talked to today said stuff like “You guys are great to work with” and “We love your product.” The other half were more focused on nuts-and-bolts stuff like pricing. But no one was mean or anything. You do get those calls sometimes, when you catch a person on the wrong day or whatever.

Once in a while, a call is just kind of weird. When I was in Customer Service, I had one call where a customer wanted to change the billing address from his home to his place of business because–well, I want to keep the customer’s confidentiality, so I’ll stop right there! Make up your own reason! 

It’s toward the end of the year, so some customers are out of money to purchase with, but they like it that we’re putting ourselves in their minds for next year.