“Must Be More Than a Good Service” – Lodestar in Business

Good service is not enough; in order to succeed, businesses must be helpful to customers when they are in need.

Business has never been easy, especially in today’s increasingly fierce competition. So what do businesses should do to survive and grow in the market?

The answer is – Businesses must be helpful to customers when they are in need.

The quality of products and services you provide to customers must always be guaranteed to the highest level – But this is just a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for a successful business.

Ms.Truong Thi Uyen My, senior specialist of Customs Broker Department, stated: “Over 20 years of serving customers, I realized that the prerequisite for customers to think about us, to choose us among the multitude of competitors is: Are we helpful for customers when they need us?”

To explain why, she shared a recent case, by which she and her colleagues have won the trust of customers as well as business opportunity with enthusiastic, timely and effective support when they need it.
Solar Park 1 and 2 solar power projects are under same investor and EPC contractor, the logistics part was contracted to 2 service providers: Vantage and another logistics service provider (company “X”); both have to match the very harsh time frame for customs clearance and delivery.
According to the original plan, company X was assigned to apply for tax exemption master list, full-set declaration list and customs inspection at site for the two projects Solar 1 and 2, as well as customs clearance and delivery to job site for Solar 1; while Vantage was only responsible for handling customs clearance and transporting to the job site for Solar 2.

However, when we start the project, we realize that the way company X handling tax exemption master list, full-set list was not the best way and had potential risk for project owner could not enjoy tax exemption for many equipment that they should be able to enjoy legally, Vantage had proactively proposed our solution and got approval from the investor and EPC contractor to provide full logistics service for Solar 2 project (instead of responssible for customs clearance and delivery to jobsite as originally planned).

Since the first shipments arrived, the Team always proved our expertise on customer service focusing, ensuring timeliness, safety and accuracy for all tasks that we handled. Thank to this, Vantage gained more and more trust from customer; we were regularly being asked to give advice or support to company X when they encountered difficulties in their scopes of work.

Then there was an unexpected incident occurred. Company X had made a rather serious professional mistake in the process of customs declaration which leaded to the fact that they could not prove the integrity of the goods during transportation; resulting in the customs deciding to hold 13 containers of equipment at the port for further inspection, while the project was deadly in need of these containers. Company X was not capable to convince and prove the intergrity of goods with customs.

Customer asked to help them solving this problem. This was meaning that we had to help our “competitor” doing their job. It also meant that we needed to help without knowing about our “reward”. But we don’t hesitate. When our customer needs help, just do it and give customer our highest effort, using our rich experience and knowledge accumulated through various types of projects to prove and convince customs officers about the integrity and correctness of goods. Late on same day, Vantage got customs’ release and let company X to pick up and deliver shipment to jobsite.

After this incident, the customer recognized how benefitable service is, and eventually, had decided to shift all scope of both projects Solar 1 and 2.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *