Customers

Aebi Schmidt customers include municipalities and public administrative authorities, airports, business service providers, the agricultural sector as well as the military and the industrial sectors. Aebi Schmidt has many years of experience with these customer groups and is characterised by close proximity to all customers.

These contacts are fostered not least by our attendance to trade fairs (e.g. Inter Airport 2011 in Munich, Suisse Public 2011 in Bern, Agritechnica 2011 in Hannover), an image film, dealer conferences, customer journals in countries where Aebi Schmidt holds its own sales subsidiaries as well as personal visits to customers. As a new approach, Aebi Schmidt is also using its own YouTube channel. This is how Aebi Schmidt intends to take care of its customers and fulfil the high requirements on its own services.

Competent application thanks to expert training

Being an innovative system supplier, good customer relations also means to Aebi Schmidt the professional training of vehicle and product users to ensure their optimum application. For example, Aebi Schmidt conducted training courses to obtain the “sweeper driving licence” and created a broad basis for training courses and workshops based on the “train the trainer” concept. Product introductions to the Swingo 200+ compact sweeper were organised and about 150 persons participated in sales training courses.

Satisfied customers

Since 2010, Aebi Schmidt has been measuring the satisfaction of its customers on an annual basis. The rating categories include product quality, customer care & service, sales & marketing as well as order processing. More than 5000 customers are asked to provide feedback in each survey. The results indicate a high level of satisfaction with the customer service; product quality and function also received excellent ratings. The delivery period of spare parts was considerably improved in 2011: 88.5% of all customers gave a positive feedback (previous year: 82.2%). In this category, it became evident that a distinction needs to be made between the delivery period of spare parts and that of products and machines. The survey revealed certain room for improvement regarding the delivery period of products, which is why Aebi Schmidt will be placing special emphasis on continually improving its services in this area in the upcoming year.

Improved products thanks to customer feedback

In order to be able to directly integrate aspects that are of particular interest to the customers into the product development, Aebi Schmidt introduced an end-of-season meeting between the purchase, development and product management departments in 2011. Improvement measures were defined for all machine types, also taking account of the feedback given by customers. Furthermore, the warranty management process introduced in 2010 ensures that all information relating to warranty claims is forwarded by the sales subsidiaries to the production factories, so that the quality improvements can directly be integrated into the production process.

Safety and quality

At Aebi Schmidt, only products complying with the high safety and health standards are allowed to leave the factory. From development to application and disposal of the products, the relevant safety measures are taken into account. In addition, all products are subjected to a final inspection and three product audits were conducted in the year under review. Just as the inspection of the compliance of the products with the general statutory requirements and standards, these revealed excellent results. Minor defects that are not relevant to quality were easily rectified.