Trucks
The successful sale of a high performance tipper follows the same principle. In case of Volvo Trucks, being a premium segment truck, it makes the operators apprehensive. So it is important for the sales team to ensure that the client is informed about how to run the truck to achieve maximum profitability. The boost happens when the client is clear on what he gets for his investment.
The client Sri Raja Rajeswari Constructions Pvt. Ltd. (SRRC) is into irrigation projects and one of the first customers to buy Volvo Tippers for irrigation projects. However, he never really got to experience the full performance of the Volvo Tippers and soon was apprehensive of Volvo Tippers as a solution for irrigation projects. Since irrigation projects were small tenure projects and low cost equipment was preferred. The industry also felt that irrigation projects did not require big trucks.
SRRC had many small tippers in its fleet. This led to high density of vehicles on the site, which led to accidents. The customer did not achieve the high fuel efficiency as promised. They were having issues with the tail door and few such irritants. The productivity was hampered due to inefficient transport operations.
“Customers are volatile in nature. No customer will pay the price, if they do not see value. We cannot sell a tipper and expect the customer to run it. We need to constantly be present to help them maximize the productivity. My objective was to ensure that we delivered more than what we promised.” SUMANTH BOLLAM
Sumanth knew that communication is key to resolve any issue and here was a lack of communication. SRRC was beginning to look at alternative solutions.
Sumanth sensed the discomfort and quickly organized meetings and telecoms with Mr. Naveen, the fleet-in-charge of SRRC and Volvo’s Support team. The agenda was to understand the issues, resolve them and at the same time educate the customer on how to work with a Volvo Tipper and maximize the strengths of a Volvo. Sumanth sought the assistance of Mr. Mithra from Volvo and his team and ensured that the issues were sorted. Slowly the pain points were ironed out and failures reduced. Sumanth knew that he had to act and deliver something more than that what was promised. This was the only way to repose confidence of the client in Volvo. He first made sure that Mr. Naveen attended the Operational Managers’ Meet (OMM) in Bangalore to strengthen the relationship and also give him hands on experience of the Volvo tipper.
Sumanth then focused on improving Operational efficiencies at site where fuel efficiency and productivity were seen as challenges. With the help of the marketing team, he managed to track the turnaround time at his site. He presented the customer with the best practices being adopted by other Coal OB contractors by organizing a site visit. Here he explained to the SRRC team on the advantage of grading the haul roads to reduce trip time and improve uptime.
He initiated SRRC to use Dynafleet and started tracking fleet performance for a month and had discussions with the fleet manager on the overall performance. Using Dynafleet showed that the drivers were not adopting the Best Driving Practices. Mr. Bollam deputed a driver trainer and started tracking the vehicle & driver-wise performance for a month. A lot of recommendations were enforced for road safety; no mobile phone usage while driving, installing convex mirrors at turns, building side walls at above surface level roads, etc. So impressed were they with Dynafleet and Driver training that they purchased a USB port for every driver to record and driving performance was monitored.
With these changes SRRC noticed the fuel economy improve by almost 40%. Seeing measurable improvements the trust and conviction of Volvo Tippers were restored. To an extent that SRRC even asked Volvo to evaluate a railway project for feasibility of a Volvo solution.
The focus and attention given by Volvo Trucks is unmatched and for a major project Volvo Trucks are the best choice. The results of the efforts in improving FE & maintenance of haul roads have sustained till date. Sumanth is the face of Volvo for us as he coordinated between the teams and kept us informed of the progress. The suggestions about operational improvements given by Volvo are good and of great help.
MR. RAMU RAVURI, DIRECTOR,
SRI RAJA RAJESWARI CONSTRUCTIONS PVT. LTD. (SRRC)