From Revolt to Results

Andrew Jones, the Technical Director at Axair Fans talks about their most recent disruptive campaign; We’re Revolting and specifically how their revolt has led to better results for customers in the industrial fan industry. 

I’ve gone into the reasons for our revolting images being scattered around everywhere over the last 6 months, and over that period I’ve spent a considerable amount of time discussing the positive outcomes of the messaging while out on customer visits. 

You see, it’s one thing to say something, but getting all those ducks in a row and delivering on them is another, entirely different beast. It takes a companywide collaboration on optimising sales processes, enquiry escalation, technical support hierarchies, and setting achievable service level agreements that every employee commits to. 

Firstly, Let’s discuss response times, an inherently unrecognised pain point for most customers in all industries. The meatiest enquiries are replied to and actioned, the small but profitable fish are handled a few days later, while those deemed too small are ignored, discarded with no response to even highlight to the customer that the supplier is unable to give a commercial offer. It’s a bit like applying for a job when you’re 16, if you have 10 years’ experience in coding at 16, you’ll be replied to, but a school leaver with no experience is ghosted, losing motivation and self-esteem with every failed application. When a simple reply to feedback on why they were deemed unsuccessful would go a long way on improving cv quality or actions to take up some volunteering to bolster the experience for example. 

Our proactive response times have been recognised wholeheartedly by our new and existing customers; the positive feedback is far greater when the issue is pointed out through visual messaging. It’s made customers recognise the value immediately when compared to what they’re used to. 

Secondly, I’ll touch on one of the most important aspects, technical support. I won’t blow my own trumpet, but I consider myself to be one of the niche fan men that have a unique and natural affinity for physics, and air or fluid movement. Just generally engineering problem solving, it gets me in my flow – meaning it’s where my energies lie best. Not in spreadsheets or analysing sales figures. In a strong man competition, I’m going to liken our pre and after sales technical support to the Stoltman brothers, consistent and likely to lead, you can place your bets and know you’ll probably win backing one of them. Customers recognise this too, they’ve gained a huge amount of trust in our team, that creates barriers to entry for competitors who can only offer price as their leading offer. What use a product without the presale’s selection, after sales technical and committed to service level response times on issues? It’s a difference between saving a few quid on each component, against getting a unit on site back up and running within a day compared to 6 or more weeks. 

I’d call it a result when we’re getting phone calls and emails requesting our “revolting service”, or compliments from brand new enquiries expressing how impressed they are that a simple, yet highly important aspect of response times has been identified and actioned for customer benefit flood in.