GiTi launches GT Assist
During December GiTi Tire (UK) Ltd. launched its commercial vehicle roadside service assistance programme throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland. The so-called soft launch of the programme began on 1 December with pre-launch information released during November. Afterwards the company’s four key regional salespeople visited 98 per cent of the company’s dealer partners in the month that followed. The soft launch is now being backed up with complete nationwide implementation and a “big push” across the UK and Ireland. Tyres & Accessories met with GiTi Tire (UK) sales and marketing director Truck and Bus, Tony McHugh and marketing director Europe – Commercial Tires, Peter Foulkes to find out more.
The new GT Assist is described as solely focusing on helping the company and its GT Radial partners better engage with fleets. Anecdotal reports suggest they like the product, but before now the question has reportedly been – what about service integration? GT Assist is operating solely with the company’s GT Radial brand.
GT Assist’s UK operation is actually the second deployed by GiTi in Europe. The first was rolled out in Italy during 2012. Further national programmes are currently in progress in France, the Benelux countries and Germany and are expected to be up and running during the first half of 2013.
How it works…
The new GT Assist programme is built on a back office structure provided by Infleet and connecting with RACA (RAC commercial assistance) for the servicing side of things. In practice Trevor Trucker will either phone his normal tyre dealer or the GT Assist 0845 number in the hypothetical event of a tyre going. The voice at the end of the phone will answer GT Assist in either case. Let’s take an example of the haulier calling the 0845 number. After receiving the call, RACA’s system kicks in and allocates the work to the nearest of the 180 dealer points in the GT Radial partner network. The system prompts them to call the depot and check stock. In the event that that branch doesn’t have the correct tyre in stock they will re-allocate the job to the next nearest dealer. At every stage of this process, Tony McHugh emphasises, the focus is on customer service and so the allocation of work to the next nearest dealer will only take place in the event that the depot a) has the tyre in stock and b) can attend in the quickest time and within a maximum of 90 minutes. The 90 minute cut off point has reportedly been selected in order to put GT Assist on a par with the best in class. However a 90 minute maximum is simply that – a maximum. Tony McHugh explains that in one recent case the system selected a partner that could attend within 40 minutes.
All this can now be monitored on an iPad thanks to a special app designed to enable GiTi’s management and sales team to monitor progress and help partners receive business effectively. One feature of this is the ability to let dealers know why they refused business within 24 hours of this taking place. This system is in place now, but the next goal is to increase the speed and efficiency of this service, reducing feedback time to just two hours by the end of January 2013.
You may remember that GiTi first shared plans for an Assist network back in 2007. Back then the programme sported a largely orange logo, which has now been re-designed to – amongst other things – reflect GT Radial’s corporate red, white and blue. However, apart from the scale of GiTi’s influence in the UK being significantly higher now than it was five years ago, the company has not changed its GT Assist approach too much. What’s different is that, as far as the company is concerned, the time is now right to fill its service gap and take another step towards “fair size” fleets with the company’s new tyre, retread and now GT Assist in hand. There is even talk of GiTi UK approaching fleets directly with a view to winning more business for GT Radial partners.
In addition to winning more business for partners, adopting this approach also offers strategic advantages for GiTi. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, rolling out the Assist programme will really help GiTi with sales retention in the commercial vehicle sector. The strategy is to help offer like-for-like replacement of its products and there are signs that this is already working with something like 99 per cent of tyres fitted through the programme during December said to be GT Radial products. Without Assist this replacement figure could have been somewhere in the region of 50 per cent. The second benefit is sales growth, which has reportedly come as something of a surprise to managers. The word is that some are now asking for GT Radial and particularly the company’s GTR 990 REE Tread, potentially increasing sales. McHugh however insists that Assist is not about directly increasing sales, but rather about improving service.
Related news:
Comments