De-risking Britain’s fleets – Tructyre launches major rebrand

Multi-brand commercial fleet specialist Tructyre is part of the global Michelin group and Euromaster family. As is the case for many companies, Tructyre has found the past 12 months challenging, and it has focused on managing the impacts of the pandemic and helping to keep customers moving throughout the crisis.

Tructyre has also devoted its attention to future plans, and this month launched a major re-brand together with a new core strategy for helping customers: de-risking Britain’s fleets. Nick Harley, managing director of Tructyre, explains: “The way we operate is unique in the market and it was important that we had an identity and brand that clearly demonstrates the value that we can bring to customers. ‘De-risking Britain’s fleets’ is a way of defining what we do in a distinctive way. By deploying our expertise and national coverage, we protect the tyres of commercial fleets across the country, and that protects our customers’ operations.”

According to Harley, de-risking Britain’s fleets’ refers to Tructyre’s way of “defining what we do in a distinctive way.” He elaborates: “By deploying our expertise and national coverage in maintaining tyres, supplying tyres and dealing with tyre emergencies, we take the risk out of Britain’s fleets. By protecting the tyres of commercial fleets across the country, we protect those fleets’ operations. As one of our new adverts states ‘if we don’t deliver, neither do you.’”

The rebrand follows the successful transition to a single, national call handling and administration office, the new Customer Experience Centre in Gateshead. Tructyre set up the new Centre to be as Covid-19 safe as possible and even managed to train new recruits face-to-face by implementing rigorous health and safety measures in a specially designed training centre.

Multi-skilled team

The managing director reports that the new team is “settling in well” at the Customer Experience Centre after it became fully operational at the start of February. The centre handles calls from customers across Britain, schedules work with our depots, resolves queries, processes jobs and creates invoices for all Tructyre activities.

“One of the objectives of setting up the new Customer Experience Centre was to make sure that we had a multi-skilled team capable of being able to manage a number of different elements of the job,” comments Harley. “Having one team in one place has made it much easier for our people to work together, answer customer queries more quickly and provide an overall better – and consistent – customer experience.”

Tructyre’s Customer Experience Centre became fully operational at the start of February

The most logical option

Harley, who joined Tructyre in September 2019 following its merger with the commercial arm of ATS Euromaster after its purchase by Michelin, has already witnessed a number of changes within the company. “The key thing is that we have created a business combining the best from both organisations that covers the whole of Britain,” he elaborates. “We take pride in being Britain’s only single-ownership commercial tyre management service provider, and while we are a part of the global Michelin group and Euromaster family, we run a multi-brand, national operation, that we think delivers the best of both worlds to our customers.”

The switch to a central call centre was a major change for Tructyre, but not a step into the unknown. The company had set up a single call centre of its national customers about a year earlier. “We gained a much greater understanding from that experience of how a national operating model should work and the success of that team, which was based in Gateshead, was one of the reasons we chose the area for our new Customer Experience Centre.

“Even before the coronavirus crisis and the impact on the UK and global economy, we have been developing plans for the future of the business, Harley continues. “We focused on the best way to improve customer service, provide a good working environment for our teams and be cost effective to give the best value to customers and our shareholders. Obviously, the pandemic has not helped any of us in the haulage industry, but centralising our back office and call centre functions into one location was the most logical option to help us push forward.”

We’ve learned a lot

As mentioned, Tructyre needed to set up its new Customer Experience Centre to be as COVID-19 safe as possible. Nick Harley describes operations during the pandemic as challenging, both in terms of its impact upon operations as well as the need to support customers through the crisis.

“We’ve learned a lot during the coronavirus crisis. As well as our disaster recovery and business continuity planning, we also had to be ready to enable some people to work from home if needed to ensure we continued to support our front line teams. Most of our people need to be in work to work, but together with our safe working practices, it did give us another option for working during a pandemic.”

Consistency of service

According to Nick Harley, the greatest benefit that Tructyre customers gain from the company’s transition to a large, national organisation is consistency of service. “Wherever they need us, from one end of the country to another, they know that they will get the same service from us. That is down to the consistent training of our people and that’s another benefit of being a part of the global Michelin Group. Michelin are leaders in training and all of our Technicians are fully trained for both roadside work with an accredited licence to fit qualification. Plus, Tructyre has been in the business for 25 years now, and together with over 55 years’ experience from ATS and Euromaster, we know a thing or two about commercial tyres. That’s backed up by our customers who rated our Technicians’ knowledge as 9/10 in a recent survey.

“And being a large company, at least in commercial tyre terms, we have the processes and procedures in place to ensure that we can always operate 24/7/365. For example, we have a backup office just minutes from our Customer Experience Centre where we can transfer our people in the event of a disaster striking our new office. You just can’t have that level of backup and confidence as a smaller organisation.”

In an exciting place

When asked what the future looks like for Tructyre, Harley responds that the company is now “in an exciting place” after a difficult couple of years for the business. “We are constantly improving how we work; we updated our processes ahead of setting up our Customer Experience Centre and have adopted continuous improvement practices, so this isn’t a one-off.

“We’re also working with established tyre system providers to use new technology to improve our services to customers. We are not out of the pandemic yet, but we are seeing signs of recovery in the haulage industry. And we have a long-term business strategy that will ensure we offer the best service possible to customers, now and in the future.”