5 minute read
CASE STUDY: CUSTOMER SERVICE
PERSONAL APPROACH
From promptly answering phones to solving issues — Sciencix befriends its customers, ensuring they both succeed.
Call laboratory parts provider Sciencix, and you’ll never wait on hold, listening to an automated recording that attempts to reassure you that your call is important. Instead, you’ll speak with a person in short order. “When that call comes in, it’s important,” says Lisa Bamford, Sciencix’s director of global marketing and business development. “If a part is $20 or $10,000, each caller is considered royalty. You don’t have to go through nine or 10 prompts to get someone. Nothing against those companies, but that will never be us. We invite customers to tell us what they need. If it’s not on our website, give us the specifics, and we can probably make it for you.”
Sciencix was founded in 1985 as CTS. Its high-quality maintenance and repair parts are comparable with original equipment from manufacturers. It has a 28,000-square-foot test lab at its Minnesota headquarters and an office in Cary, where it serves pharmaceutical and medical companies in and near Research Triangle Park. Its worldwide network stretches around the world. Its annual sales are more than $15 million. And it takes customer service seriously.
Sciencix’s list of high-pressure liquid chromatography consumables, which are used to manufacture pharmaceutical and biological products, includes tubing, vials and caps, filters, fittings and tools. Each is comparable to 10 name brands, including Hitachi and Waters. Customers order parts at all hours. “What’s interesting is we serve customers in more than 100 countries, and we take orders from all over the world, and we have customer relations employees that speak more than one language,” Bamford says. “So, even if it takes more time or more effort, it’s OK. We’ll take that time to be more personal.”
New employees are educated about company expectations. And while there is no formal handbook for interactions with the public, Bamford says there is a philosophy. “Part of our onboarding is across the board,” she says. “Some is specific to the role that person is coming into. But on Day One, we tell you about the company and the culture. While we don’t give them scripts to speak, their job is to make friends, first and foremost. How do you talk to your friends? How do you want your friends to talk to you? And we will place a new employee in a position where they’re shadowing and learning through osmosis, so they understand the experience we’re trying to create. When you call us, you’re not going to talk to someone who’s been outsourced.”
Extra effort creates lasting relationships. “When you get to know your customers, they open up to you about their careers and families, and you get to do life with them,” Bamford says. “And that makes our job more meaningful. When you’re invited into a
—Lisa Bamford
customer’s daily life, it’s more than just them placing an order. And you can’t achieve that if you aren’t practicing good customer service. It’s at the tip of the pyramid of what we do.”
Bamford says concern for customer success is at the heart of what Sciencix does. “And especially in customer service, if someone says their part hasn’t arrived or if it’s been damaged, we seek to get to the truth of whatever the issue is,” she says. “If a customer says a part is not performing right, we rst ask to assist them and see what’s going on, and we may nd out that they’ve tried to install it wrong. We never make assumptions. We want to nd out the truth about it.”
Sciencix’s president, Raj Bhandari, came to the United States from Nepal when he was 19 years old, searching for a better education. “He never thought he’d be president of a company, and this has been a dream beyond expectations,” Bamford says.
Sciencix’s Minnesota roots run deep, but Bamford says Bhandari wanted to grow the business. So, he traveled the country, visiting cities and searching for a place to expand. “RTP is where he wanted to set up camp,” she says. “It’s a very powerful hub in this industry. ere’s no shortage of opportunities. e question was should we move the entire business? at was explored. But the president said there were so many employees with families in Minnesota, and he didn’t want them to have to move. e goal is to grow this [Cary] location. We have plenty of talent to pull from.” e RTP location was established in 2019. It carries on Sciencix’s commitment to customer service, including making employees accessible to customers and personalizing every interaction. “When we answer the phone, it will be like ‘Hi, I’m Lisa. ank you for calling,’” Bamford says. “We want to establish that relationship early and make it personal. We work very hard to maintain that in a day and time when if people reach out to a business it can feel like casting a net into the abyss. No matter how large we get, we’ll always be like a small company where everyone knows everyone, and our customers can talk to a human being on the other end of the line.”
During the onset of the pandemic, while most companies were transitioning into safe mode, Sciencix decided to take a risk. “We created a strategic operating method where we kept very high levels of stock, and that’s against what people teach,” Bamford says. “ ey say, ‘Clear the shelves; clear the shelves,’” but our industry is very critical and time-sensitive. [Customers] need it yesterday. We knew it was a risk, but it paid o . Customers called to place that order, and we could o er same-day shipping, so when the supply chain became a struggle, it didn’t faze us. We were prepared to operate without any disruption. e customer truly is the heartbeat of this business. It’s a busy world. I get it. But isn’t it nice when someone can respond so quickly?” ■
Sciencix 110 Brady Court, Cary, NC 27511 952-895-8292 sciencix.com
