Getting Feedback and Making Changes

Obtaining feedback, especially negative feedback, is critical for a business to improve, grow and change for the better. We recently asked our customers for their feedback on areas where we can improve. We do this once a year , and every year it is this feedback that helps us improve as a steel service center.

One of the common suggestions was that we did not always carry enough of a certain inventory on our floor.  Our management team discussed which steel types and why.  We agreed upon a dollar amount and added that much of common inventory items to the floor.  The goal was to stock more of their desired items while balancing our inventory turns.  As we seek analyze our bread and butter items each month, we can measure if we meet our customers expectations.

Feedback is something that should not only come from your customers, but from employees within your business. Currently, management and key employees from each segment of our business have been conducting brainstorming meetings to discuss the feedback from our customers to determine the causes of the problems within our process.  After identifying the areas where we need to improve, we have been brainstorming potential solutions. This process has led us to reevaluate the physical layout of our warehouse to determine how we can reduce the time it takes for customers to receive their steel shipment. While this process has been challenging, it is necessary. As Winston Churchill once said, “Criticism many not be agreeable, but is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to the unhealthy state of things.”

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