Last spring, we conducted another customer satisfaction survey of sawn timber customers in the European, APAC (Asia-Pacific), and MEA (Middle East and Africa) sales areas. We added a new question to the survey to gauge customers’ views on developing long-term cooperation.
“We wanted more opinions from our customers about what we should focus on in the future to improve cooperation,” says Vice President of Sales Services Tom Nickull.
The responses show customers want us to focus on availability, developing customer understanding, and expanding our product range in the long term. We received positive feedback about product quality, reliability, and good customer relationships. All in all, the number of positive comments has grown since last year.
“Based on these results, we can say that the feedback we received in previous years has helped us focus on the challenges that our customers face and helped us find solutions to them. This has been reflected in better customer experiences,” says Nickull.
Challenges in delivery times
Availability and delivery reliability were criticised.
“Last year, there were already delivery time challenges and, unfortunately, the problems have partly continued this year, too. We will do our best to improve the logistical issues,” says Harri Vertanen, Vice President of APAC.
In particular, the new Rauma sawmill will improve the availability of sawn timber. It will begin operations in the third quarter of 2022.
The results of the survey also indicate that there is room for development in customer communications.
“The responses show that we should be more active in communicating with customers and ensure that we keep them up to date, especially in situations where there are delivery challenges,” says Mikael Lagerblom, Vice President of European Sales.
“We believe that cooperation and communication will also improve when we can have in-person meetings again. We look forward to meeting our customers at various events,” says Kustaa Laine, Vice President of MEA Sales.
Improving with feedback
The survey response rate was good this time, too, and customers said they liked how easy and quick the survey was to complete. With these responses, we were able to identify customer-specific development needs and solve these issues with the customers in question.
Metsä Fibre’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Customership Ari Harmaala emphasises that the survey is conducted because of a genuine interest in providing even better service to customers. We carefully review the results and, together with our customers, consider what measures we can take to improve our cooperation.
“The customer survey provides us with valuable information and helps us continuously improve our operations,” Harmaala says. “I would like to extend my warm thanks to all our customers who responded – your feedback is very important to us.”