ECFIT - what customer want
In the blockbuster movie What Women Want, a high-powered advertising executive played by Mel Gibson undergoes a miraculous transformation after almost electrocuting himself in the bath. The near fatal shock endows Gibson's character with supernatural powers, enabling him to read women's minds, causing more than a little trouble and a whole lot of amusement.
In typical Hollywood style there are some semi-serious messages wrapped up in the hilarity, perhaps the most profound being that you may think you know what someone wants, male or female, but unless you can read their mind, making assumptions can be a dangerous business.
The film makes its case for wronged women everywhere, but the lesson it ventures to teach could just as easily be applied to any category of people who you'd like to understand better; your customers included. Matt Bailey investigates how a company with no known telepathic powers managed to 'read' its customers minds and deliver just what they wanted.
SCOTSMAN ICE SYSTEMS
In the name of product development, and always, reputedly, with the customer's best interests at heart companies gladly throw millions of pounds at building faster, smaller, cheaper, all-singing, all- dancing, all-round 'better' versions of whatever it is they happen to build.
But every so often a certain kind of company will try to get inside the minds of the people buying its products and ask that seemingly simple but Pandora's Box of a question "what does the customer actually want?"
Scotsman Ice Systems, a global leader in the manufacturer of ice making machines, likes to think of itself as this kind of company.
BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS
You'd think when it comes to ice making systems, that the customer's requirements are pretty straightforward. After all, if they're buying the product, and in the case of Scotsman they have been for a long time, it can't be too wrong. Nothing, according to Chris Davis, Commercial Director at Scotsman's Suffolk based UK distributor Hubbard Ice Systems, could be further from the truth.
"Sometimes, successful companies can become complacent", he says. "It's the old 'if it isn't broke, why fix it?' attitude".
But Davis and his team were convinced that there were obvious ways in which the Scotsman offering could be improved. All they had to do was ask the customer.
"Rather than take the head-in-the-sand approach, Hubbard took a close look at what we could do to add value to the Scotsman range of ice making machines. More than anything, this involved simply listening to installation engineers and customers".
The result, for Hubbard, was an epiphany. "Sometimes", says Davis, "you can be so close to something you just don't see what subsequently turns out to be blindingly obvious".
Hubbard's simple realisation was that all ice making machines, when installed at a customer's premises, must be located near a drain. What's more, as evacuation of the wastewater from the machine relies on gravity, the unit also has to be above the level of the drain. These simple requirements mean that an ice-making machine is rarely installed in the most convenient place for the customer, but is quite often installed wherever the location of the drain dictates.
"There were alternatives", says Davis, "the first would be to fit a condensate pump; a lose piece of kit next to or under the machine, vulnerable to damage from kicks and knocks. The other was to call in the plumbers to re-route the drains to accommodate the ice maker". If you think the second approach sounds expensive, you're right.
"As we know, plumbers aren't cheap", he adds. "What's more, it's just another thing to worry about when, quite frankly, you've probably got more important things on your mind".
"This isn't rocket science", he points out. "Basically we saw that ice machines are wanted in one place - i.e. close to the bar or the service point - where in reality it's not always easy to put them there because the plumbing or the drainage is usually in the wrong place. These days, no one would buy a domestic appliance like a washing machine or a dishwasher and expect to have to locate it in the garage. We wanted Scotsman ice machines to be easy to install exactly where the customer wants them".
It was around two years ago that Hubbard's Technical Manager, Trevor Fellowes, started investigating cost-effective ways to solve the problem.
ICE SYSTEMS SINCE 1950
Scotsman Ice Systems pioneered the development of affordable, reliable ice-making machines in the 1950s. Half a century of research and innovation later, the company is justifiably proud of its reputation for building a wide range of high-quality icemakers.
"Scotsman is the largest manufacturer of icemakers in the world", claims Davis, "with distributors and authorised service agents in over 100 countries. There are currently over a million Scotsman icemakers at work in hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, fast-food outlets, hospitals and other commercial operations. Hubbard has been the official UK Distributor of Scotsman Ice Systems for 37 years".
Hubbard's close relationship with Scotsman prompted Davis to contact the company with the product development idea.
"We got the ball rolling by looking at small pumps suitable for incorporating in the Scotsman unit. We didn't have a great deal of luck at first; we needed a compact but powerful pump that would fit inside the Scotsman product without a major redesign".
This is the point at which Scotsman recognised the potential for the development and stepped in with its engineering expertise and R&D resources.
"We started collaborating with Scotsman shortly after we had the original idea", says Davis. "The first prototypes were finished around the last quarter of 2001 and trials were conducted at the company's factory in Milan".
Hubbard also ran the early machines in its Ipswich factory before taking them along to customers and distributors to test.
SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE
Keen to have a say in the final product Hubbard was closely involved with finalising the prototype design before Scotsman commenced production.
"The design is quite simple", says Trevor Fellowes. "There's a pair of sensors in the ice maker's water tank. When the waste water level rises it makes contact with the sensors, closing the circuit and activating a 30 Watt pump for eight seconds - enough to keep the water level sufficiently low without completely emptying the tank, risking an airlock in the pump".
"Another thing needed was some sort of safety cut-off device", he says. "If the circuit is there for more than 5 minutes - if, say, the pump has failed or there's a problem with the sensors or the machine's control board - the machine will shut down completely and sound an audible alarm".
Of course, Fellowes is keen to point out that the chance of a malfunction is very unlikely. "What we wanted to avoid was any possibility that when a bar or restaurant is shutdown at night that the proprietor comes back in the morning to find water all over the place".
In fact, the cut-off device is no different from that found in a domestic washing machine. You just want to know that if something does go wrong it isn't going to burn your house down.
NEW RANGE
Just six months after the first prototypes were shipped to the UK Scotsman launched the EC-45, an updated version of its very successful ACM-45 ice maker, but this time with an integral pump.
"Technically, nothing has changed in the specification or the dimensions of the machine", says Davis. "It does use a little more power, but only a tiny amount. There's no extra noise, the service intervals are the same and it still uses the same cabinet. Externally, a customer wouldn't even notice the difference between the old model and the new one".
The first public showing of the new machine was at Hotelympia 2002. "The exhibition machine was sold immediately", says Davis. "The feed back we're getting is 'this should have been done years ago'".
"The end-user won't see any change in how the machine functions", says Davis, "the big difference is in the installation. No more calling in the plumber, no more stands to raise the height of the unit, no more condensate pumps".
As an indication of its power, the integral pump in the Scotsman EC 45 is capable of transporting wastewater 1.5meters vertically and up to 3 metres horizontally from the machine outlet.
"Alternatively", says Davis, "if the drain is just 0.5 metres higher than the machine's outlet, it'll pump 10 metres horizontally and 20 metres if the drain is below the machine. It should be sufficient for almost every situation", he claims.
Because the new machines are easily relocatable, the company predicts that they'll be of particular interest to chains of hotels, restaurants and bars.
"You can take them from one location and just drop them into another", says Davis. "There's no messing around with plumbing and fitting, etc. That's also important from a layout and an interior design point-of-view, especially where the buildings are very old or building modifications are restricted by preservation orders", he says. " It can either sit on the floor or, if you remove the legs, under bar tops and counters - exactly where the architect or the interior designer wants it".
Sales figures don't lie. Even though, in the past, customers were forced to compromise on the location of their ice machine, people didn't stop buying them. Hubbard hopes that the new machines will change customer's expectations by making life easier, but that they will also have beneficial effects on future sales.
The EC-45, 55 and 85 models were available from summer 2002 and now Hubbard Ice Systems has launched larger versions, the EC-105, 125 and 175.
Of course, there are plenty of companies that claim to listen to their customers, but listening and hearing, as any customer will tell you, can be subtly but critically different. Davis claims that Hubbard and Scotsman have learnt a valuable lesson.
"Locating an ice machine exactly where you want it is so obvious it's what the Americans might call a no-brainer. And yet, up until recently, no one has bothered to listen to the customer".
Maybe, like Gibson's character in the movie, many companies are afraid of just what they might hear if they do listen.
