Elmeridge - Putting Customers First

Meeting the needs of the new business environment

It's time cable vendors put customers first, says Simon Rycroft (left) and Des Smith of Elmeridge Cables

Why are cable buyers excluded from the trend towards improving customer service, value and choice?

We see the privatised industries rushing to convert themselves into real service providers, dragging their own suppliers in their wake. In information technology, supply-side dictatorship has all but been eradicated with the taming of the IBM leviathan. Market forces everywhere are pressurising vendors into putting customers first in their business priorities.

Except, it seems, in the cable business

As production techniques and manufacturing capacity change, specialist cable expertise and production are lost. The continual drive to gain every last penny from economies of scale becomes of paramount importance to the factory or production manager. Consequently, the needs of the client have become lost somewhere. The cable supplier's agenda has been set by the main Board. But, at the sharp end, underqualified sales staff are required 'just to sell', in order to keep production moving and to balance the books.