How does Ben Furney Flour Mills ensure on time, in full delivery?

A mantra of Ben Furney Flour Mills is “experience the ease of doing business with us”

We know that you are far too busy running a successful business to have roadblocks from your supply partner.

We know your expectations are so much higher.

This is where Ben Furney Flour Mills steps in.

We believe the foundation of good service is to develop a great relationship with our customers. The key foundation of our business model is our record of product, delivered in full and on time. 

Our team recognised that to secure our place in the market, to grow our business and most importantly to satisfy the needs of our customers we needed to work with all parts of our supply chain. We needed to create the conditions that allow us to be your reliable partner all year round. 

At the heart of our success is communication. 

We believe strongly in honest and effective communication.

When we say something will be delivered on a certain day, we know this to be true. 

From the moment we take your order and commit to a delivery window, we know that behind the scenes we have everything in place to make it a reality. We don’t promise what we can’t deliver.

The starting point for this is quality product and knowing that our production schedules are in sync with our customers needs. To achieve this we  have a levelled production schedule using a lean manufacturing approach You can read more about our methodology here.

Ensuring that we have the appropriate stock levels on hand all the time, has been the result of considerable analysis of our production techniques, but also clearly understanding our clients history, why and when they need it. 

We know this because we communicate with you, regularly. 

Our service team is not just waiting for your call. We have a proactive call cycle that we work with that will best address our customer’s needs. We are always listening and paying attention to the fluctuations in your buying cycles and production schedules. You can rely on us to deliver product that you need, when you need it. 

Every member of our team can see your order history and understands your buying patterns. It is important to us that everyone in our service team is across the unique needs of your business. This way, even if your regular contact is away, you can be confident that anyone on the team can assist you with any questions or concerns you might have. 

Communication for us is a two-way street. Whenever we start working with a new customer, we take the time to not only understand your business but help you to understand ours. It is important to us that working with our service team is a smooth process for you, that ordering our product is stress free and clear cut. We want you to understand how our ordering processes and delivery windows work so that you know where you stand with us at all times and what to expect.

It’s simple really. 

We want you to trust us to reliably do what you need us to do, on time, in full and with every order.

This care is across all parts of our business, not just in customer service.  Where we need to move heaven and earth to get you product, we can and will.  

After many years of working closely with our transport partners and your logistics and warehousing teams, we work your timetable and delivery windows. We don’t turn up when you can’t accommodate us and like any great guest, we always phone ahead if anything has changed. 

Our personalised approach sets us apart from the rest. We don’t know you by your customer reference number, we know you by name. 

These are just some of the many examples of how our team works above and beyond for our customers.

Jake Robertson – Logistics Manager

“A long standing customer of Ben Furney Flour Mills needed a delivery the day following a public holiday. It was the day of the public holiday and our customer had realised their error and contacted Brain, one of our sales team members at the time to see what we could do to help them out. Brian then quickly rang me – I was in a kayak, 1 ½ hours down the river from my car. I hightailed it back up the river to my car, drove to the mill, entered the order, picked the order, and loaded the truck for delivery into Sydney the next day.” 

Linden Kotzur – Service Operations Manager

“In the 2011 Toowoomba floods our clients in the area had run out of and had no access to flour.  All roads on our normal route north from Dubbo and roads west from Brisbane were also cut off due to the flooding. After many calls to our transport partners, we diverted our trucks west to Bourke and up to Charleville in South West Queensland so that they could then drive south into Toowoomba. This kind of lateral thinking is what our combined team does every single time it is needed.” 

Another example of this out of the box thinking is summed in in this recent client visit. “I arrived for my meeting and received an apology that the person I was going to see was in his workshop trying to fix a machine, but I was still welcome to talk to him. I then found an extremely frustrated person who was having trouble with the drive of an important part of his production line.

Normally he has  spare for most major parts but today he had no substitute, and production was now stopped. He had already called a specialist but they would not be there till late afternoon at the earliest.

He then showed me where the issue was. I looked at this and thought that BFFM have the same brand equipment in the factory. I said this and asked whether he minded me taking a photo, then sending this to our maintenance manager at the flour mill. I then phoned the mill and put our customer on to explain the issue.

The BFFM maintenance manager then put on one of our staff who are very experienced in this issue. After much discussion the two of them came up with a short term solution that let the factory continue until the drive could be fixed properly.

Needless to say we had one very grateful customer.”

More than just a product delivery provider, our team is always thinking about ways we can help your business and add more value to our relationship with you.

A recent example of this out of the box thinking came from Julie Le Jalle in our customer service team. 

This is what Julie had to say.

“I was in the middle of completing my normal calls for the day when one of my customers mentioned to me about the trouble that they were having in getting packaging right for a new product. They had tried a few suppliers, but nothing was really working as best as it could. I asked them a few questions about the product and what they were looking for and finished up our call as normal. 

After I got the phone, I mulled over the problem a little and thought, surely there had to be a solution. In our weekly service meeting, I spoke more about this to my team members to see if they had any ideas.  One of them mentioned a company that they had heard of in the automotive business that dealt with a similar kind of packaging issue. 

At lunch that day, I did a bit of internet research, found the company and the product and thought that it was familiar. It turns out that we also purchased packaging from this business, so I passed on the name of our contact to my customer, thinking that it just might do the trick.

A few days later, I received a call from a very happy customer. They had called the company and it turns out that they actually did have a solution that would solve their problem with the packaging for their new product.”

You just never know where a conversation will lead you!

Julie Le Jalle – Customer Service

If you would like to chat more to a business partner that really listens to what you have to say, speak to us at Ben Furney Flour Mills.

Julie will be waiting for your call.