Customer Collaboration and Education

Thermo King has long stressed its commitment to ensuring customers’ success. This goes far beyond providing a quality product. It begins and ends with a close collaboration -- to not only determine the right equipment to fit a particular need but also to ensure that the customer is properly educated on the operation and capabilities of the equipment. This sometimes delves deeper into best practice loading procedures, refrigeration concepts, industry-specific needs such as fresh transport, pharmaceuticals or seafood, and the importance of an uninterrupted cold chain (farm to fork).

Thermo King offers all types of customer education, from informal to formal. One recent example was coordinated for Kuehne + Nagel, a global major freight-forwarder and long-time customer based in Germany. The presentation was centered on the transportation of pharmaceuticals in containers. Topics covered included:

• Pharmaceutical transport via reefer containers
• Basic transport refrigeration concepts
• Best practice procedures to ensure success
• Importance of generator set use

More than 50 customers from Kuehne + Nagel were in attendance at the Madrid, Spain presentation, along with several pharmaceutical customers representing companies from Spain and Europe. “The purpose was to educate the end customer, the real user of our equipment, on what our reefer unit can and cannot do, as well as why Thermo King’s technology is ideally suited for pharmaceutical transport,” explained Gino Ansaldi, Thermo King sales and service manager.

This pharmaceutical-focused collaboration with Kuehne + Nagel not only provided their customers with important facts to help them make fleet decisions but armed Kuehne + Nagel personnel with the knowledge and information they need to offer greater customer support in the region and attract new business.

Kuehne + Nagel is a leading global provider of innovative and fully integrated supply chain solutions and owner of New Zealand-based Cooltainer. Its strong market position lies in the seafreight, airfreight, contract logistics and overland businesses, with a clear focus on providing IT-based integrated logistics solutions. In 2015, the company celebrates the 125^th anniversary of its foundation in Bremen by August Kuehne and Friedrich Nagel. Learn more at http://www.kn-portal.com/.

Schedule your education session!

Are you interested in scheduling a training session with Thermo King experts? Contact your representative today to discuss needs, opportunities and language preferences. Whatever your need – from training of sales, service or management, to educating customers to ensure proper operation – we are ready to assist.

(L-R): Gino Ansaldi, Thermo King; Marc Meseguer, Kuehne + Nagel Bremen; and Felipe Garcia, Kuehne + Nagel, Madrid

A full room of Kuehne + Nagel associates and customers gathered in Madrid in late November 2014 to hear more about pharmaceutical container transport.

Training offers Valuable Feedback

The collaboration with customer is equally valuable for Thermo King. A recent training for WAN HAI vessel engineers in Guangzhou offered technical training for the customer and feedback for Thermo King.

“Spending time with the end users in training situations is very valuable for us,” said Johnny Chi, Thermo King field service and parts manager in China. “One, we make sure they are using our products correctly so that they have an ideal customer experience.  Second, we get feedback on our design based on real-life usage. In this particular training, participants confirmed they like the MAGNUM PLUS® design and simple, user-friendly interface. Moreover, a chief engineer inquired about our low power consumption, wanting to understand why only two generator sets were needed to keep 100 Thermo King units running while the competitor required three gensets for the same number of units.

“It is always nice to hear real performance stories that prove the value of our technology to customers’ bottom lines.”

Participants of a recent thermo King training for WAN HAI vessel engineers in Guangzhou.    

Customer: Kuehne + Nagel | http://www.kn-portal.com/