Wait, that’s what we do every day.

I couldn’t believe how nervous the Buzzard on take off!

We recently exhibited at the Design2Part show in Grapevine and had lots of inquiries about our panel shop. I always tell this visual story about retrofitting. The customer sent us in this panel to “redo.” I’ll post a photo how we did tomorrow.

We love ya.  Below is a quick email I shared with the Innovative team today.  Read it and if you’re one of our Customers, let us know how we’re doing.  Let’s us know which of the three companies we are.  Just post to the blog.  And Thanks . . . Thanks for your business.  You Rock!

Sincerely,

Gene Gray
President …of Customer Service

From: Gene Gray
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:32 AM
To: InnovativeAutomationInc
Subject: Customers – Of course we love ‘em – but do we show it?
Importance: High

“Customer Focus” is a motto, a saying, a pleasantry shared by most companies. Yet the actual execution of Customer Service varies wildly across companies.

At one company, a Customer service rep answers the phone, helps a Customer and then thanks them for their call.  The service rep feels he’s been Customer Focused.

Across the street at a competitive company, a team member ends a phone call with a client, thanks the Customer for their call and later that day sends a follow-up email asking what else he can help with and again in the email thanks the Customer for their call.

Across town, a young team member at yet another competitor takes a call from a longtime Customer, thanks the Customer for the call and then asks the Customer how she feels about the way she’s been treated and served.  After he hangs up the phone, he sends a personal handwritten thank you card to the Customer letting her know how important her business is and thanking the Customer for sharing her input on how he’s been taking care of her company.

Are the three companies wildly different in their Customer service?  You decide.  Then ask yourself; if you had a problem and needed help — if you had a new opportunity — which company would you call?

Customer service means you’re grateful for what you’ve been given and will work to help those Customers before they complain of a problem.  Customer Service is how you react when you’ve dropped a ball. How you apologize. How you make it right. How you work for the Customer’s forgiveness, knowing that only the Customer’s opinion matters.  Customer Service is knowing that the only way you’ll consistently get that Customer’s opinion is to ask for it.

Be grateful you get to serve.  Not everyone has Customers.  BTW, the word “Customer” is capitalized on purpose.  Think about Customer in everything you do.  They are, after all, who pays your wages.

Take Care,

Gene Gray, President

The error-less streak stretched back into March before a minor slip-up the week of July 24 ended the amazing run. Innovative’s panel shop built error-free jobs more than 99.9 percent of the time in the 12 months ending with August 2009. The late-July error was confirmed last week at an internal QC audit.

Their on-time delivery rate of 98.6 percent for that same time period — as defined by the customer’s requested due date, no matter how demanding or the difficulty of obtaining the parts — is an industry standard for timeliness.

“It was a full quarter and a half of error-less work,” said Innovative’s shop manager Jason Scott, who mans one of several quality control checkpoints in the manufacturing process. “Now, we start a new errorless streak.”

In addition to providing original CAD schematics for our design and build services, Innovative Automation’s CAD Documentation Services range from simple conversion of hand drawn schematics to CAD, to creating original schematics of existing machinery, to updating existing CAD schematics for easier readability and understanding.

All of these are centered around one thing… Saving you money and LEGENDARY customer service.

Dallas Fair Park, home of the State Fair of Texas, will never be the same after this control panel is installed.

This panel, in conjunction with several others built right here at Innovative Automation’s UL508A control panel shop, will control a new set of water fountains that pulse and spurt to music and lighting.

It was a team effort making this project a reality, including lots of help and support from the customer, the main team of (l to r) Jason Scott, Brad Swift, Adam Ring and Chris Coler made sure it was delivered ON TIME and BUILT CORRECT.

But the interesting part is that little camera on the tripod and the studio lightbox, taking a photo automatically one every 60 seconds. This job takes several hours to finish, so we’ll see what the video looks like.

(Update — camera battery died halfway through. Will have to find a way to splice two QuickTime vids together. Maybe Studio Plus will work.)

Fajitas will be delivered around 5 p.m. today. Britt just called in the final number. Saul is headed to get the keg at noon and ice it down. We’re hoping he comes back.

Rain or shine, the Innovative Automation Customer Appreciation party is on.

The two met yesterday afternoon during QC of the panel. While the customer meticulously measured and weighed foam density and mass, Antwine was concerned about the velocity of the foam upon exit from the application tube.

The machine passed the test. But for the selfless Antwine, the results were unfortunate. Call us at 877.906.2100 or email at info@iacorp.com or visit www.iacorp.com to see what lengths we will go to — including taking a full-throttle PSI of foam in the face — to provide LEGENDARY customer service. There is NO TELLING what the FedEx guy thought when he walked in on this.

Yes, we were busy. Yes, we were accurate. Yes, we were on time.

People who care make the difference. Innovative’s Marcus  Antwine (shown left) is an excellent wireman who, like the rest of our technicians, is competent, caring and mindful of the end user.

What can we make for you? UL508A industrial control panels? Custom cables? Machine framing? Something else?

Give Innovative a chance to bid your next job. We can come and see you in Houston, DFW or Oklahoma. Call us at 877.906.2100, email us at info@iacorp.com or go to www.iacorp.com.

Try us! You will not be disappointed in our LEGENDARY customer service.

The panel, along with the Yaskawa F7 drives you can barely see to the right of the panel, will control a myriad of water fountains. The Parker CTC screen on the panel door allows easy control of fountain height, wind allowances, timers, lights, shut off/on and many other user friendly touchscreen commands. Lots of WAGO terminals in that box as well.

Innovative’s UL508A panel shop completed all of this work and did all of the programming of the drives and touch screens. We can do it for you, too. Call 877.906.2100 or go to www.iacorp.com for more information about how our our UL508A panel shop can help you.

For even more immediate assistance, email us at info@iacorp.com.

Want to save time and money? Be more productive? Call Innovative’s contract manufacturing at 877.9006.2100 or contact us as info@iacorp.com . We also produce some of the cleanest UL508A industrial control panels you’ve ever seen.

We are a UL508a certified shop for both open and closed panels.

Among the many things that makes Innovative different from other panel shops is the attention to detail with our wiring, right down to the labels we affix to each wire and terminal.

Our wire and terminal block labels are printed on this automated printer, which assures a neat and uniform look on every panel we build. What’s even better, the next guy who has to go in and troubleshoot inside the enclosure will be greeted with a repair-friendly environment.

No guessing, he’ll know which wires go where. Call us at 877.906.2100 or email us at info@iacorp.com. We want to build your panels, too.

We just finished and informational brochure on our Value Added Services Department, which feature some incredible before and after photos of some panel jobs we’ve done.