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Topco Associates

  

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Company: Topco Associates, LLC, Skokie, IL
Company Description: Topco is the third largest privately held company in Illinois ranked by Crains; a procurement cooperative for private label grocery, HBC/GM products. Topco members include east coast companies Wegmans, Winn-Dixie, Price Chopper, Big Y, and Giant Eagle; Midwest grocers: Roundy’s, HyVee, Meijer; and western companies Stater Brothers, SaveMart, Raley’s, Brookshire, and United
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - All Other Industries

Nomination Title: Topco Associates

    Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

      Continuous improvement is in our blood at Topco Associates. In
2009-2010 we continually looked for ways to improve our customer service
methods and processes by listening to the voice of our customers and members.
Topco Associates is an 11 billion dollar organization that
procures private label groceries for independent grocery companies; it is our
goal to purchase private label groceries for cooperative members at the best
possible price by aggregating their purchasing power so that they can compete
with warehouse clubs and WalMart; this competitive opportunity allows our
members to employ thousands of employees nation wide and to provide the best
products at the best prices across America.

Because of our size, thousands of orders are passed through our
systems monthly; during the past year we have maintained processing times
within two hours of order receipt, this is extremely important to our members
because lead times within our industry average ten days and member’s inventory
levels are kept at a minimum. 

The orders that pass through our system create a lot of communication
between our members and us; we receive approximately 4,000 emails daily and
respond to each and every one of them generally within an hour of receipt. 
How do we know this?  We know because our member’s tell us.  In April we
surveyed our membership on our customer service skills and compared them to
the previous year’s survey.  Our approval rating averaged 95% compared to 78%
the previous year.  Our continuous efforts to improve are working! 

In addition, the following summarizes some of our other
accomplishments this year:

•     A ten member certified six sigma, (for transactional environments),
team from our department studied our vendor fill rate results for our
membership.  As a result we changed our systems, educated and retrained our
staff and implemented better communication tools.  Our system changes reduced
invoice deductions from our membership and our communication tools helped to
accurately code a cut from a vendor which helped to improve our fill rates
from 96.7% to 97.5%
•     Over 2009-2010 time frame we visited eight members at their
headquarters in an effort to better understand their customer service needs
and share best practices.  These trips took us from the east coast to the west
coast and allowed front line associates to meet the members they are assigned
to build relationships and understand their businesses.
•     By finding and fixing the root cause of our vendor invoicing
discrepancies we reduced vendor invoice errors by 18% this year and now have
the lowest error ratio recorded over the past four years; these efforts
translate to accurate invoicing to our customers and members. 
•     Our “How’s my service?” email signature tag has generated over 40
compliments from members who appreciate the service they receive from their
associates.  This tag is on every email correspondence from everyone in the
department and provides a vehicle for our members to speak directly to our
associate’s managers whenever they want to reach out.

At Topco Associates service is our main priority!

    List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.topco.com/News/TopNews.aspx

    Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Cheryl Alaniz is a certified customer service professional (CCSP) and
certified Six Sigma green belt for service and transaction environments with
over thirty years of customer service management experience.  Hired in 2007,
Cheryl is the first Director of Customer Service at Topco Associates, LLC. and
created the new Member Services structure which led to Stevie award finalist
win for Topco in 2010.  Formally, the National Customer Service Manager at
Empire Today, LLC Cheryl worked on creating a customer service culture in
sixty-four markets, achieving a formal nomination for “Best Customer Service
Department” Stevie award for Empire in 2007; Empire went on to win the Best
Customer Service Department Stevie award in 2008.   Cheryl encourages her
associates to add value to their customer’s experiences every day by providing
responsive and competent customer service.