Optical Supplier of the Year
Winner: Mainline Instruments
Shortlisted:
- CooperVision
- Grafton Optical
- Millmead Optical Group
- Seiko Optical UK
Mainline Instruments were named Optical Supplier of the Year at the Optician Awards 2022 for demonstrating excellence in service and relationships with optical practices.
Nader Naccouzi, marketing manager at Mainline Instruments, tells Optician that the team were elated to win and celebrated by partying on the night. ‘We also enjoyed sharing the win with the rest of the team who were unable to attend the awards ceremony.
‘Winning the award meant recognition for the hard work and dedication the entire Mainline team delivered across 2021 and 2022. We will continue to pursue this journey of excellence under the mission of continuous improvement across all areas of the business,’ he says.
Naccouzi adds that recognition from the Optician Awards highlights its efforts behind the scenes and reinforces its commitment to continuously improve customer relationships.
Re-evaluating relationships
Near the end of 2021, Mainline Instruments thought about ways it could develop existing customer relationships and find new ways of reaching audiences.
‘We took a step back and decided to take a closer look at who we are, who our customers were and what made them tick. To re-evaluate our relationships, we decided the best place to start was at the beginning and focus on what made us who we are; our values,’ Naccouzi explains.
He says seven values were created that formed the foundation of the company’s goals and vision for a better future for eye health.
The values are:
- Make it easy to do business; take time building customer relationships and give customers a good, fair deal.
- Do not try to maximise short-term profits at the expense of building enduring customer relationships.
- Communicate with customers regularly.
- Adopt sustainability best practices and cut waste relentlessly.
- Improve interdepartmental communications and processes by taking ownership.
- Always search for and apply the best ideas, regardless of their source.
- Deliver honest and trustworthy long-term service solutions and recommendations.
Focused strategy
Once these values were established, a plan for 2022 was designed to prioritise existing and prospective customer relationships that consisted of two areas; marketing orientation and service excellence. ‘Our new values acted as the bedrock for this new strategy,’ Naccouzi says. ‘At Mainline, we prioritise our existing customers because they are the driving force behind who we are as a company.’
A new focus on marketing and service excellence meant pouring efforts into re-segmentation and targeted marketing strategies to improve communication relevance. Naccouzi says this was done through marketing technology that introduced automated processes to enhance customer retention. ‘As for service excellence, new techniques, services and business improvements were introduced, which directly and indirectly served customer interests,’ he says.
Mainline is now able to develop target marketing strategies that focus on specific groups of customers and their needs. ‘By introducing marketing technology, we are able to reconnect with our customers on a much deeper level, ensuring their voices were heard and their queries were resolved quickly,’ Naccouzi says.
Efforts to enhance service excellence include the creation of a mobile service van that removed the need for practices to ship their instruments to Mainline for maintenance. Mainline grouped customers by area and were able to offer discounted prices and quicker turnaround times on maintenance.
Sustainability is also on Mainline’s agenda, shown through the introduction of electric vehicles across its sales and service fleets, as well as the installation of solar panels to power its head office.
‘All of these initiatives were developed in the spirit of Mainline’s values and vision with the hope that we will achieve our goal to nurture and improve customer relationships,’ Naccouzi says.