Photo: Georges-Eric Ruys, Christophe Hottelier, Tito Fornasier and Yves Excoffier

A graduate of l’École du Transport et de la Logistique, Yves Excoffier is today the Customer Service Manager at Safram. He explains what his team’s task consists of within the company.

Can you sum up your career for me?
I have been working for Safram for ten years now, but I’ve been in the transport/logistics sector for seventeen years. As Customer Service Manager, my job covers a broad spectrum, very much focused on customer service and the operations which concern them, all over Europe.

What kind of manager are you?
The management at Safram is close to the employees and aims to always be in the thick of the action. This makes it possible to act quickly and effectively, always focusing on the customer and the quality of the service provided.

How is the Safram Customer Service team made up?
For Europe, 30 people work in customer service. We have administrative teams in charge of receiving orders from customers and integrating them into our SAP system, specialist teams handling our key accounts, and finally more generalist teams who will manage the remainder of the customers, from SMEs to larger structures.

What are this Customer Service Department’s activities?
The Customer Service Department manages all the customer-related operations. We receive the transport order with the inherent documents, we check them and prepare the file for the transport teams. Of course and most importantly, the Customer Service Department remains continually at the customers’ disposal to track their transport and answer all their questions. There is therefore only one person working on the whole file and the customer has only one contact.

What is Safram’s customer service approach?
Our philosophy is to be fully available to meet the customers’ requirements and to do everything to provide them with the quality they expect. This is our way of being visible in a difficult market, where customers are often disappointed by the larger service providers.

Which tools are your key strength?
Our primary tool is our transport network. Safram operates directly on a daily basis and has strategic agencies and partners throughout Europe. A network which works and is responsive is guarantee of quality for the customer. Another tool to ensure we perform is of course IT. In this respect, integrated management through SAP offers us ‘in-house’ solutions, entirely dedicated to the requirements and the specificities of each of our customers.