Awards Serve To Highlight Harris Paints' Position as a Regional Leader in Customer Service Quality

Harris Paints' most recent award winning performance in the Barbados National Initiative for Service Excellence (NISE) awards has emphasised the company's status as a regional leader in customer service excellence and commitment. The Caribbean Champions of Colour earned four of the five top prizes for Customer Service including the Prime Minister's Award, to be the toast of the evening at the recent NISE Gala awards event held at the Hilton Barbados. The Company won in Efficiency Improvement; Personal Development; Environmental Responsibility; and topped these off with the Prime Minister's award, the highest available honour. This major achievement in the inaugural improvement awards clearly demonstrates recognition of the Company's commitment to providing excellent customer service while engaging employees in a customer focused strategy that is positively impacting customer loyalty and positive brand recognition across the region, the Company stated. Speaking after accepting the top award from Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, Harris Paints' Chairman, Ralph Bruggadung Johnson said nothing can replace the magic and the awesome power of engaged employees as they can move mountains. The big win for Harris is that over two-thirds of the Harris staff got involved in the initiative and we and our customers have seen improvements in many areas varying from health and safety... product information and process improvement. We have also improved our supply chain efficiency. Many of our staff members have also made personal improvements from gaining more skills on the computer, on improving their public speaking and all of this directly or indirectly impacts on our customer value propositions for the better. So our commitment to continuous improvement at Harris will continue as it did over 40 years ago," said Mr. Johnson. The Chairman added that the key to the success of the Company, presently celebrating four decades in the business: “has been having good employees, keeping them engaged with the customers and going the extra mile. You always have to try to please your customers and bend over backwards to help. In the long run you may lose a few dollars by giving away a deal, but that customer is going to become loyal forever. NISE designed the 100 Improvements programme, which ran for 100 days from January 23rd, to fully engage employees at all levels of participating companies to conceptualise, evaluate and implement ideas to positively impact on the business in areas including Innovation, Creativity, Customer Satisfaction, Work Relationships, Punctuality, Waste Reduction, Personal Development, and Working Conditions and Atmosphere. In achieving the Prime Minister's Award for the Most Improved Organisation, Harris Paints was adjudged to have generated and implemented the most improvements from the highest percentage of employees, with these improvements having had the highest measurable impact on the company's performance in the key improvement areas. Notably, the outstanding performance in the NISE Barbados Awards came in the wake of another standout performance in March of this year by Harris Paints (St. Lucia) Limited, which won a total of five quality awards in the coveted categories of Diamond and Platinum at the inaugural St. Lucia Manufacturers Association Awards (SMAs). These included a brace of Platinum Awards in the categories of Human Resource Development and Social Responsibility, topped off with three Diamond Awards for Implementation of Standards and Best Practices; Leadership; and Product and Consumer Service Quality. (PR) http://www.bajanreporter.com/2012/07/nise-customer-awards-serve-to-highlight-harris-paints-position-as-a-regional-leader-in-serv