Sailing Through The Storm – The CWT Globelink 5 “C”s (Part 2)

In the previous issue, we touched on being customer oriented by "Going the Extra Mile" to increase the level of customer satisfaction. This month, we will focus on staying competitive in today's ever dynamic NVOCC market place.

COMPETITIVENESS is the ability and performance of a firm to sell and supply goods and/or services in our market by providing adequate returns on the resources employed. Particularly in NVOCC market, we often relate competitiveness with the lowest LCL rates. This is a common misconception. Competitiveness does not often only mean the cheapest price. Interestingly enough, competitiveness has less to do with price than it does with value of the services we are providing. However, if we are able to provide competitive LCL rates and premium services to our shipper that is achieving COMPETITIVENESS excellence.

Our business is a volume game, more so in today's competitive environment sustainable help to achieve more volumes service reliability, consistency and the economics scale in terms of an efficient load factor. One golden rule in maintaining competitiveness is to focus on our client. The fundamental essence of competitiveness is to develop long-term strategic relationships. In our industry, that means creating value for clients, in addition to offering competitive LCL rates. There should be more direct services, reduced roll-over of cargo, ability to handle different types of cargo and one-stop solution center to our shippers.

We could explore and look into our current customer service methodology (Part 1 on Customer Service), personnel retraining, to maintain a pro-active business outlook. Externally, we need to stay relevant to the market and equip ourselves with the latest market information. There should be a regular review of our products and services to meet the market requirements. 

Obviously, NVOCC industry will continue to evolve and with that, business will get tougher every year. With the reality of challenging times, shrinking revenues and tougher competition, maintaining competitiveness is not an option. Thinking out of the box is a service industry and service means people-clients respond to people who are empowered and energized.