Tag Archive for: Service

ICL products and Agrovista service deliver

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ICL products and Agrovista service deliver: Stuart Hogg, Course Manager at The West Lancashire Golf Club, believes that ICL’s products and Agrovista Amenity’s service help to keep course standards impeccably high.

Founded in 1873, The West Lancashire Golf Club in Liverpool, is one of the 9 oldest clubs in England. It is currently ranked 28th in Golf World Top 100 in England; 49th in Golf World Top 100 Links GB & Ireland; and 23rd in National Club Golfer Top 100.

ICL products and Agrovista service deliver

ICL products and Agrovista service deliver

The West Lancashire has also recently been selected by The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A) as one of four renowned golf clubs to stage final qualifying for The Open.

Stuart, who has been at the club since 2015 and manages a team of seven members of staff, underlined the importance of keeping up standards at such a highly regarded club.

“It certainly puts pressure on us to deliver,” he admitted. “As a business, we have grown massively, and so has the reputation. We have to keep standards high and constantly need to deliver high-end surfaces and to do that we need to rely on proven, quality products.

“For example, when we first started using ICL we quickly realised that the products being developed and launched were matching where I wanted to go, and they were making it easier to achieve our goals.”

Stuart sources all his ICL products through Agrovista Amenity – an ICL distributor, and he has recently reported excellent results from Qualibra wetting agent and Sportsmaster WSF SMX 20-0-0 – a beneficial nitrogen source in the form of ammonium sulphate coupled with SMX – an effective and sustainable seaweed concentrate.

Commenting on his use of Qualibra, Stuart said: “We’re now using Qualibra across the whole course because over recent years we’ve developed a huge amount of trust in the product. The standards and expectations here are so high that I need to be using market leading products. I like the fact that its widely tank-mixable with other products and I can buy it in bulk, ensuring we keep within budget.

“We always make sure that we get plenty of applications of Qualibra throughout the course by the end of May, so we are prepared for any further dry spells ahead of us,” he continued. “I like to do a simple test when I’m concerned about the soil accepting any rainfall or irrigation and that’s to simply pour some water over the treated area to see if the water is absorbed or just sits on top. This tells me that everything is in place to accept any irrigation or rainfall. I am currently very happy with the results this product gives me and can’t see any reason to change currently.”

On SMX, Stuart said: “After some trial work with ICL we started to incorporate WSF SMX 20.0.0 into our programme and it has been a great product. I like the makeup of it because it is environmentally friendly, and it is in line with traditional greenkeeping. It’s delivering sufficient nutrition and helping mitigate stresses on the turf which is hugely beneficial because we are quite a stressful site.”

As well as being impressed with the products, Stuart underlined the importance of working with both the manufacturer and distributor.

ICL products and Agrovista service deliver

ICL products and Agrovista service deliver

“Ask anyone – Agrovista Amenity and ICL provide the same level of service to the local club down the road as they do to some of the biggest sporting clubs in the world. Both companies’ values align with my own values.

“I buy the products through Agrovista Amenity, and I have their support, but I also have the back up from ICL. I believe all Course Managers need to trust the companies they deal with in product deliveries, and I have never had any issues at all.

“Having two of the industry’s biggest companies working in partnership together helps our golf course – that’s for sure. There is absolutely no reason to move away from ICL and Agrovista when everything works incredibly well for us.”

Please contact ICL on 01473 237100 or visit www.icl-growingsolutions.uk or www.icl-sf.ie if you are in Ireland.

For more news and insightful views, you can follow ICL on Twitter @ICL_Turf

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Customer service at the heart of Reesink awards

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Customer service at the heart of Reesink awards: Each year Reesink UK highlights its dealers who go above and beyond in providing exceptional standards of customer service, goals and considerations with its Aftermarket Dealer Awards.

Lee Rowbotham, service and training manager at Reesink UK, says: “The relationship between distributor and dealer is vital to the success of both businesses. In many cases Reesink’s dealers have that all-important customer facing contact. We appreciate how vital that role is and feel strongly about strengthening our relationship with our dealers wherever possible. That’s one of the reasons why the Aftermarket Dealer Awards came to fruition.”

Customer service at the heart of Reesink awards

Customer service at the heart of Reesink awards

The awards recognise an overall Dealer of the Year for Excellence in Customer Service, alongside outstanding performance in three key areas: Service, Parts and Skills. For the first time this year, Reesink also recognised its dealers that showed the greatest improvement across all key areas in a brand new award.

The new award is designed to reward dealers that showed the biggest step up across all sections of its KPI scoring: service, parts and skills with Devon Garden Machinery scooping this inaugural award.

Steve Dommet from the company says: “This award recognises the efforts our after sales team has put into raising standards and improving the service we provide our commercial customers. As this is a new award it was a pleasant surprise when we found out we’d won.”

Dealers are scored across all three key categories in keeping with Reesink’s Service Level Agreement. The dealer that achieves the highest combined score across categories is awarded the overall Dealer of the Year for Excellence in Customer Support. This year that award went to Reesink Turfcare South East who also won the gold award for Excellence in Skills. Tom Clark, branch manager of Reesink South East says, “Receiving these awards is a proud achievement and recognises our staff members doing a good job. It shows customers we’re a trusted brand as an award winner in what we do to be recognised as one of the best in the field.”

The runners up in these respective categories were Lloyd Limited and Oliver Landpower, who both took home silver awards.

When it came to Excellence in Parts, Revill Mowers took the gold award, with Gammies Groundcare taking silver. Stan Grewar, parts manager at Gammies Groundcare, says: “We’ve got a young team and this award reflects their hard work. I’m very proud of them, I know that the company and the parts department are in safe hands with them.”

Excellence in Service saw Cheshire Turf Machinery win gold while Redtech Machinery took silver.

Mark Woodward, service director at Cheshire Turf Machinery claims: “We are continually investing in our customer service and the excellence in service award is our eighth award since 2017. All of our staff have been brilliant in maintaining and improving standards since the Reesink service level agreement was introduced.

“I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate one of our service technicians, Chris Hester. He’s our first technician to successfully complete the prestigious Toro Master Tech course.”

Lee concludes: “Reesink has always prided itself on delivering fantastic after sales service and the Aftermarket Dealer Awards recognise those dealers who do an exceptional job at upholding this customer service standard. We’d like to thank them all for their continued hard work and incredible work ethic, it’s a real pleasure working with them year in and year out.”

To learn more about Reesink’s aftermarket offerings including genuine parts, machinery servicing and maintenance advice, customers can get in touch with their local Toro Genuine Parts dealer or service centre or contact Reesink via reesinkturfcare.co.uk.

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Reesink announces Master Service Technicians

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Reesink announces Master Service Technicians: The Master Service Technician award, the highest training achievement Reesink Turfcare and Toro Commercial has to offer, has been awarded to four more technicians.

Chris Hester from Cheshire Turf Machinery, Ian Hill from Oliver Landpower, Stuart Barrie from Reesink Scotland and Michael Dixon from Lloyd Limited (Newcastle branch) have completed one of the most stringent and comprehensive training courses in the industry and are now able to offer the highest level of service in the UK.

Reesink announces Master Service Technicians

Reesink announces Master Service Technicians

The Master Service Technician (MST) programme is specifically designed to provide the most thorough training for Authorised Dealer Technicians, ensuring their skillset is updated and meets the demands of the industry’s continuous evolution.

With the rapid development of electric and hybrid technology, it’s important that the skills and knowledge in those areas progress at an equivalent rate so that technicians and dealers can better serve their customers and the Toro product.

Stuart confirms this is very much the case: “As engineers we need to keep up with industry progress and development. We all know about climate change and the move from petrol/diesel to electric power in the car industry. Not so well known is our industry is going through the same changes. This course makes sure all engineers are adequately trained to carry on with day to day repairs and requirements as the changes happen.”

When considering the advantages this will bring for customers, Ian says: “The MST course provides the opportunity to train to a standard that’s not widely available in the industry. In a customer facing role, it’s an advantage to be able to give the best level of support and advice to customers and ensure high standards of service on hybrid and all electric systems.”

Michael agrees: “Completing the MST training has meant that Lloyds as a dealer has also benefitted, receiving better warranty return rates and boosting the dealer standards score. It has not gone unnoticed by the company that my efforts have had a positive impact on the business.”

And it’s not just customers who benefit from Reesink setting the standard and offering this course as Chris explains: “For a start, it’s a huge achievement to pass the interview process and be accepted onto the course; that in itself is a worthy addition to the CV! But most of all, it’s recognition for the dedication and hard work you’ve put into your career and with it being similar to a degree in this sector, it’s a big deal.”

Summing up the benefits having a qualified MST in the business, Sean Trotter, service manager from Lloyds, says: “This training gives the engineer the recognition they deserve for their skill set and abilities. It’s an industry recognised qualification held in high esteem with our customers in the golf industry and brings financial benefits with warranty reimbursement and a contribution towards the training once qualified.”

The course has been set up with further benefits for the qualifying technician too as Michael explains: “There’s a trip to America to get a first hand insight into the goings on of Toro and where it all comes from. For someone who works for a dealer this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and trips like this rarely come around.”

Further courses run throughout the year to keep the technicians up-to-date with evolving products and technologies and with all qualified Master Service Technicians hailing from different dealers, it means there’s a good chance customers across England and Scotland now have access to this higest level of service and support.

But there can never be enough, so for dealers wanting to recognise their technician’s talent and ambition, and for technicians wishing to further their careers, call Reesink on 01480 226800 or go online at reesinkturfcare.co.uk/resources/training-courses.

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Superior service seals the deal

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Superior service seals the deal: The combination of an Arborist 130 and SAFE-Trak 19-28 from GreenMech are proving the perfect pair for Heartwood Tree Care, providing Owner Gavin Coles the versatility he needs on his fleet to undertake both small domestic work and larger-scale commercial projects.

Gavin made the switch to GreenMech earlier this year following reliability and support issues with another manufacturer, both of which are now a thing of the past with his GreenMech pair delivering quality performance, backed-up with first class dealer support.

Superior service seals the deal

Superior service seals the deal

Gavin and his team of two undertake tree-works for customers and a number of large estates across Kent and the South East. “Each job poses different challenges, but the main one is normally access – whether we’ve got to work on small, tight driveways or get equipment across uneven or soft ground” explains Gavin, who established Heartwood Tree Care 17 years ago. “Because of this, we like having road-tow and tracked chipper options available to us, but after reliability problems and some lacklustre customer support I lost all confidence in our previous brand.”

“I hadn’t used GreenMech chippers before but got in touch with our local dealer GA Groundcare Ltd who invited me along to their depot, where I was instantly impressed by the quality and design of the machines. You can tell they’ve really thought about how we operate, and this was also clear in the demonstration I had so I went ahead and purchased the two units to run side-by-side.”

The GreenMech Arborist 130 is powered by a 23hp petrol engine and features a generous in-feed hopper and no-stress feed system to process bushy brash or timber of up to 6” with ease. Gavin adds, “The large infeed is brilliant at pulling in awkward shapes and as a road-tow unit, is super portable for jobs in residential areas or those further away where you don’t want to take a trailer.” Complementing his Arborist 130 is a GA Groundcare refurbished 19-28 SAFE-Trak, featuring a 7.5” chipping capacity and GreenMech’s patented SAFE-Trak system which, with impressive ground clearance of 550mm, allows for safe traversing of uneven ground of embankments of up to 35o.

“This SAFE-Trak is proving to be a ‘go anywhere’ machine, which saves us so much time and labour by being able to take the chipper exactly where we want to use it. The flywheel drive belt tensioning system and engine bay layout is also better and more accessible on these two GreenMech chippers compared to previous models I’ve used.”

Together with the impressive performance, Gavin has also been delighted with the service received throughout the purchasing process from GreenMech and Ashley Stevens at GA Groundcare. “From the first phone call it was evident Ashley really knew his stuff, there were no questions he couldn’t answer!” He concludes, “In this profession, issues are always bound to crop up but ultimately it’s about how quickly these can be resolved and with GreenMech I know I’m in safe hands.”

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Trencher Hire service just the job

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Trencher Hire service just the job: A Toro TRX-16 pedestrian trencher – supplied with operator – dug-out 400 metres of trenching in challenging land conditions in just one and a half days to the delight of customer Steve Stringfellow.

Steve, who lives in a remote farmhouse in Lincolnshire, wanted to lay a new water line from his house to the main water main, as the old existing iron water pipe ran across the farmer’s field and during ploughing often got damaged.

Trencher Hire service just the job

Trencher Hire service just the job

He commented: “We expected some problems with the property being built in 1850. The ground is fairly heavy clay agricultural land, with lots of trees and other obstacles within it. My initial reaction was to get a JCB for the job, but realised that this would have caused a great deal of disruption. I also calculated that around 84 tons of sand would have been needed to backfill the trenches, which would have proved costly both in terms of buying the sand and the labour needed to do the work.

“One of my colleagues, who had used Trencher Hire UK in the past, recommended them. When I contacted the Operations Manager Steve Kingdom, he ran through a few options open to me and I selected a Toro TRX-16 with operator.

“Not only was the trencher cheaper to hire than a JCB but, with its narrow-gauge cutter, could access areas a digger couldn’t. In addition, the narrow neat channels created by the Toro meant that probably only 30 tons of sand would be needed to backfill afterwards – saving both material and labour costs compared to a digger.

“The trencher operator Paul was brilliant and cracked on with the job straight away, but was also honest and upfront highlighting patches of ground where he could not get the Toro through and had to find another path.

“The new 32mm water pipe has been re-routed, but did have to pass over the old one and Paul was able to dig down without damaging it.

Most of the trenching was dug-out to a depth of 650mm and 100mm wide, but in some places adjustments were needed to be made because of large rocks and other obstacles. This meant that in some areas he only dug down to a depth of 500mm, or even as low as 400mm.

“I could not fault the service from Trencher Hire – it was ‘spot-on’. They arrived on time, did the job that they agreed to do and with no excess costs.

To find out how Trencher Hire UK call help, contact us on: 0121 751 9319, or email: team@trencherhire.com or visit our website: www.trencherhire.com

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