“I have been with MCB for almost 6 months, and I already feel well integrated. But I still want to keep that edge on things that could be improved.” Jelle van Geel is responsible for the sales of long steel products (tubes, bar steel) at MCB. Very soon, customers will be able to order bar steel and tubes (steel/stainless steel/aluminium) cut to length, but Jelle emphasizes that there is no replacement for personal service: “I like to keep on top of things: Customers need answers as quickly as possible, they expect increasing speed. And so you have to give them that, not just through the web shop.”
“MCB could also stand for More Caring Business, that is something I would like to mention. If someone wants to buy a cut length of steel from the web shop in the future, that is fine, but if someone wants to call my colleague Hans Bleeker to order it, that is still possible too. We want to be multichannel, just like retail. There is a group of customers who just don’t want to order through the internet, they just want to do business more conventionally, and that has to be an option too. Only then are you really listening to your customers.”
“Customers have to have faith that we have their interests at heart, it’s about the whole picture. Online too, I envisage lots of opportunities for the web portal. Certainly if we’re able to offer sawn lengths through the web shop too, then we can just let customers enter the length they require. Providing we have long enough lengths in stock, but a customer can see this immediately.”
“We want customers to be able to say to people that they are delighted to do business with MCB, because we help them so well. Anyone can be the cheapest, there is no added value there for Sales people like us. I think that if we listen carefully to our customers as a team, we can help them in a lot of different ways. We ensure that we offer every customer the solution they are looking for: EDI, online ordering, various VMI concepts, whatever they need. Like the possibility of customer-specific stocks, important if a customer doesn’t want to be left short of a specific material. We want to be the best supplier for our customers.”
“Our slogan at MCB is that we understand our customer’s business, and I truly believe this. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small welding company around the corner or as big a company as VDL, we can answer all your questions. A negative association is sometimes attached to a generalist, but I think that is exactly what MCB is good at. It depends how you look at it, because together we are actually a very large group of specialists.”
“From the outside, customers still often perceive MCB as sheet metal supplier, but we have a very wide and deep range of bar materials including steel, stainless steel and aluminium. Many people are unaware that we can supply beams, we have a lot of in-house knowledge and we know every factory in Europe. This is where we are keen to prove ourselves, throw me a challenge.”
Contact information Jelle van Geel:
jelle.van.geel@mcb.nl | +31 (0)40 – 20 88 273
