In an effort to reverse slumping user ratings for its product support, Sikorsky has engaged in a major, multi-faceted overhaul of its customer product support business, and it will highlight those changes here at Heli-Expo, in a special customer support zone at the company’s booth (2617).
Sikorsky had already laid the foundations for the upgrade before its purchase by defense giant Lockheed Martin, according to Joe Triompo, the airframer’s recently-named vice president of customer support. “Clearly the survey results that we received from our customers and some of the feedback that we had received [said] that Sikorsky wasn’t as focused as it needed to be on customer service.”
To address that, here at the show, the Connecticut-based rotorcraft manufacturer announced the official grand opening of its new customer care center, which is staffed 24 hours a day, to provide immediate assistance in repair situations. The company’s telephone hotline feeds directly into the AOG support center, which has an integrated team consisting of customer service representatives, engineers and inventory and parts procurement specialists, who can guide the field service representatives and field repair teams around the world. Another function of the facility is a fleet management center staffed with analytical engineers and technical experts, which accumulates and reviews data from the Health and Usage Management Systems installed on Sikorsky’s S-92 and S-76 fleets around the world, to identify trends for forecasting parts wear and replacement schedules. Triompo said the S-92 fleet is approaching the one million hour service mark, providing an abundance of such data.
While Sikorsky has had account service managers in the past, it has recently increased staffing so that every commercial helicopter customer now has an assigned representative within the company. “He’s clearly the eyes and the ears of the customer,” Triompo told AIN, “giving us feedback as to the customers’ needs and desires and expectations. He’s also responsible to us internally to be sure that we’re having the appropriate-level meetings with the customer and reviewing their data with us.” The company has also relocated some of its technical support engineering staff to the new location in Trumbull, Conn., for easier access to maintenance experts.
In the past, all Sikorsky spare parts were dispatched from the company’s warehouse outside Atlanta, Ga., but in an effort to speed the delivery of spares, Sikorsky has just established its first forward stocking location, essentially a parts depot, in Stavanger, Norway, to support one of the world’s largest concentrations of its products. “Having material at the location of that fleet we see as a big advantage for our customers,” Triompo said. “Our plan is to open up a number of other forward stocking locations during the year so that we could again focus our material at the sites where our fleets are flying.” At the Stavanger location, which will also serve Europe, Sikorsky’s multi-million inventory is managed by material requirement planning (MRP) systems, which communicate directly with the new Trumbull service center.
Other locations eyed for parts warehousing include Brisbane, Australia-based MRO provider Helitech, which was acquired by Sikorsky more than a decade ago. This past year it was designated as the manufacturer’s first factory-authorized S-92 customer support center in the world. Last month, the company designated UI Helicopter in Yesan, South Korea, as an authorized customer support center to service the nearly 20 Sikorsky S-76s and S-92s currently operating in the country. Of the more than 20 support centers authorized by Sikorsky worldwide, only a small number are approved to provide MRO services for both of the manufacturer’s commercial transports. “We take a great privilege in our relationship with Sikorsky, since we are the founder of the helicopter industry in the Republic of Korea, with a long history in its profession,” said Albert Rim, president and representative director of UI Helicopter.
According to Triompo, who joined Sikorsky last July after more than three decades with former owner UTC, where served as president of United Technologies Aerospace Systems, and more recently vice president and general manager of UTC Power, Sikorsky is finalizing approval for two additional support centers, one in southern California, and one in Ontario, Canada. “Our goal is to achieve customer service excellence,” he told AIN. “I think we’ve really regained the focus and are committed to our customers from a standpoint of keeping them flying. We’ve put in more customer service centers, we’ve opened up the customer care center with the AOG and the fleet management, we’ve refocused the organization on customer support and we want to get that message out to everybody.”