Customer care: Lessons learned from Syntech’s win at the Channelwise Awards

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IT reseller magazine Channelwise has honoured Syntech with its award for Customer Care Distributor of the Year for the second year in a row, based on votes from its readers.

The results of the 2021 Channelwise Awards were announced in February, with Syntech performing well in a number of categories. This includes placing as a finalist in the overall Distributor of the Year Award and reaching second place for the Distributor of the Year in Components and Accessories.

However, Customer Care is where we truly shone, with voters ranking finalists on categories such as stockholding, communication, value-added services, self-help tools, adaptability, innovation, and going the extra mile.

Syntech won all of these categories (tying for first place in one) and earned the overall award for Customer Care Distributor of the Year.

“It means a great deal to us that Channelwise has seen the value of our services,” Ryan Martyn, Sales & Marketing Director at Syntech says.

So with this being our company’s second award for customer care, here’s what we’ve learned and how it informs our plans for the coming year…

Making the customer journey easier

Our focus at Syntech has been not to just sell great products at low prices. Rather, we look at every point of contact that a reseller has with us – from filling out forms to collecting products and even after-sales service.

At each of these points, we look to invest in customer service, optimising our tools, and empowering our resellers throughout the process.

“We’ve tried to look at every possible area where we can enrich and empower that relationship and make it easier to deal with us,” says Martyn.

“That’s a journey we started on several years ago and that we continue to refine,” he adds.

Innovation as customer care

Martyn, a co-founder of Syntech, says that the importance of the customer experience is also reflected in our company’s focus on creating innovative new tools that streamline processes and bring novel capabilities to customers.

For example, the application form is fully automated for new customers. This paperless system, which integrates with the CIPC database, pre-populates 90% of the form for applicants using their company registration number, meaning the once lengthy process now only takes a few minutes.

Syntech’s system also shows real-time stock levels and pricing. This translates into customers being able to process orders at any time of day or any day of the week – allowing them to work on their own schedules.

But our tools aren’t only about convenience.

Our PC Builder platform, currently in beta, offers a truly innovative system for resellers who want to offer their clients custom-built gaming PC solutions.

This tool has the sole intention of empowering our resellers and provides all the logic needed to build a gaming PC – including flagging any incompatible parts.

Syntech customers are also partners

Martyn notes that the relationship with customers isn’t only one-way, but rather symbiotic.

“The data that we see is that we have a rapidly growing base of customers. But the most important thing for us is not how fast the base is growing, but how many customers keep coming back,” he says.

By providing customers with a positive experience, we can create a recurring relationship that also supports our business.

“All of the tools we give to our resellers are really with the mind of being to empower them to win. I suppose we see our reseller base as an extension of our sales team and want to make sure that they’ve got all the tools in their arsenal to be effective,” Martyn adds.

He also noted that resellers not only played a key role in Syntech receiving our Channelwise Award, but that their feedback provides essential value.

“I’d like to thank all of our resellers for all of their ongoing support and most importantly, not just their support, but their feedback. Where there are areas that we can improve, we take that feedback very seriously and welcome it.”

Syntech’s plans for 2022

The continued support from our customers and insight from the voting categories at the Channelwise Awards has shown that resellers enjoy the process we have established.

However, our performance in the innovation and self-help tool categories show that these are areas of particular value to our customers.

Martyn says that Syntech will continue to invest in systems and processes that make the overall experience better, while helping make resellers more effective.

“If we can assist with further improvements on our logistics and ability to provide dropshipping and ability to take away all the pain points that a reseller may experience in shipping and selling electronics products…I think we’re winning.”

“So that will be a big focus from an operations perspective – continuing to understand where all those pain points are so that we can make them even easier to deal with. Coupled with that is continuing to grow the range of great brands and products we offer. “

He notes that continued feedback on where Syntech can improve will be a key ingredient in achieving these goals.