Interface with Clients
Semco Carbon’s Interface with Clients
We live in the golden age of business communication. Whether you’re talking finance, graphite applications, or real estate, many e-commerce solutions exist to connect consumers with businesses and facilitate purchasing when face-to-face is not possible. With nearly everyone proficient in Zoom these days (even if we’re not all sure how to get that cat filter off our screen), businesses like Semco can “meet” with our clients when we need the rapid back and forth of conversation when working on complex graphite applications, but without unnecessary travel or the risk of COVID exposure. The truth is that, while we may long to go back out in public and browse in stores, most businesses and industries, including graphite industries, are moving more towards doing business online.
This trend certainly applies to Semco. In fact, about 90% of our orders for graphite applications are placed via email, with some orders still placed by fax or phone. That being said, a lot of the work done prior to receiving orders is completed through phone conversations or Zoom calls. Getting the specs exactly right on our customers’ graphite applications, making sure we’re using the ideal graphite grade, and setting up a timeline for production that works for the customer--all these considerations, as well as others, can more easily be discussed over the phone or Zoom than through an email exchange. Before COVID, we even made a lot of visits to our customers, or they would come to our manufacturing facility in Ohio. While these visits have dropped off considerably during the pandemic, we still recognize face-to-face interactions as invaluable to good relations with our customers. Like everyone else, we hope to get back to in-person interactions soon.
Once we’ve got the specifications for an order and it is ready to be machined, we rely on the E2 Shop System tool to track all customer orders. E2 is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool that allows us to efficiently collect and integrate information from all parts of our business. E2 also makes it very easy to look up current as well as past orders in a variety of ways. We can link part numbers with technical drawings or with set-up and product photos. E2 makes all this data easily accessible by our technical departments. Also, E2 provides proper storage of projects, an invaluable service to our customers who find our database a safeguard to revert too when they need to order older parts that, perhaps, they no longer retain records for. For a graphite industry that prioritizes customer services, this system is essential.
Semco prides itself on the number of repeat clients, and we make it a point to be very accommodating with these clients. 2 to 3-week lead times are the norm on most orders, but accommodating a valuable customer in need sometimes means expediting an emergency order when their business depends on it.
Whether you’re an old or new customer, you can use a variety of methods to contact us. Our website, which includes many articles from this blog, has links that clearly guide you through the ordering process as well as helpful technical data related to graphite materials and graphite machining techniques.
For those who prefer email, use sales@semcocarbon.com to contact us. This address reaches a variety of personnel here at Semco, from sales to the engineering department to management. cs@semcocarbon.com is another good email address that is visible by multiple departments.
For customers who like to hear a friendly voice, our phone number is (440) 277-5860, or toll free at (800) 420-5740. For our customers that use a fax, (440) 277-5859 is our number.