GLTC wins Crown’s global dealer of the year award

In a ground-breaking achievement that heralds its world-class customer service standards, Goscor Lift Truck Company has won the Summit Award, an accolade bestowed to Crown’s best global dealer of the year.   

Crown – one of the world’s largest material handling equipment manufacturers – recently recognised the outstanding performance and commitment to customer service by its top company-owned branches and independent dealers in the EMEA region.

The most prestigious honour bestowed by Crown is the Summit Award, and this year’s top accolade went to Goscor Lift Truck Company (GLTC), the sole distributor of Crown forklifts in southern Africa. In essence, this means that the South African materials handling equipment specialist is Crown’s top dealer for 2018 globally.

The achievement is a step forward on its previous year’s achievement. Last year, GLTC was the co-winner of the 2017 Ascent Award. Crown’s Ascent Award recognises branches and dealers that performed well and “are continuing to move towards the summit”, which is exactly what GLTC has done within a year – moving to the summit.

“Receiving the Summit Award fills us with pride and excitement here at GLTC. It is one of the big achievements in our lives,” says Darryl Shafto, MD of GLTC. “We are delighted that Crown has recognised us for our continuous efforts to successfully sell and support the Crown brand here in southern Africa. We believe in Crown’s products and philosophies and we will continue to strive for excellence.”

Shafto says the award is a true measure of the strides that GLTC has recently made to ensure maximum customer satisfaction in its area of jurisdiction. Major considerations of the award are wide-ranging and include unit sales vs budget; part sales vs budget; number of technicians trained during the year under consideration; marketing spend and branding, among others.

Speaking of what GLTC has done differently to be at the summit of Crown’s dealership globally, Shafto says the DP Training Centre and the amount of technicians trained, as well as its sales-beating budget, were major differentiators for GLTC.

To build a pool of technical skills it needs to better support its product range, GLTC established its own Training Centre at the beginning of September 2017. The Training Centre is aimed at breeding new forklift technicians, as well as offering skills improvement, refresher courses and continuous product upgrade training.

Last year, the company put the last piece of the puzzle to its training revolution with the appointment of a merSETA-accredited trainer. Shafto says the investment was informed by GLTC’s understanding that technology is changing fast, and it is key to keep technicians well-versed with the new changes to ensure that machines operating in the field run optimally all the time.

“In short, the award is testament to our continued compliance to all of Crown’s standards and our ability to deliver world-class aftermarket service to our customers. To remain at the top, we will continue to raise the bar to greater heights in all facets of the business,” concludes Shafto.