Business & GA

EBACE 2008: P&WC service centres keep customers flying

Just over a year ago, Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) launched its innovative ‘customer first centre’. Under the control of customer support vice-president Maria Della Posta, the centre concept is designed specifically and significantly to improve the return-to-service time when aircraft powered by the Canadian company’s engines are prevented from flying by engine-related issues.

And Della Posta says this improvement has happened, with a 50% reduction in return to service times over the past year or so. “Our aim is for the return to service time to be reduced to an absolute maximum of 24 hours, worldwide,” she says. “We’ve already achieved this target in North America but at P&WC we’re all running to the same drumbeat and I’ve just received feedback from our customers that shows a three-fold improvement in our customer satisfaction rating in terms of levels of service for this year.

“I’m confident that we’ll achieve our ‘return to service’ targets by the end of this year and to that end we’re concentrating particularly on Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America, especially Brazil.”

Maria Della Posta - P&WC

Parts distribution is the key, with spares and even complete engines sometimes taking longer to arrive on-site than the original diagnosis. “It’s not about availability,” she says. “We have around 1,000 engines in stock and plenty of spares for all our engines in service. We’re working closely with DHL (each centre has an in-house DHL person working on-site) worldwide to expedite delivery. And with the new ‘customer first centres’ in Amsterdam and Singapore we’re achieving delivery times far better than was the case in the past.”

Della Posta says that new customer first centres will be opened in Brazil and Australia before the end of September 2008, and these should also assist in achieving the engine builders’ customer service targets.

The improved performance has been made possible by what Della Posta describes as “total event management”. Each customer first centre is open 24/7 and takes full ownership of each and every problem reported to it, while a 15-strong global network of mobile repair teams (MRTs) work closely to resolve customer issues on-wing.

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