Mehmet Apak “We are a solution partner for every need of our customer”

Mehmet Apak, our General Manager, explained Zer's approach to customer satisfaction and our goals to improve it in an interview with Customer Centric, a supplement prepared by Fast Company magazine.
 
Stating that we position our customer at the starting point of our business in all processes from product development to pre-sales, from operations to after-sales, Mehmet Apak highlighted that although processes vary, the fact that we do not lose the human focus in any way when we are in contact with the customer is a decisive difference in the experience we offer to our customers. Describing Zer as a ‘solution partner’ for every need of the customer instead of a customer-oriented company, Apak gave an example by referring to the fact that even when the demands of our customers are outside of our operating categories, we meet the demand by providing the purchasing and supply chain management services to meet the need in question thanks to our flexible structure. Noting that empathy is a key point in understanding customer needs and solving problems, Apak said: “We ensure that our relevant unit representatives together with our Customer Relations team conduct one-on-one meetings and mutual feedback interviews. We are sincere in our efforts to empathize with our customers, because we believe that we can only agree when we listen by genuinely caring about others.”
 
Emphasizing that we regularly update our research every year to measure customer and supplier satisfaction, Apak said: “We ensure that every unit that contacts our customer contributes to the research design process. We want to make sure we are asking the right questions in this way. We share the results of business processes, relationship management, price and productivity indices with all units and identify common areas of action and improvement. We share the steps to be taken and improvements made with our customers, and ask again what they think about the improvements we have made. We continue to try different methods and solutions until a positive opinion is formed” and pointed out effective solution management.
 
Describing Zer as ‘a company that produces competitive technology in its field with its own software and constantly updates this technology’, Apak showed the chatbot application commissioned by Promena at the beginning of 2021 to answer any questions of our customers and suppliers 24/7 and our robotic processes which provide information about routine ordering, shipping, and invoicing processes to our customers and suppliers without having to ask them as examples of technological solution to improve the customer experience. Touching also upon the strategies that we will implement in the following period to improve customer experience in addition to our current projects, Apak said, “Our strategy is to offer applications and approaches that will have each customer say, ‘I have achieved effective supply chain and purchasing management with the Zer ecosystem that will ensure the sustainable success of my company.’”