The Hydraulics Online team is celebrating a super night of award wins at our local chamber of commerce’s annual awards – where we scooped awards recognising our excellent customer service and international trade.
South Cheshire based global hydraulic solutions supplier, Hydraulics Online has been recognised for a startling three awards at the 21st South Cheshire Chamber Awards. The unprecedented haul at the end of November included:
- Winner – Excellence in Customer Service
- Winner – International Trader of the Year
- Highly Commended – Ambassador of the Year
The ISO 9001 accredited Cheshire hydraulics business was founded in 2004 by directors Helen and Mark Tonks. Helen said: “We are absolutely delighted. By allowing ourselves to be scrutinised and judged by external professionals, all experts in their own fields, it has provided certainty that we are on the right track and that we really do stand out from the crowd. It has helped to make our vision clearer, and given us an opportunity to pause and reflect on what we have achieved and celebrate our many successes to date.”
Mark commented: “Being recognised for three chamber awards like this is great recognition of the hard work of every member of our team, the high standards we expect of ourselves day in, day out and our team’s shared commitment to always put the customer first.”
Each of the three chamber awards were judged by their sponsors…
Financial planning group, 1825 were the sponsors and judges of the Excellence in Customer Service category
David Williams Dip PFS, Regional Managing Director at 1825, commented:
We picked Hydraulics Online Ltd as our winner of the Excellence in Customer Service award for 2017 because they demonstrated a superb customer service approach which has underpinned their business growth. We found them to be a welcoming and friendly business which interacts well with its customers through their website and social media, but still prefers the ‘old school’ approach of picking up the phone. We also felt that Helen and Mark truly understand the essence of good relationships in business; the incredibly low number of complaints they receive is testament to this. It is clear to us that they are always seeking to improve and be the ‘best they can be’ – placing real importance on customer feedback.
The International Trader of the Year award was sponsored and judged by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).
Dr Kevin Gallimore is Senior Head of Departments of Business Management and Exercise & Sport Science and was part of the judging panel.
He said:
We were particularly impressed by Hydraulics Online because of their global reach, their clear competitive positioning, their strong business model, and their plans to invest in technology to better understand their customers in a wide variety of markets around the world.
Co-judge, Jie Liu, Associate Head of MMU’s Business Management department, was so impressed by the Cheshire hydraulics company’s global reach and success that she invited them to speak to her class about international market entry strategies and Hydraulics Online’s use of the internet as a global market entry strategy.
Ambassador of the Year is a new award supported by the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership in which Hydraulics Online received a “highly commended” recognition.
Veronica Dawson is the Cheshire hydraulics company’s local International Trade Adviser, North West International Trade Team, Department of International Trade.
She shared her excitement of their award success, saying:
What impresses me most about Hydraulics Online is their passion. They understand that excellent customer services are crucial in exports as you are building that business relationship from a distance. If you have enthusiasm and passion and you combine that with excellent customer services – which Hydraulics Online do – you can succeed in exports. I’m very pleased to be working with them, as it is on smaller businesses like Hydraulics Online that exporting in the UK is based.
The evening was a celebration of the innovative businesses working to put the South Cheshire region on the global map. Chamber Chief Executive Paul Colman said all 39 finalists were winners in their own right. “The awards gave us another chance to celebrate inspirational leadership, exceptional vision and brilliant customer service across a wide variety of sectors. South Cheshire is truly blessed with an abundance of business talent,” he said.
Chamber Chairman Shaun Cafferty said the area was well placed to meet the demands of a modern economy. “We have big, small and medium firms, operating in a wide range of industries, all forward-thinking, energised and delivering excellence locally, nationally and often internationally.”
He added: “South Cheshire is a great place to live and work. It’s a great place to be a business in and to employ people and for new companies to set up. We should perhaps shout about that a bit more than we do!”
Because this really has been such a team effort, we’d like to share a few words from some of our team about what winning the awards means to them.
Since we so rarely get time to take stock, we’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all our team for their continued hard work and dedication and all our customers for giving us the opportunity to serve them and demonstrate our commitment to excellent customer service. We hope you have all enjoyed the ride as much as we have – and look forward to many more years of excellent customer service and international growth.
Watch the awards highlights here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0oA5yTtlxY
