Member Article

Lemon aid local firm Power Tech to become a 24 hour service

Lemon Business Solutions, a business outsource partner based in Stockton, has helped local engineering firm Power Tech stay on top of a workload which has dramatically increased due to this summers’ lockdown.

Based in Middlesbrough, Power Tech offer a comprehensive range of services to complement electrical installations such as trace heating and thermal insulation. When lockdown measures were introduced in March, demand for their maintenance services expanded rapidly as food and goods distribution centres shifted to round-the-clock operation to meet the boom in home delivery.

Repair requests from these centres came in 24/7, which threatened to leave their engineering team stretched, according to Neil Anderson, Project Manager at Power Tech: “We are a relatively tight-knit firm so it was not always feasible for us to respond to calls around the clock. As soon as it was clear that this was no blip, we brought in Lemon immediately to manage our calls in the evening (5pm to 8am), so that our engineers could focus their time on working through the rising tide of maintenance requests, in the daytime when it’s easier to get the work done.

“We have worked with Lemon on several projects before, but we were particularly pleased with how it worked this summer, given the unique challenges of lockdown. Out-of-hours calls are becoming the norm and all firms have to adapt to it. Clients rarely notice the difference, because of the professional and intuitive way their team manages the calls and patches the work on to us.”

Peter Rabbage, Solutions Manager at Lemon, says: “Handling out of hours’ calls 24/7 remains a dilemma for so many engineering and maintenance firms. Setting up your own response hub is complicated and the unpredictable volume of calls rarely justifies the expense and distraction from core business.

“We have developed a niche offer, partnering with local and regional engineering firms as they grow and take on enhanced responsibilities for their clients. We’re particularly proud of this work as it helps other firms in the area punch above their weight in the face of strong competition, often from multi-national FM firms. We talk our partners language and are comfortable working within their existing processes and escalation routes.

“In addition, new clients are often surprised by the number of new business enquiries they have been missing when the phone goes unanswered in the evening, particularly between 5 and 9pm. In the modern age expectations are higher than ever before, customers want businesses to be there when it suits them, not when it suits the business.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by News Gathering .