Dinie Sanders, Administrative Manager, has worked at the Central State Thermo King Kansas City location since August ’96. A family-run business, CSTK also owns locations in Wichita, Oklahoma City, and Saint Louis, as well as a few outposts on the East Coast. They have also expanded in Kansas City beyond Thermo King to provide construction equipment as well.
While Dinie may not be part of the founding family, they treat their staff as such. Over her career at the dealership, she has worked in every department in some capacity. She knows the ins-and-outs of their processes—where things are working, and where there’s room for improvement.
“I have literally worked in every department except for turning a wrench on the units themselves.”
The business has been operating on DIS for as long as Dinie has been there. In her current role, she has been championing leveraging their DIS software to streamline communication internally and with their customers.
“I’m kind of the go-to lady for any questions related to DIS because I’ve been there so long.”
Why did you decide you needed a solution like Notify?
“We really felt it would be beneficial to be able to keep the customer updated on where their jobs are moving through the service flow. A lot of our construction equipment work is very labor-intensive and lasts a long time.
So, the customer being able to see that we’re getting ready to come out to their job site, or if their equipment was here, to know when it was dropped off and when it gets into our shop—all that kind of stuff.
And we thought that it would be very good on the Thermo King side as well, to keep customers informed on where their trailers are at and being worked on.”
How do you see Notify improving your service team’s efficiency?
“I knew that a large part of a service writer’s job is answering phone calls. ‘Is my unit ready? When are you guys going to get this done?’ I felt that it would be a good way to lessen those phone calls.”
How has Notify helped you to do your job more efficiently?
“I check it two or three times a day. I’ll look at the work in progress and at the document list and see what’s open and how long something has been open, sorted by reason code. The reason codes are what moves the notify message system along. We’ve come a long way as far as our service team getting those reason codes updated, as the work order flows through the actual system.
As far as Thermo King is concerned, it helps me because I do our Blue Track reporting to Thermo King corporate every month for this branch and Saint Louis. It has enabled us to keep our Blue Track percentages up where they need to be.”
How was the Notify implementation process?
“It was relatively painless for me to get set up, which was good.”
Does DIS provide the support you need?
“I love the help I get from you guys. Any issues that I’m having, opening up a support ticket is easy, and I love working with your support team.”
