How Vetter Equipment Uses Data and Analytics to Improve Their Customer Experience

Meet T.J. Miller, Marketing and Customer Relations at Vetter Equipment Co.

Vetter Equipment Co. is a Case-IH dealership that started in Denison, IA in 1975. Today, nearly 50 years later, with 12 locations across Iowa and over 200 employees, Glen and Julie Vetter are still very involved with daily operations. They still take calls and greet visitors and are more than happy to help where needed. 

T.J. Miller, Marketing and Customer Relations for Vetter Equipment Co., has been with the company for seven years. His computer skills and knowledge of new technologies helped him grow from his role in the parts department to where he now supports the entire business. 

T.J. was kind enough to share his experience using DIS’ data and analytics capabilities to better track customer data so they can deliver a better customer experience. To learn more about DIS and Analytics, read T.J.’s story below.

What was it like learning to use the DIS system?

Vetter has been on the DIS system for well over a decade now. When T.J. started, they were mainly using it for parts tickets. 

T.J. Miller: “It’s fairly simple once you get the basics down of how it works. I mean, you really can’t screw something up when you’re using it.

Obviously, I knew it wasn’t just to make a parts ticket and send it on its way. There was, you know, the marketing tab, the contact feature, all the information you can gather about a customer. And so, just in my free time, I’d read about how to do things and talk to other people. I was just always looking into what else it does. 

It’s a very good system.  It’s got everything you want, and then adding on Analytics and everything else that goes with it – it can make things so much easier.” 

What parts of DIS do you use most in your day-to-day?

T.J. Miller: “I use Data Mine quite a bit for different things, I like that I can narrow it down to certain things I’m looking for.

We use the territory feature. We put all of our customers in there by county basically. So then I’ll Data Mine all that out and put that in our Excel sheet on top of our sales ranking report and work things off that. 

Probably the main one I use is for our inventory to put on our website. I Data Mine that. I have 15 or 16 filters to pull out different things that we don’t need. It’s nice to be able to not include the tools bin location in the search, for example.” 

How do DIS data capabilities help you deliver a better customer experience?

T.J. Miller: “Well, actually on Friday I’ve mined out one of our stores’ combine customers. Using our product code, I was able to pull all the customers that had a combine that we worked on in the last two or three years so we could send out promotional materials.

A lot of stores just had a list of their customers – maybe 200 customers – but if somebody really wants to narrow it down, we can go and pull service information, how many people have bought specific parts, or our STIHL equipment – you know, who’s actually buying it and how many we have sold. 

I think we’re getting better results by being more targeted. We are doing more direct mail and some other things to bring more business, and having those lists does help because we can see who hasn’t been in for a while.” 

What’s the next step? How is DIS helping you serve your customers going forward?

T.J. Miller: “We’re setting up Analytics now. We just had a meeting with Jeff, our DIS rep, about how we can streamline things, get better information, and just overall make things a little bit easier on us.

We’ve been doing a lot of things by hand. There’s a specific report we send to Case-IH every month, and Analytics will do this for them. It’s going to save hours throughout the month for accounting too because we’ll already have that information.

And actually, one big thing is where you can search partial serial numbers, that will just make things faster for us, it’s going to save us time throughout the day.”

Do you find that you’re leveraging the data to find opportunities?

T.J. Miller: “We’re getting there. Glen Vetter, for example, has been in business for nearly fifty years, he doesn’t worry about the computer, he goes out and calls people. But we can look at the data too and relay the important information to him, bridging the technology gap between generations with data.

From what I’ve seen in Analytics and what I saw in the demo, it’s going to be really good to have and see how it all works where we used to do manual calculations that will all be already there.”

Do you get the support you need from DIS?

T.J. Miller: “Actually, today I emailed support for help setting up a new tablet and they called me about an hour ago and sent me the instructions.

One of our store managers wanted to get a cellular iPad so he could be in the field and still have access to the system. I was in our Audubon store when the tablet was delivered and got it all set up, except I didn’t know which SonicWall app to download.

Any time I email, I get an answer and it works great. If I email them before noon, I’ve got an answer before the end of the day, and they make it really easy.”