The real meaning of 'full service delivery'

Pickerings Lifts was selected by high street restaurant chain TGI Friday's to develop, install and maintain platform lifts throughout its entire UK operation.

Earlier this year, Pickerings Lifts was selected by high street restaurant chain, TGI Friday's, part of the Whitbread Group plc, to develop, install and maintain platform lifts throughout its entire UK operation.

In addition, the UK's leading independent lift company currently holds the Whitbread Group Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) 'Contractor of the Year' Award.

In its context, each is a prestigious achievement and clearly important to both Pickerings and Whitbread, yet what is their relevance to the broader commercial environment? The answer, in short, is more than might be apparent at first glance.

On the one hand, Whitbread is typical of large businesses across many sectors - from banking to manufacturing to retail - in that it is a complex, highly diverse group, changing rapidly in response to increasing market pressures.

In this way the organisation reflects many of the needs and concerns of businesses of all sizes across the hotel, sport and leisure Industry.

In addition to TGI Friday's, Whitbreads brands include Brewers Fayre, David Lloyd, Beefeater, Costa Coffee and Travel Inn chains - each with differing requirements as a result of targeting different markets, operating at differing times of the day and with very different demographic profiles.

Broad offering The leisure industry in general has a very distinct set of needs in terms of lift provision and all share the requirement that, as dynamic, fast-turnround businesses they cannot afford interruptions to customer service due to lift breakdowns.

To work successfully with companies in this sector therefore requires customer focus, flexibility and responsiveness: easy to say, perhaps, but much harder to achieve.

As its success with both TGI Friday's and Whitbread Group amply demonstrates, Pickerings has a customer service approach and broad portfolio of product and service and maintenance solutions that are able to respond to the diverse, yet particular, demands of this market.

The service and maintenance accolade, for example, highlights Pickerings' ability to provide a consistent level of support countrywide, ensuring that Whitbread maintains its high quality of customer service.

This is in part achieved through Pickerings' network of 11 regional offices and national network of specialist service engineers, through which it is well-placed to respond promptly to emergency call-outs.

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