DATE: 09/10/18
Truly first-rate customer service means going above and beyond the customer’s expectations and delivering results that might initially have seemed complex and nearly impossible to achieve.
Jorge Cereceda, manager of Amerijet’s Customer Service Department, said he’s seen a lot of impressive examples of that, where his customer service agents effectively demonstrated to customers how capable they are of finding solutions for them.
One customer focus example, that employees still remember vividly, Cereceda noted, involved a family in the U.S. shipping clothing for a wedding being held in Barbados. The family discovered that the bride’s wedding dress had accidentally been shipped to Cancun, Mexico instead of Barbados. It looked like the dress wouldn’t arrive in time for the wedding ceremony.
As Cereceda pointed out, that’s when Amerijet stepped in.
“We made arrangements for the head of our Cancun office to fly to our Miami station, then fly to Barbados with the wedding dress,” he said. “We definitely went the extra mile and we delivered the dress for the event.”
What it demonstrates, he said, is the way that Amerijet’s dedicated customer service agents make every effort imaginable to deliver solutions and results for customers who have come to rely on the company to meet all their cargo shipping needs.
Listening to customers, understanding their needs, and being able to provide them with solutions are all key attributes of the Amerijet customer service team, Cereceda noted – but it also means being able to rise to the occasion during situations and circumstances that are anything but ordinary. When a crisis hits, he said, his team responds with real leadership.
A strong example of that, he said, is how Amerijet responded in 2017 to the hurricane season that did so much damage in the Caribbean, with Hurricanes Maria and Iris turning that season into one of the most ferocious and deadly in history.
Hurricane Irma, a category 5 hurricane, struck the Virgin Islands. Afterwards, a group there contacted Amerijet and arranged to remove as many dogs as possible from the island, so they wouldn’t face any more danger.
The Amerijet team responded.
“Last year, we moved hundreds of dogs from the Virgin Islands,” Cereceda said. “The majority of the pets were from rescue organizations who were assisting in rescuing these dogs. It took time to do that. We needed to load the dogs onto the planes, and that takes time. But Amerijet has experience moving live animals, a lot of experience.”
That’s an example of how customers who need to make special shipments such as live animals can rely on Amerijet’s air cargo shipping, but also on the fact that their customer service team helps find the right shipping options.
“We have had many of those situations,” Cereceda said. “We see ourselves as logistics providers. We want to make a difference and we’re known as a company that works to meet our customers’ needs.”
When Tropical Storm Erika hit the Dominican Republic in August 2015, the island’s airport got damaged. But that didn’t stop Amerijet from making deliveries, he added.
“We moved cargo to the island of St. Martin, then put it on a boat to the Dominican,” Cereceda said. “Sometimes we have had emergency shipments, and we have moved many humanitarian aid packages.”
Amerijet has also helped customers who need to transport human remains. It’s not at all uncommon today for a family member to have passed away, and the family needs to make arrangements to transport the deceased back to their home state for a funeral. Amerijet offers dignity services for the transportation of human remains, Cereceda noted, offering a compassionate and specialized service to assist in funeral transports.
They had a request recently, he noted, from a family that needed to transport a beloved from Nicaragua to the United States for their final resting funeral service.
“They were at a loss,” he said. “They didn’t know how to proceed. They wanted to know if their cargo could enter the U.S.”
Amerijet worked with them, and “We were able to tell them what was expected from the funeral homes.”
The Amerijet team will think outside of the box, Cereceda noted. In one instance, a customer had arranged to have cargo shipped to Amerijet’s main hub at Miami International Airport, but there was a challenge.
“Some of the shipments were arriving at the wrong place,” Cereceda said. “We were puzzled. We did not understand what the disconnect was.”
But the team investigated and was able to figure out what the challenge was.
“We discovered that the cargo was not being labeled correctly,” he said. “The truck driver was not doing his job. The driver was mixing up the cargo without proper labels, and when the truck was moving, the boxes started moving around and they got misplaced inside the truck. He was giving us the right cargo with the wrong documents. We went back to the customer and presented to him our findings. He was really surprised.”
The bottom line is whether you’re making a one-time shipment or you make shipments every week, you want to be certain you’re using the best air freight services available.
When you’re choosing your air freight company, you want to be certain they meet specific criteria, including:
“Your cargo is 100 percent guaranteed,” Cereceda said. “That makes a tremendous difference.”
At Amerijet, our customer service agents are trained to communicate with our customers effectively, are always friendly and professional, can answer all your questions about shipping, and are knowledgeable about all aspects of the shipping industry, both domestic and international.
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