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In late 2005, based on customer feedback, Angelica launched
our “Delightful Service through Innovation” strategy. Our customers told us
that our industry had made too many compromises on quality and service in an
effort to provide hospitals with constantly lower prices. This was evidenced by
price stagnation in our industry during the first five years of the new
millennium while inflation averaged 3%.
We agreed and launched our new strategy.
And to date, results reported by our customers are very
encouraging. Customer ratings of Angelica’s product quality, customer service
and on time delivery have skyrocketed. More
impressively, almost 90% of our customers are willing to recommend Angelica and
even more are willing to renew. That’s great, but not good enough. Our goal is
to have 98% or more of our customers willing to recommend and renew our
service.
So, how do we get there?
By executing our “delightful service through innovation” strategy even
better. Let me explain.
 Steve O'Hara Angelica President & CEO
While “delightful service through innovation” may sound like
a marketing slogan, to us it has become Angelica’s reason for being. When our customers told us that they were
tired of incomplete and late orders, we raised the bar from industry standards
from “percentage of pieces delivered against an order” to “percentage of orders
delivered 100% complete”. By investing
an additional $5 million in additional inventory, we raised our orders
delivered complete percentage to over 98% and pieces to over 99.9%. While we’re happy with this progress, we’re
striving to make it 100% of orders delivered on time and complete and we’re
extending that even to inventory items for which the customer may control the
reordering. By working together with our
customers, we want to make incomplete and late orders a distant memory or
something that only occurs around a natural disaster.
We have also launched several improved products since 2005.
The list includes an improved patient gown, T-180 sheets (versus the industry
standard T-130), whiter pillowcases, a larger bath towel so a patient only
needs to use one instead of two or three, and a better facecloth your nurses
aren’t embarrassed to hand your patients.
We’re not stopping there and we continue to test products with customers
to find the optimum product for quality and value.
Besides introducing improved products, we focused on all of
our current products by implementing a zero defect campaign in all our service
centers. While others seek to have their
customer contracts allow small stains and tears, we are striving to eliminate
these from our inventory. If we wouldn’t
want to sleep on it at home, we don’t want to ask you to have your patient
sleep on it!
Finally, recognizing that our customers work in a dynamic
environment and they need more than simply clean sheets, we launched several
new products to help address needs which customers brought to us. Our Angel Slider product provides a
launderable, easy use alternative to assist in patient repositioning with less
strain on a nurse’s back, helping prevent nurse back injuries. Our Angel Kit product of micro-fiber mops and
rags individually packaged by room enables housekeeping to monitor room
cleaning and reduce any cross contamination between rooms during cleaning. Our Angel Comfort line gives health care
providers a resort like quality line for high end patient services. We continue to test more ideas to fulfill the
wishes our customers have shared with us.
Perhaps that’s the biggest part of the story. “Delightful Service through Innovation” is a
journey not a destination. Once you get
used to our current level of delightful service, we need to keep innovating so
that we can delight you over and over again.
It doesn’t hurt that this makes it more difficult for the competition to
catch up with us either.
We ask only two things of healthcare providers. First, give us a try and sample the Angelica
difference yourself. Second, share with
us any idea to satisfy you better, no matter how small and seemingly crazy it
might sound. We’ve shown delightful
service does not have to cost you more because doing it right the first time is
always the least expensive way to do business.
Sincerely,
Steve O’Hara
President & CEO
Angelica Corporation
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