“Metsä Group consistently receives good results in customer surveys, but we need to always strive to do better,” says Hannes Vickholm, who was serving as Metsä Group’s director of member services in the spring before moving to a new position in the company.
“We want to be a forerunner, and we enjoy a good reputation, as is testified by various questionnaires, market analyses and surveys about our brand position. Regardless, we want to continue to provide even better service for our owner-members in the spirit of continuous improvement.”
Metsä Group measures customer satisfaction with the NPS index, which asks the people participating in the study how likely they would be to recommend a service to their friends. If Metsä Group’s feedback received in 2014 is taken as the base result with an index number of 100, the comparable result from last year was over 160.
This spring, Metsä Group has deployed a new service model that has been in development for a little less than two years. Wickholm says that customers should see improved cooperation as a result of the update.
“This isn’t about things going poorly – on the contrary, things are going very well. Our starting position is good, but we want to continue to ensure that we stay at the vanguard of development.”
Metsä Group interviewed hundreds of its owner-members and contract entrepreneurs for the development of the new service model. The owner-members own Metsä Group’s parent company Metsäliitto Cooperative, and contract entrepreneurs perform work such as harvesting and transporting wood to the company’s mills. Vickholm says that the survey gave them many good ideas for developing their operations.
“I want to thank our owner-members and other participants for their feedback. This is an important channel for us that allows us to develop our services.”
The development of the service model was motivated partly by the increasing competition in the wood market, as well as Metsä Group’s expansion.
“We’re a growing company. We invest in Finland, and we want to procure raw materials from our owner-members to be converted in our mills. That’s our mission,” says Vickholm.
The mission refers to Metsä Group’s ownership structure: Metsäliitto Cooperative is owned by more than 90,000 Finnish forest owners, and their cooperative’s mission is to generate added value for their forest assets.
“That’s what the company was originally established for, and it continues to be our mission today. And that includes comprehensive member services and offering good customer relationships,” says Vickholm.
Metsä Group makes plans for its offered services in the short and long term. Some short-term changes have already been made, and the long-term changes are related to matters such as changes in forest owners: an increasing number of Metsäliitto Cooperative’s owner-members lives somewhere other than their forest estate.
“There are more and more forest owners with different interests regarding their forests. If you live a long way from your forest, you may need different services than people who live on their forest estate. We want to provide customer-oriented services to everyone.”
Metsä Group’s forest specialists play a key role in customer service. At the start of May, Vickholm also moved closer to fieldwork when he was appointed the manager for the Lappeenranta procurement district.
Text and photo: Metsä Group
This text was published in Metsä Group’s Viesti 2/2023.