The phone rings at Venture Trailers, and the voice on the other end says something the team hears often: “You helped me a few years back. I’ve got another question.”
Sometimes it’s a trailer that’s a year old. Sometimes it’s one from 1998. And sometimes it’s a dealer calling as they are helping a customer load the boat and trailer to take off the lot.
Trailers are simple, but complicated, you learn to ask the right questions to get at the real issue.
-Dennis Johnston, Parts Manager
Dennis Johnston has been answering those calls since 2004, and even though he spent years building trailers on the production floor, most of his expertise has come from helping customers through all kinds of real-world situations.
Trailers are simple, but complicated,” he says. “You learn to ask the right questions to get at the real issue. Someone calls asking what their hitch height should be, so you ask about the trailer model, the boat size, and from there it snowballs. Fifty answers come out of one question: what plugs they need, how to secure the boat, what to check before they tow.
The trailer itself is simple, says Dennis. But using it in the real world is where it can get complicated. Those are the questions that the Venture team is here to answer, for the customer and the dealer.
Sometimes the payoff is bigger than a quick answer. Dennis once got a call about a trailer from 1998 whose axle was no longer being made. Rather than tell the customer they were out of luck, he found a compatible replacement and worked out the adjustments needed to make it fit. “Saved him a ton of money,” Dennis says. “He didn’t have to replace the whole trailer.” With trailers getting more expensive across the industry, that kind of fix – keeping something well-built running instead of starting over – is often the better outcome for everyone.
We’ve had customers who’ve had their trailers since the company started in the 1980s.
-Patricia Rossi, Assistant Manager
Patricia Rossi, assistant manager in the parts department, says they often get calls from customers whose trailers are decades old, and from all over the world.
“We’ve had customers who’ve had their trailers since the company started in the 1980s,” she says. “We’ll get calls from Australia, from England. It’s amazing that it all comes from one small company.”
One recent call involved a dealer’s customer swapping out axles, fenders, and bunks on an older trailer. It was a puzzle Patty worked through piece by piece with the dealer. Another was from a customer replacing every part on an aging trailer, some of it long out of production.
“It took a lot of research to find the right solution,” she says. “Sometimes we don’t have the parts anymore, so we try to locate them, Or, we have a replacement part that works the same way, even if it’s not the original.” She points to trailer cross members as an example. Older models mounted on top of the frame, newer ones mount inside it. “We have to walk the customer through that difference so they understand how to make the switch.”
None of it happens in isolation. “We have a great team here,” Patty says. “I still go to Dennis for his perspective, to understand the engineering side. We each have our own area of expertise, and we lean on each other.”
If a customer contacts us, we don’t want them running around trying to get help. We will help them directly as much as we can.
-Kelly Reillo,Lead Warranty/ Tech Support
Kelly Reillo takes warranty and technical calls from dealers and retail customers alike, dealing with everything from hitch questions, bearing greasing, axle and winch adjustments, to the day-to-day of keeping a trailer running right. Dealers call in on behalf of their customers as often as customers call in directly. “If a customer contacts us, we don’t want them running around trying to get help. We will help them directly as much as we can.” Kelly says.
But not every issue can be solved over the phone. “Sometimes the problem is not an obvious part replacement or adjustment. So we send the customer back to the dealer who can put eyes on the trailer and find the root cause,” Kelly says. “Then we support the dealer and the customer from there, until they land on a resolution.”
Every call gets logged, so whoever picks up the phone already knows the trailer’s history and past interactions with the customer. No one has to re-explain their situation to get additional help or ask a follow-up question.
“It means a lot that dealers and customers can call years later,” Patty says. “They know they can count on us to get them what they need.”