Take an Insider Look at Customer Service

GIW Industries Inc. hasn’t just been around a long time; many of its employees and customers have been with the company for a long time as well. By employees upholding traditions of education, engineering, and customer support, GIW has stayed in business for 125 years.

During this time, the company hasn’t just survived; it has thrived! And thanks to our employees, we at GIW have several success stories to illustrate why.

We spoke to Harry Tian, Reab Berry, and Ronnie Willis about their departments and how they’ve helped — and continue to help — our customers be successful in such a wide variety of industries, including the harsh worlds of oil sands, dredging, and phosphate production. Despite their varied backgrounds and different areas of expertise, each of these individuals recalls amazing stories of customer service that go above and beyond the norm.

If you’re wondering what sets GIW apart in the world of pumps and pump parts, we encourage you to read the accounts of each of these fascinating experts!

Education: Getting the Right Materials with Harry Tian

What goes into our pumps sets our company apart. No one knows this better than Harry Tian, GIW’s Director of Metallurgy and Materials Research & Development.

“I’ve been in the same role for over 23 years, overseeing metallurgy and materials,” Tian says. “The function of my group is material development and to improve the performance of the GIW product — our pumps. We do a lot of analysis on parts and evaluate and analyze pump performance to find areas of improvement. There’s a lot of interaction between my group and the GIW customers, suppliers, and internal departments.”

This constant interaction keeps everyone educated about what GIW’s products are capable of — and what they need to be capable of in order to keep our customers up and running. [Read more… ]

Engineering: Getting the Right Design with Reab Berry

You’ll have a hard time finding someone with more hands-on experience and pump expertise than Reab Berry. As an accomplished engineer, leading slurry pump expert, and lifelong instructor for GIW courses, he’s been an integral part of GIW’s focus on the customer for his entire career — which started at GIW in 1963 when he was just 19 years old!

Thanks to his lengthy tenure, Berry has been directly involved in developing slurry pumps and systems that have supported and continue to support countless customers. This includes engineering large pumps that can withstand the harsh oil sands and phosphate environments, but it also includes other products like dredge pumps. [Read more…]

Customer Support: Getting the Best Partner with Ronnie Willis

As Tian and Berry’s stories illustrate, customer service is primary focus at GIW. In fact, it’s the guiding principle in every area but is especially true for our sales department.

Sales at GIW isn’t about convincing customers of new things they need to buy. For us, it’s about listening to what’s happening with a client, responding to needs, and proactively solving problems together — even if that means creating something entirely from scratch.

This is something that Ronnie Willis, GIW Senior Product Manager, knows very well.

“We are solution providers for our customers,” he says. “When a customer brings a problem to us, we work with them to gather operating field data and we discuss with them what they want to achieve. Then we bring the information back to GIW, evaluate it, and propose a solution. This could be a new hydraulic design, new materials, or maybe it’s adjusting the way they’re operating their pumps — sometimes it’s a system recommendation instead of a sale.” [Read more… ]

[cta]More About Our Experts

Harry Tian

Harry H. Tian, GIW’s Director of Metallurgy and Materials Reaserch and Development, has a doctorate in metallurgical and materials engineering from the University of Alabama. He has 23 years of experience in research, teaching, and industry and has published numerous technical papers in national and international journals, which he has presented at conferences. Tian has been with GIW since 1992.

Reab Berry

During his 50-plus year career with GIW as mechanical engineer and slurry pump expert, Reab Berry has worked on design, testing, sales, selection, installation, and troubleshooting of slurry pumps and systems. Using knowledge garnered from hands-on experience in the phosphate, coal, iron ore, nickel, and copper industries, he has helped companies in the U.S., Australia, and Canada.

Ronnie Willis

For nearly 40 years, Ronnie Willis, a graduate of Aiken Technical College, has worked providing customer service. He started in GIW Engineered Systems, a division of GIW that designed, made, and sold foundry equipment for other foundries. He later transferred to the slurry pump side of GIW, working in engineering, then sales. In his roles as an application engineer, supervisor of project management, manager of part sales and warranty, and and oil sands market manager, he has helped customers select the right equipment, solve technical field issues, improve wear life, and operate their pumps more efficiently. Today, Ronnie uses his wide range of experience and expertise as a Senior Product Manager working mainly with the oil sands and phosphate industries.[/cta]