Professional Specialist Advice 
Progressive Innovative Solutions 
Proactive Professional Aftersales 
Award Winning Support 2022 – A Year In Review
Chris Gibson, Managing Director of GGM Groundscare gives a review of a challenging yet highly but successful year at GGM. We have ended 2022 on a high, after a busy year that has seen business growth, award wins and new contracts.
It’s been the first year of relative “normality” after the pandemic, and we have overcome obstacles of a different nature, but we’re proud to have continued doing what we do best – selling machinery and supporting our valued customers.
It’s been a year of growth, recruitment and building on our already strong customer service offering, as well as award wins and recognition, something that we are incredibly proud of.
We have been awarded the prestigious Gold Plus for Kubota Dealer Service Excellence, having held Gold status for a number of years previously, to achieve this top level is a huge achievement for our team.
The award, which is assessed and presented every two years by Kubota, is based on dealer equipment, facilities, commitment to training and, most importantly, customer service.
The Kubota customer satisfaction survey is submitted to customers after every product sold and is used to rate the service department of every Kubota dealer.
Having been awarded the Kubota Gold award for the past seven years, and now achieve Gold Plus status is a great achievement, and shows the level of commitment made by the whole team.
Continuing our winning streak, the business also received an award from Service Dealer for Best New Initiative for our new Service
Contracts scheme. We identified a gap in the market and offered customers peace of mind when making a purchase by developing a value-added product, available at point of sale in the form of the Flexible Service Agreement.
In these tough times, it helps customers manage cash flow, opting to choose whether to prepay for up to five years servicing or spread the costs over the contract period, just as you would with a utility bill.
In terms of innovation, we have – and are continuing to – increase our range of commercial electric and robotic machines to keep up to speed with this ever-growing market.
The judges were impressed by the clarity of execution and that we demonstrated forward thinking in the process, taking into account new, emerging markets in this process such as robotic products. This new initiative shows the professionalism and high level of customer service of the dealership.
We work closely with local schools and colleges to help develop our industry and we were delighted to complete a fleet deal with Myerscough College, installing an impressive range of machinery consisting of a number of Baroness Ride-On Mowers, Kubota tractor with loader, Kubota ride-on mower, Kubota utility vehicle and a GKB disc spreader to replace their old tired fleet of machinery with new state of the art machines that are now up to the task of meeting the establishments high demands. Myerscough College was founded in 1894 as the Lancashire County Institute of Agriculture, Myerscough College is one of the oldest further education colleges in Lancashire and is today one of the UK’s largest and most prestigious land / sports-based colleges, it is the ‘go to’ college and training centre for future green keepers & groundsman within the professional turf care industry.
We’ve seen several staff appointments, promotions and new Initiates across all areas of the business, to develop services and enhance our already highly renowned customer support offering even further, in line with unprecedented business growth.
Having continued with our recruitment drive which this year has included apprentice roles, trainee parts, admin, and logistics roles and ensures the business continues its philosophy of providing job opportunities. We are particularly passionate about recruiting young people into this fantastic industry, and we have been working with schools and colleges to spread our message, as well as running several social media campaigns.
During the course of the year, we continued with our social responsibility objectives including implementing working practices to reduce our impact on the environment and also in our charity fundraising, which this year is in aid of The Northwest Air Ambulance. So far, our activities have included a 95km team cycle between our Haydock and Colne depots as well as our annual Christmas Jumper day.
We would also like to extend a huge thank you to our customers who have completed our customer survey having received almost 100 responses to which we have donated £5 to this year’s charity for each returned completed response.
So, what does 2023 hold? That is the million-dollar question! For the next 12 months, our plan is to simply maintain our growth pattern and continuing to develop our high level of customer service, as well as developing our product range and bringing new products to market.
We will be launching a new service for the spring – our LANTRA based training programs, so we can not only supply equipment but offer certified operator training courses. We will also be continuing our fund-raising efforts having already achieved 37% of our £10000 target to date.
Above all the company will remain at the forefront of innovation.
I would like to thank all our customers for your continued support during 2022 and to wish you all a very Happy New Year!
