Amid growth, True Value emphasizes training

Dallas, Texas – After laying out evidence of progress and growth for what President and CEO John Hartmann called “the new True Value,” the co-op during its general session here at the Dallas Convention Center candidly addressed the need to improve customer service across its store base.

To that end, the True Value Company is rolling out its first ever, national, consistent training program for store employees through its True Value University.

 Hartmann opened the session with a list of bullet-points showing momentum and strength for the Chicago-based co-op and its members, which he said enjoyed the best financial performance in 20 years in 2014. They included:

• Gross billings up 6%;

• comp-store sales at Destination True Value format stores up 4.8%;

• comp-store sales across all formats up 3.1%; and

• Gross billings from new stores exceeded lost billings from terminated stores by $24 million.

“Growth is at the heart of our plan,” Hartmann told the audience of True Value dealers. “All of these are very positive signs that the best is yet to come.”

Emphasizing the need for customer service improvements across the brand, executives twice displayed a slide showing True Value ranking fifth on J.D. Power’s survey that measures customer service. Ahead of True Value on the list: Ace, Menards, Lowe’s and Home Depot. In sixth place on the survey was Sears. The company also pointed stats showing low levels of unaided awareness, relative to competitors.

“We all believe we can improve customer service across our brand,” said True Value University’s Lori Birkey, the co-op’s director of talent management. She described video training and informal organized training sessions in stores called “chats” as new tools for the co-op. Some of the goals of the new chats are to set priorities, to try out new behaviors and techniques and offer employee feedback.

The company also pointed to a new and improved store modernization program. It offers larger discounts and reduces certain mandatory elements of a Destination True Value format conversion that might have discouraged investment in the past.

True Value Chairman Brent Burger, owner of five stores in Maine, during his moments on stage applauded the efforts of early initiatives in the True Value strategic plan. “It’s great to see the traction,” he said. “The 2014 growth for our members was a long time coming."

Burger also pointed to an area of potential improvement: data sharing. Currently, about one-third of True Value’s 4,500 stores share data with the co-op, he said. Burger explained the value of sharing data across the co-op: “We expect our DCs to be ready for what we want to buy when we want to buy it,” he said.