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ASCENDUM’s well-equipped facility is conveniently located at 5730 Rutledge Pike in Knoxville, Tenn.
ASCENDUM Machinery held a customer open house in May at its Knoxville, Tenn., branch location to shine a spotlight on several new features within the facility.
The Knoxville location is one of two in Tennessee, along with ASCENDUM's Chattanooga branch. The company maintains 10 additional Southeast dealerships across North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, in addition to a pair of North Dakota branches.
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Carlo Gagliardo, ASCENDUM's sales manager for Tennessee and North Carolina, said the open house's goals included highlighting the Knoxville store's revamped facilities, its service capabilities, its larger machine inventory and giving customers a chance to meet its personnel.
"We have a new management team that is covering the Knoxville and Chattanooga territory, with three industry veterans that also have stakes in ASCENDUM's North Carolina region: Kristin Parker, general manager of North Carolina and Tennessee; Cory Penland, product support manager of western North Carolina and Tennessee; and myself as sales manager for the two states," Gagliardo said.
In addition, he noted that ASCENDUM used the forum to introduce its various programs and products to the east Tennessee event's visitors.
"We want to increase our inventory on the yard, give customers a chance to come out and see the equipment, and put it to work in the Knoxville and Chattanooga area," Gagliardo said. "ASCENDUM offers rentals, rental purchase options, leases and strong financial packages."
Penland noted that ASCENDUM's long-time and robust emphasis on customer support in its home state of North Carolina is being strengthened in its Tennessee market.
"Now that we are in Knoxville and Chattanooga, we are carrying that increase in product support over here through a lot of great programs, and we are going to roll out more that will involve machines, telematics, GPS tracking and managing technicians geographically and more efficiently across the region from North Carolina to Tennessee," he said.
ASCENDUM said it is known for investing in its technicians to create a roster of highly-trained people working in-house at its dealerships. Each member of its service team is equipped with the most up-to-date knowledge and technical tools to diagnose problems, make repairs and offer solutions, according to the company.
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At the moment, ASCENDUM's focal point of product support, according to Penland, is working to train its younger Tennessee technicians to become as skilled as their older, more seasoned counterparts in the Tarheel State.
"Strong parts and service teams led in Knoxville by Brandon Grant, and in Chattanooga by William Walker, makes the task of supporting equipment less of a challenge," he added. "The real challenge is customer awareness of ASCENDUM Machinery in eastern Tennessee."
ASCENDUM's underlying goal is getting machines in customers' hands and providing eastern Tennessee customers the tools made for uptime, safety, and comfort, Gagliardo added.
"We have to make sure we have the support group on the back end that keeps the customer up and running so they can concentrate on their business," he said. "For instance, we have our dedicated Expect More team for all of our customers where if a machine gets an error code, we have somebody monitoring that, and if it is something pretty urgent, we can immediately reach out to the customer and ask if they need us to send a technician out to them or step them through the process — whichever results in the quickest and safest path to uptime.
"That is us being proactive on the service side of things because the customer's number one focus is keeping their machines moving." CEG
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