Walsh Grain Terminal
Customer Stories
Background
Taking care of those you do business with is more than sending a holiday card, slicing a discount, or even being close friends. It’s about having a genuine desire to make your customers truly successful. And at Walsh Grain Terminal, they’re doing just that.
The Opportunity
Walsh Grain Terminal is a grain facility located in Park River, North Dakota. Their facility serves over 100 growers. Having over 100 growers means that they have to make over 100 phone calls and remember over 100 names and faces. For a team of eight, that takes a significant amount of time. Walsh Grain would have to answer questions like “What are today’s cash bids? How much is left to deliver on my contract? What is the market doing?”, over and over throughout the week. Walsh Grain knew they couldn’t keep operating that way forever and that they needed to invest in a digital platform – one that could provide most of the answers to their growers’ questions any time of day. Word of Bushel’s customer portal and other products caught the attention of one of Walsh Grain’s board members. “I thought it was a good idea, and a good concept,” says Kilen Flanagan, Grain Merchandiser at Walsh Grain.
“We’re your [Bushel’s] customer, but at the same time the farmer is the customer as well. They’re the ones that make it sell. If our farmers don’t like it, we aren’t going to carry it.”
Kilen Flanagan, Grain Merchandiser, Walsh Grain
The Solution
Walsh took advantage of Bushel’s customer portal to all their growers to view commodity balances, contract balances, futures market prices, and more. “I would say it’s been much easier when farmers know what they got in [delivered again a contract]. They just know a bit more about their business,” says Flanagan.
“Instead of going to Google and plugging in the website, they [Walsh Grain growers] can just go into the app [customer portal] and see what cash bids are for that day, or what else they want to know.”
Kilen Flanagan, Grain Merchandiser, Walsh Grain
The Results
The Walsh Grain customer portal hasn’t only helped their growers, but it’s also helped their team members. They can have more meaningful conversations with their growers during the time they would have spent answering account-related questions. “They just know more. It’s made our jobs easier with guys looking at cash bids and prices more,” says Flanagan. It is ultimately helping farmers make better business decisions.
“The idea behind a transparent easy-to-use platform for our growers to check on the business they do with us was the number one reason [we chose Bushel]. We liked the concept, and want to stay progressive in any way possible, especially when it comes to marketing and customer service,” Flanagan said.
Since joining the Bushel platform in August of 2018, more than 98% of Walsh Grain’s growers are using their customer portal. Walsh’s portal adoption rate has almost doubled since introducing it to their farmers. To achieve such a high adoption rate, Walsh Grain took advantage of marketing kits provided by Bushel. The marketing kits helped Walsh get the word out to their farmers and consisted of posters, signs, a website ad, and push notifications sent via the customer portal.
“Making the app user-friendly with all the data clean and tidy for farmers has been one of the most useful parts,” said Flanagan.
The significant increase in adoption shows that the growers of Walsh Grain are enjoying their digital experience. Their customer portal is not only benefitting their growers; it’s also giving Walsh Grain a competitive advantage over neighboring elevators.