"I can source anything," said Donna-Luisa Eversley, managing director, Vent Caribbean Resourcing Ltd. "If you wanted to do a room that you could smoke in, I can outfit it so that you can it's more environmentally safe than outside. You can smoke in the room, it won't be a hazard to anybody and it's safe to continue operations. "If you wanted to source bearings because your equipment is down and needs bearings to be fixed, I can get you bearings. If you wanted to do customer service training, I would provide the programme for that," Eversley said.
The Eversley-led family company has established distributors throughout the Caribbean for the manufacturer she represents. "Part of ensuring that my product is sold entails the end user gets the product and the customer is happy. So I designed a customer service programme to ensure that my distributors and their staff, their resellers, are able to sell to their customers. "I try to capture everything, so I do customer service training, but geared towards people who are in the industry of ventilation or building materials and that sort of thing. "That's basically how customer service training came along," Eversley said.
If a customer wants cable, Eversley contacts Electrical Industries Ltd. Another wants bearings–a popular item in this company–she calls the Bearings Centre Ltd in Chaguanas. And if no one locally has what she wants, Eversley gets on the phone to a Miami supplier, finds the product, get a quote and arrange shipment. Job done. Next order. "I short circuit that search for them," Eversley said. "Most of the requests come from my clients in the islands. "If I can support what you want, then when you want something in terms of ventilation, you will always be looking at me. I am always around. You can catch me on the phone. I am available 24/7."
Hard worker
Believe it, Eversley is 24/7. Established three years ago, Eversley is asked whether she's past the uncertain period of a start-up's success. "There was no uncertain period," she said. "The uncertainty is in terms of perceptions externally that from the financial sector that this company will not last, it's new, you're small, a small person cannot represent the world's largest, most respected, fan extractor manufacturer worldwide, so you get a lot of resistance. I got that initially," she said. How did you deal with it? "I networked." "I have to have buy-in from sufficient industries that would allow me to conduct my business in a very professional manner to establish a reputation. "I had a 101 per cent support from the manufacturer with my capability, so it was a case of working 25 hours a day." Eversley starts work at 2 am. That's when she prepares to call London–which is five hours ahead–at around 3.30 am for a customer who needs an item ASAP.
Always on call
"I have five phones: red, black, white and silver and her Magic Jack. Each phone has a different alarm on it. By 8 am, I can forward a response and I can make my request. "I needed to make the supplier understand that the Caribbean, as a territory, needed information urgently and we cannot be treated like everybody else. "So if I am making the effort to get up and give you a call, when your staff gets in at 8 am officially, but 7.30 unofficially, then they must hear from me at 7.30, so that at 8, somebody is going to send me something so that I could respond."
A client with urgent business gets a call from Eversley's red phone. "From the time I am finished with you, I move you to the Blackberry, which is the black phone, which means that, okay, the e-mails could work. "The other two phones are the house phones. One operates as a fax and the other. The other is my cordless white phone, so that I could talk and be outside at the same time. The other is my Magic Jack, so that I can be cost efficient and call anybody anywhere in the United States to get anything," said Eversley.
