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30 THE RURAL VOICE
'O EN.IN A'
WOMAN HANDLES SERVICE MANAGER
POSITION AT TRACTOR DEALERSHIP
"Service. Joanne speaking."
"Can I speak to the service man-
ager?"
"You are."
Such phone conversations are less
common as word spreads that a wo-
man now heads customer service at
Huron Tractor, the largest and most
productive John Deere service depart-
ment in Canada.
"As far as we know, Joanne Traut
is the only female John Deere service
deparunent manager in Canada," ac-
cording to her boss Herb Verbeek,
general manager and co-owner of the
Exeter dealership.
Verbeek notes there is no gender
bias at Huron Tractor. "The person
who can best do a job, gets that job.
We stress teamwork. Everyone must
work together and respect each other."
As management of the service de-
partment became too much for one
individual, an executive decision was
made in 1989 to divide duties between
customer service and technical sup-
port. Joanne was put in charge of the
former.
"It wasn't a tough choice for us.
Joanne doesn't need to know all the
minute technicalities — that's the job
of her counterpart. The service
department is detail -oriented, and in
my opinion women arc better at detail
than men. The customer service man-
ager's job is a front-line position.
That person gets all the calls if some-
thing breaks down in the field, and a
woman is more sympathetic," Verbeek
asserts, adding "We are very happy
with Joanne."
Joanne is equally happy with
Huron Tractor. "The company has
guided and supported me from day
one," she reflects.
Joanne held a variety of jobs after
high school, but her hopes were riding
on an application submitted to Huron
Tractor, and she was hired as a service
clerk in 1980.
Initial duties included work orders,
gas audits, and balancing time cards.
On her own initiative, she gradually
took on more responsibilities to reduce
the service manager's work Toad.
"The more I got into it, the more I
wanted to do," she says. "What I
Teamed, I learned through fellow
employees and the owners."
Among Joanne's acquired skills
are accounting, budgeting, customer
relations, and scheduling. She directs
an annual service inspection plan im-
plemented in 1987 whereby farmers
are contacted to bring a machine in for
overhaul when one of the company's
16 skilled technicians has time to give
it full attention.
"Some want to wait to the last
minute, and we can't handle 25 com-
bines at once," Joanne points out.
She has picked up a general
knowledge of farm equipment tech-
nology. This enables her to quickly
respond to a call by determining what
area of expertise is needed, and which
technician to assign.
Joanne is proud that Huron
Tractor's service department was one
of eight from an eligible 200 nation-
wide to qualify as a Superservice
Dealer in a program inaugurated by
John Deere in 1989. She intends to
maintain that standard.
Verbeek didn't hesitate to promote
Joanne, partially because of the good
examples of his two daughters. One
daughter, Anita, is a partner is an 80 -
sow farrow to finish operation near
Tillsonburg, while the other, Charlene,
who has a M.A. in Speech Pathology,
works at St. Michael's Hospital in
Toronto. by YRO