The Melink Umbrella

Are you an existing customer or follower of Melink?  I’m guessing the answer is “yes” if you’re reading this, so what all falls under the “Melink” umbrella? If you’re in the Cincinnati, OH region perhaps we’re best known for our super-green energy efficient HQ building, with a second on the way, or Steve Melink’s advocacy in the region surrounding energy efficiency and sustainability.  Those things help to show who we are as a company, however it isn’t always clear in what we do as a business to support this mission of changing the world one building at time. 

To help illustrate the portfolio of offerings at Melink, pretend for a moment you own a hotel, restaurant or operate an entity involving a commercial kitchen facility.  Prior to leaving for work in the morning you utilize your smartphone to check if your building is healthy for your employees and customers by swiping open your PositiV app to check the latest building health makers of indoor CO2, temperature, humidity and building pressure.  You notice that your building pressure has been trending in the negative for the past week and notify your Melink Test & Balance account manager that you’d like an investigative visit to determine the root cause and corrective measures prior to big event coming up.  You meet your Melink field-technician onsite who identifies the outside air damper on your RTU has been locked shut and there’s an insufficient amount of fresh outside air being supplied to your building.  This negative air pressure situation would have been substantially worse, however you have a self-learning adaptive control system that adjust the kitchen exhaust fan speeds in accordance with the cooking loads in real time.  Your Intelli-Hood control system automatically turns itself on in case the prep crew starts cooking without the fans and will preemptively warn your team if there’s an issue with the exhaust fan to mitigate risk from fire.

Knowing your building is back to optimal conditions you head to the back office to review your utility bill statements and prepare payments.  You’re sure there’s a billing error, however you remember this past month your new rooftop mounted solar system has been installed and commissioned resulting in 40% decline in your electrical bill.  Your gas bill for operations in the winter time has never been much of a concern since your buildings geothermal HVAC system is utilizing the ground underneath your parking lot as natural heat sink rather than using gas to boil water for your HVAC units.  In addition, you have a waste water reclamation system to extract the heat in the water being dumped in the sewer to preheat your domestic hot water tank. 

Welcome to the Melink umbrella.  While not all customers have the potential to benefit from the full suite of our offerings, these complementary business units make us a stronger partner for our customers as they invest in business growth in a responsible, sustainable manner. 

Customer Experience – The Key Differentiator

Good is no longer good enough! It seems it was only yesterday that every business claimed the key to winning customers was the quality of product or service they deliver. Here at Melink, we’re changing the game to focus on the customer experience! According to a Walker study, by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. So, what is customer experience you ask? Customer experience is your customers’ perception of how the company treats them. These perceptions affect their behaviors and build memories and feelings, and may drive their loyalty. In other words, if they like you and continue to like you, they are going to do business with you and recommend you to the others. With customer experience being the new battlefield, companies are changing their approach, offerings, and business practices. Sales teams are working harder to learn their customers and their customer’s business, so they can create the “wow”. Hotel managers, restaurant chains, and even doctors’ offices are focused on creating an experience that knocks their customers socks off, instead of just standard practices.

These days, social media gives the consumer a lot of power and impact. There’s an instant feedback loop and the cluster of data starts to create the company’s reputation. For example, if you get on Amazon to buy a new bike for your son, you’re likely going to check the performance stars and the customer reviews. Any of those reviews can be the difference between you purchasing that bike and moving on to a different bike. If you’re looking for a surgeon and every website has them at 3 out of 5 stars, you’re likely going to move on to the next guy. He may be the best surgeon in the land, but his rude receptionist and office staff have poor bedside manner and make people miserable when they go in to see him. If you go to a fast-food burger joint, how likely is it that you’re going to write a positive Yelp review if you pull up to the drive thru, order your food, pay the correct amount, get the correct change and correct order, and you leave in a timely manner? Probably never! They didn’t go above and beyond and create the “wow”! If you want to improve the customer experience, there must be a “wow”! Recently I went through a drive thru myself and was caught off guard with my experience. When I pulled up it was raining. Normally I would get soaked reaching out to hand over the money. This time the cashier stuck an umbrella out the window, so I wouldn’t get drenched. Super small, super easy, but I was impressed! I’ve never seen it before in my time on this earth and he was focused on my experience! I did write a review and I tipped a drive-thru cashier for the first time!

Millennials are changing the game and companies need to embrace it. Sure, the entitlement is out of control, but the business practice changes are not all bad. If you’re focusing only on your product or service and not how your customer feels about the entire experience, you’re in trouble! Some of the large hotel companies are incentivizing their General Managers on customer experience and guest loyalty. The baby-boomers want to talk, interact, have face-to-face experiences with nice people. The millennials want to check-in swiftly to the hotel with no hiccups and have issues resolved quickly. Management needs to address all their consumer personas in a unique way to setup the individual customer experiences for success.

What happens if you fail to provide a positive customer experience? According to a recent study, 67% of customers mention bad experiences as a reason for churn and only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain. That means companies not focused on the customer experience will lose customers well after it’s too late! Most of this is the result of what I refer to as “sales autopilot”. When you’re there trying to make it look like your product is perfect for them, without the data, you end up losing trust with them. Trust, brand and customer experience are all built on honesty. And honesty is knowing when your product won’t be a perfect fit for everyone. Therefore it’s so important to stop selling and start solving!

Since most companies will be expected to compete mainly on customer experience, organizations like Melink that focus on customer experience will stand out from the noise and win loyal customers over. One thing is for sure, if you want your customer to have an excellent customer experience and create a “wow” you must know your customers better than ever before! Here at Melink, my team and I are completing customer profiles and personas to improve individual experiences. Once you know your customers well enough, you can use that knowledge to personalize every interaction. Customers these days have more power and choice than ever before. Thus, we are responsible for understanding and acknowledging their needs. When people ask what we do, it shouldn’t be Test & Balance, Demand-Controlled Kitchen Ventilation (DCKV), Solar, or Geothermal, it should be creating the best customer experience in renewable and energy reduction markets for our customers!

Melink develops vast solar farm for NC country club

For Immediate Release

CINCINNATI – Dec. 1, 2016 – Melink Corporation has completed development of a 5.25 megawatt solar farm in the Charlotte, North Carolina, metro region.

Located on land owned by Rock Barn Country Club & Spa in Conover, the photovoltaic array began operating Nov. 18. The vast array comprises 16,948 solar panels on 28 acres.

All of the electricity produced by the solar farm will be sold to Duke Energy. The system is expected to generate more than 7.3 million kilowatt hours of clean energy – enough electricity to serve 500 homes annually – in its first year of operation. The system has an expected life of up to 35 years.

“We are very grateful for the opportunity to have partnered with Rock Barn’s owner, Don Beaver, on this project,” said Steve Melink, founder and CEO of the Cincinnati-based company that provides energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions for the commercial building industry. “At 5 megawatts, it is our largest solar PV project to date. And being located in North Carolina, it allows us to show our national capabilities. Solar power is the way of the future and we are proud to be helping lead the way.”

Bill Parrish, vice president of Rock Barn Properties, added, “We explored development opportunities on some of our land that was otherwise unbuildable for commercial or residential, and identified this project as a good economic return and an environmentally friendly investment. Through our subsequent due diligence process, we identified Melink Corporation as an outstanding partner for our solar project.”

Rock Barn Properties is the owner/operator of Rock Barn Country Club & Spa, which includes two signature championship golf courses, 485 residences and an equestrian center.

Construction of the solar farm began in November 2015 and concluded in June, despite record precipitation in the Blue Ridge Mountain region of North Carolina in November and December. The solar farm has just received final regulatory approval to begin operations.

To learn more about the solar project and see the array from an aerial viewpoint, click here. You may learn more about the country club at Rock Barn Properties.

To schedule an interview with Steve Melink, please contact Marketing Manager Luci Feie at 513.965.7300 or [email protected].

ABOUT MELINK

Melink Corporation is a global provider of energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions for the commercial building industry, with four business offerings: HVAC Testing & Balancing, Intelli-Hood® Kitchen Ventilation Controls, Solar PV Development and Geothermal HVAC. For 30 years, the Cincinnati-based company has been helping organizations save energy, increase profits and make the world a more sustainable place. Melink’s corporate headquarters is LEED Platinum and Net-Zero Energy, and its vehicle fleet consists of all hybrid and electric cars. To learn more about Melink Corporation, visit Melinkcorp.com or call 513.965.7300.