When it comes to moving perishable goods, time is vaccines, dental materials, medical supplies and more, through of the essence. That’s where the air cargo sector comes into play. With a short shelf life and often destined for human consumption, it is crucial for cargo handling services to move these items swiftly but also in a manner that doesn’t compromise their quality. 

Turkish Cargo has been working to meet the needs of its customers in this field, “investing in infrastructure and technology to provide cost-saving, flexible and privilege” shipping. Recently, the company launched three services: TK SMART, TK PREMIUM and TK URGENT.

The options now available to customers means that Turkish Cargo has placed itself in a position where it can handle different requests depending on the nature of the item, delivery time required or special conditions needed to keep the package safe during transit. 

Protecting perishables
TK URGENT has been specially designed to give companies the ability to move urgent shipments or products at the last minute, providing the quickest acceptance, minimum connection and shortest available journey time. 

The TK URGENT Team will not only be available 24/7 for those booking through it but it will provide a 100% refund guarantee, under certain circumstances and conditions, reflecting the confidence in the company’s ability to deliver as promised. On top of that, for the client who is conscious of being able to monitor the status of a package throughout its journey, the company provides the option of following the process from booking to after sale. 

“Turkish Cargo’s TK URGENT service, which has been developed in a manner to be combined with all special and general cargo, including the CEIV certificated TK PHARMA, TK FRESH, and TK LIVE products, enables the transportation of the pharmaceutical shipments that are of urgent and highly temperature sensitive nature,” Daniel Lloyd Johnson, senior vice president of cargo product & customer experience at Turkish Airlines, said. 

This was something that has been seen in effect already, as the company moved time-sensitive items, such as Covid-19, and other vaccines, dental materials, medical supplies and more through TK URGENT. This service has been further boosted by its dedicated team working behind the scenes and vehicles on the ground, which are designed to expedite tarmac time for shipments needing to transit through destinations. 

Ensuring a smooth supply chain
Planning is as much key to the delivery process as the quality of the product itself, especially when it comes to maintaining a high quality brand and customer satisfaction. 

A smooth and sophisticated supply chain is a critical component of guaranteeing that products are sold in a timely process and with their quality preserved as best as possible. Speed is, therefore, the key reason why the air cargo industry remains the first choice of transport for those dealing with perishables, as they know it’s an efficient way to move items from point A to B. 

“Turkish Cargo has customers working in various supply chains and ships a wide variety of goods and products to all corners of the world, and each of such shipments has specific requirements,” Lloyd Johnson explained. “We, as Turkish Cargo, understand that supply chains and air cargo sometimes need to respond in various forms to various circumstances and also that all cargo does not need to move at the same speed and with the same priority and at the same level of urgency.” 

“In this regard, our primary focus is to analyse the customer expectations and requirements accurately while developing our new services, and thus, to be able to provide them with the most effective solutions. Accordingly, our Speed & Priority Services are designed in a manner to respond to the expectations of our customers in terms of affordable cost, flexibility, privilege and expeditious shipment advantages,” he added. 

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Avoiding limitations
To ensure that, as cargo handlers, Turkish Cargo goes above and beyond its competitors to maintain its position in the marketplace, it’s important to be able to minimise or even eliminate any potential limitations on the goods it can move. 

That’s where the three different levels of service now available come into play. The variety of options means that the company can ensure shipments are despatched with no limits depending on the weight or volume transported. 

TK SMART is a service that is appropriate for the movement of general cargo shipments. TK PREMIUM can be utilised for all special and general cargo shipments other than live animals and valuable cargo shipments. The TK URGENT service enables the transportation of not just special and general cargo but also shipments such as vaccines/pharmaceuticals that are of urgent and perishable nature. 

“Thanks to such service group, designed so as to raise the service quality to an upper level in respect of four primary aspects, namely speed, capacity, operational priority and customer services, our business partners are provided with the opportunity to benefit from the mega hub and network capabilities of Turkish Cargo. Our Speed & Priority Services are addressed to a wide range of industry verticals thanks to various service parameters, in addition to the current operations of Turkish Cargo,” Lloyd Johnson highlighted. 

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Customer communication is crucial
Increasingly, customers are looking for tailored services that specifically fit their requirements and facilitate their work, instead of standard, one-size fits all services. So, when working directly with companies to deliver time-sensitive and perishable goods, customer relations are a key element of any cargo handling business. 

At Turkish Cargo, Lloyd Johnson was keen to highlight the company’s commitment to “not only monitor the performance of the new services but also attach importance to the customer experience,” describing it as one of their primary KPIs. “We stay in touch with the customer feedback by developing the best practices in respect of each service parameter.” 

“By making use of the feedback we receive from the shippers and agents, we observe that our customers are considerably satisfied with the advantages offered by such new services of us. We receive substantially encouraging feedback about our new TK URGENT services, which offers the most expeditious solution in particular for the time-sensitive and critical requirements,” Lloyd Johnson added. Turkish Cargo describes its approach as the “value generation” – a reflection of the customer-orientated approach on the product/service side. 

Turkish Cargo hopes that, by launching these three services and through its “state of the art hubs”, it will be able to solidify its “lead position in the flight network and also raise the bar to the highest level of operational excellence.” 

“We adopt a perfectionist service concept beyond the expectations by providing our customers with the good fit solutions in terms of both product range and service quality. In line with such concept of us, we make use of the instruments to satisfy the demands in respect of customer services in the most accurately manner,” Lloyd Johnson said.