Staten Island Yacht Sales
The Situation
When a business is entrusted with a customer’s asset worth anywhere from $1 million to $6 million dollars (or more), that business is going to take steps to make sure that property is well cared for and secured. Staten Island Yacht Sales in Staten Island, New York, routinely deals with multimillion-dollar yachts, and its customers expect a standard of service that extends well beyond brokerage basics.
While Staten Island Yacht Sales has long provided its customers with excellent service, its key control practices didn’t reflect the yacht broker’s high standards. By using a simple pegboard for keys, management had limited ability to know who’d accessed yacht keys or hold staff accountable for what happened when they did have keys. Potential inaccuracies in the pegboards access log also represented a major security risk for the yachts by making it easier for somebody with bad intentions to take a key and more difficult for staff to find out that a key was missing.
Time wasted chasing down or making new copies of lost keys affected the level of service Staten Island Yacht Sales could provide its customers. After all, losing keys to a multimillion-dollar yacht isn’t a mistake customers easily brush off.
"The KeyTrak system gives us better control of customer yacht keys."
The Solution
Staten Island Yacht Sales knew it needed a better way of managing the keys to the yachts customers trusted the company with. An employee suggested the electronic key management system KeyTrak, which he was familiar with from working in the automotive retail industry.
The company now secures 50-plus yacht keys in a KeyTrak system, giving it the ability to track who took keys and when, hold all staff members accountable for their access, and keep keys out of thieves’ hands.
“The KeyTrak system gives us better control of customer yacht keys,” said Adam Dolce, the parts manager at Staten Island Yacht Sales. “With the KeyTrak system, we simply create the tag using the customer’s name and boat model. When our salesmen need to show a boat or techs need to service them, they check out the key. Management can see who took out what key and what time. This is a nice feature in locating keys that have not been returned. This system helps us keep track of customers’ keys and where they are throughout the day.”
The Results
Employees can quickly access keys from a central location without the need for manual paper logs that are often inaccurate. Staff members log in to the system with their unique credentials and request a key. The drawer then opens, illuminating the requested tag.
KeyTrak automatically logs exactly who took a key and when, giving management a verifiable audit trail of key activity. Meanwhile, staff can focus on their jobs rather than spending time on a slow checkout procedure or chasing down missing keys. Management can receive automatic notifications if a key isn’t returned to the system within a predetermined time frame, allowing them to react promptly to a potential missing key.
In explaining how KeyTrak has transformed the brokerage firm’s key control processes, Dolce commented on how efficiently they can set up key tags and update the system once a yacht has sold. “KeyTrak keeps keys organized in the drawer, and tag illumination after selecting a key is a nice feature,” he added.
The KeyTrak system allows Staten Island Yacht Sales to provide customers with the standard of service and security they expect. Customers can rest easy knowing their yachts are protected.