Nicki Meagher feels right at home in her role as service manager for the Beaver Dam location. The lifelong farmer remains heavily entrenched in her hometown ag scene.
“I’m very active in the Dodge County 4H program,” Meagher says. “I’m the president-elect on the executive board and involved in the educational committee. I love what I do here. I love Vanderloop Equipment (VE). I love farming, and the world would be lost without it. Being able to teach people about farming and what we can do for them always makes me happy.”
Meagher has a background in animal health and worked with many dairy farmers in northern Wisconsin before joining the VE team in August 2023. Her familiarity with the customer base makes her a perfect fit for the job because she’s the first point of contact when something goes wrong.
“I manage 3 master technicians, a technician in training, a truck driver and also the wash bay,” Meagher says. “When the farmers call, I figure out the issue and then I send someone from our team to fix it.”
Nicki Meagher
Years with Organization: 1
Role: “I’m the service manager for the Beaver Dam location. I manage 6 people. I’m the first contact when farmers have a problem. I love customer service and getting to interact with farmers. Getting to know them on a day-to-day basis, and knowing that they can count on our technicians, is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Quotable: “This is the type of role I’ve been looking at for years. Getting to manage a team, that’s always been a professional goal of mine.”
Rookie Season
Meagher’s rookie year on the job is going smoothly. She successfully navigated her first post-harvest season and the servicing of 40 choppers. She says the goal is to pick up more customers and increase that number to 50 in 2025.
Planting also went well, with most customers wrapping up by early May. And now she can check another milestone off the list — her first hay season.
“Hay season is our other busy season, and it’s gone well so far,” she says. “This job can go from 0 to 100 mph quickly. You can be sitting here with no calls 1 minute and 10 the next. And when you only have 4 technicians, where are you going to send them? Figuring out which calls are most urgent is always a challenge.”
Day in the Life
When Meagher arrives in the morning, she first checks the timecards to see if everyone punched in and out correctly. She then meets with her team for 5-10 minutes to run down what needs to get done for the day. After that, it’s back to the computer to processes warranty claims and close out tickets from the day before.
Efficiency is the name of the game for Meagher’s crew. She monitors average standard repair times (SRT) with DIS Quantum software throughout the day to make sure a service job isn’t taking longer than it should. If the SRT for a spout is 4 hours, then technicians should be able to finish the job in 4 hours. If it takes longer, Meagher finds out why.
“This job can go from 0 to 100 mph quickly. You can be sitting here with no calls one minute and 10 the next…”
“Communication is key, and I like to overcommunicate,” Meagher says. “When a customer’s chopper is down, they don’t want to be wondering when they’re going to get it back. That’s why we have morning meetings with the technicians, and I check in throughout the day to make sure they’re staying on track and not socializing too much.”
Team Chemistry
It’s easier to have tough conversations with someone when you know them well. Meagher had already developed close relationships with many of the technicians before she even stepped foot inside VE.
“Some of them are in 4H with me and our families grew up together,” Meagher says. “I knew their personalities going into it. Many of us are good friends and we get along well. We like to have fun — last year for Halloween we all dressed up in the same costumes. Food is another way we communicate. We like to eat here. There’s always donuts or cinnamon rolls or candy at my desk.”
Meagher is passionate about helping farmers because she is one herself. She’s confident her team can be counted on to get the job done. Delivering elite customer service is the most rewarding part of her job, but also something that keeps her up at night because there’s always room for improvement.
“If we didn’t get a piece of equipment to a farmer when they needed it, I’ve wondered what we could’ve done differently to make it work. That keeps me up at night sometimes — figuring out how to correct it for next time.”
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