Commission, train and maintain

Good customer service hinges on sending customers away happy and welcoming them back in their time of need.

The idea that a good customer is a happy one is not lost on the ABB Robotics Customer Service team. The group has a new business model aimed at giving customers “peace of mind” no matter where they are or at what hour.

At the customer’s side from the day their robots arrive at the factory, the Robotics Customer Service team installs, trains (robot operators) and remotely monitors the performance of these precious assets around the clock.

“Customer Service is about what happens after commissioning and training,” Arno Strotgen, head of Customer Service, ABB Robotics, told a crowd gathered in Mainz, Germany for ABB’s annual European Value Provider Conference and Customer Day. “At ABB we’ve moved away from an on-call ‘break-fix’ philosophy to a flat rate model. All the customer has to do is select the features of the maintenance program they want. We’ll do the rest.”

Known as ABB Robot Care, the maintenance program includes an advanced diagnostic tool called Remote Service. The new technology is at the heart of ABB Robotics Customer Service’s shift from preventive to predictive maintenance because of its ability to identify issues before they become serious problems.

Once a problem occurs, an alarm is sent to both ABB’s Service team and the robot operators, who can opt to fix it over the phone or to have an ABB repairman come to their site.

Whatever their decision, the value-add becomes quickly apparent. “Response time is faster and travel time is shorter because of how quickly we can deploy resources,” said Strotgen.

Present in 53 countries, ABB Robotics Customer Service is 1,300 technicians strong. The group also operates training facilities in China, Germany and in the United States.