Global Support Network – always there to help!

In order to strengthen customer-responsive proximity in an era of worldwide networking and continual reachability, the creation of decentralised contact points in the various regions plays a particularly important role for Krones and Krones’ clients.

These local contact points are designed to assist in guaranteeing a high level of availability for contact partners, and breaking down linguistic, cultural and temporal barriers. We consider it particularly important, especially when technical challenges are involved, that we are able to provide our clients with fast and purposeful assistance. In order to accomplish this, it’s vital to bring the quality of our technical support up to an international standard – and that’s precisely what I and my colleagues from LCS are working to achieve.

The stringent standards we set ourselves for the service we aim to offer our clients motivate us to continually improve and expand our support capabilities, and in addition to invest in new technologies. With our 24/7 support, we have already been assisting our clients through telephone and remote service for several years now, so as to be there to help them whenever technical challenges are encountered. Now, against the background of progressive globalisation and decentralisation, we are taking the next step by globally harmonising our “Support” Lifecycle Service product. The processes and procedures currently in place at the subsidiaries will be matched to the operational modalities of Krones AG. We thus ensure that we speak the same language throughout our presence on the international markets and are able to offer Krones’ clients a globally harmonised standard. At the same time, our subsidiaries will become more independent and autonomous, while still operating on the accustomed high level that Krones provides for its clients.

The global roll-out of Krones Support focuses above all on intermeshing the international operations of our subsidiaries with the group’s knowledge and the goal of establishing a global business model. A beginning was made in late 2018 in the North America Region, with all other regions following in succession. How is this integration to be accomplished? During the course of the roll-out, the subsidiaries will be changed over to an internationally identical business model, and processes will be harmonised. We thus aim to ensure that every region is able to guarantee 24/7 reachability, enabling clients to benefit from the advantages of a service deployment directly from inside the region concerned. Clients’ inquiries will now only in exceptional cases be forwarded to Neutraubling if they occur outside the region’s business hours. Thanks to the international introduction of our ticket system, specialists working on the spot can also draw up optimal documentation for the support case involved and make it available to the client. The Global Remote Service Platform, too, can thus be internationally utilised on a harmonised basis.

This has nothing but advantages for our clients. For example, access to support and the concomitant technologies is facilitated many times over by the new dimension of local reachability. Support Centers distributed all over the world are able to meaningfully contribute the group’s expertise in the regions as well, and conversely share their knowledge in the same way – an assurance of client-responsive proximity. The appropriately trained staff not only support the clients with their technical knowledge, they also keep an eye open for any necessary regional modifications to meet the needs of our clients.

The harmonised presence of Krones Support creates the following advantages, for example:

  • Maximised availability of the Krones support organisation worldwide thanks to its decentralised structure ​
  • Harmoniously networked processes plus consistent, globally conceived operational modalities and performative efficacy
  • Specialists on the spot in every region, each speaking the national language of the Krones Center concerned ​
  • Rapid guaranteed response times for contracted clients in every region
  • Globally utilised secure platform (GRS) for Remote Service​
  • Excellent support process: fast, reliable, measurable, integrated, and cost-optimised

Thus in future clients will be able to rely even more reassuringly on our international support – thanks not least to the use of augmented reality, which my colleagues had already unveiled at the BrauBeviale 2018.