Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

If you think about large industrial organizations today, which are the companies that are winning, which are the ones that are losing?

My name is Ron Kaufman, and this is what I see.

Companies that are winning are focusing on improving their service, the way they treat customers, negotiate with customers, deliver for customers, and follow up with customers. They focus on creating a better experience for clients at every point of contact and at every level.

The companies that are losing are not focused this way. They don’t understand that service is an action that creates value, and they don’t build a culture of continuous service improvement. They just carry on thinking that their products, their prices or their past performance will guarantee their future success until the competition takes their customers away.

This is a common problem for companies in technology, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, construction, and many more.

Why is this and what can be done about it?

One of the many problems that leaders in large industrial B2B companies face is getting their people to understand the need to improve their service. Their training and experience have not prepared them to face this situation. That’s very costly because B2B industries across the world are becoming more competitive every day.

This problem starts with a fundamental misunderstanding about what we mean by the word “Service”.

Engineers and technical teams often think that service is the soft and fuzzy part appropriate for retail, restaurants, hospitality, maybe medical care, but it doesn’t really apply to them. They focus on product quality and process efficiency. Often, they’re working in silos while focusing on hitting the KPIs or meeting their service level agreements.

The trouble is that performance in these areas is no longer enough to win.

The solution is to start with a better understanding of what service really means.

Service is taking action to create value for someone. Uplifting service is taking the next actions to create more value for the people you serve. That could be paying customers of your organization or the colleagues who depend on you throughout the organization.

Now, this means that everything anyone does in a large industrial B2B organization is a form of service. Constantly creating value. Unfortunately, they may not understand this, so they keep taking the same actions over and over again, or they resist taking new actions to collaborate and innovate to deliver new value that’s needed to win in today’s competitive world.

So, the first problem is a shallow understanding, or a misunderstanding of what service really means.

The second problem is a lack of effective service improvement tools that engineers and technical teams can use to analyze service from the recipient’s point of view.In a B2B ecosystem, that recipient may be a client, a customer, a colleague, a business partner, a supplier, a distributor, or even a government agent.

The good news is, when you bring proven effective frameworks to people inside these companies, they can see the value these tools provide and quickly put them to work.Our team of experts has enabled this transformation for some of the largest B2B companies in a wide range of industries, all around the world.

In every case, the people in these complex and often global organizations have put our tools to work, improved the service they provide, and increased the value they create.In the process, they overcome silo behaviors and learn to work together to create a more successful and sustainable future. It’s absurd that so many people today are still learning engineering, finance, and technical skills without learning what service really means.

They graduate with certificates and diplomas and degrees, yet do not recognize who are the people that they’re being educated to serve. What do their customers, clients, and colleagues really value from them now? What else will they need and value in the future? The good news is we have the tools to help companies answer these questions, and we enjoy helping people to learn and apply these tools every day.

That’s what I think.

What do you think is needed to improve and win in the competitive world of large, complex, and often global business-to-business organizations?