Improving customer experience and service effectiveness

Bruker Corporation is a global company supplying high-performance scientific instruments and high-value analytical and diagnostic solutions for molecular and materials research, as well as for industrial and applied analysis. The company also has a team of service professionals located in Brno, Czech Republic. From there, it supports many customers in Eastern Europe who have Daltonik instrument devices in use. Travel restrictions introduced in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced the team to seek new and remote ways to solve their customers’ issues. The team in Brno decided to test AIRe Link, an innovative remote visual support tool from Konica Minolta. Positive results with service cost savings in thousands of euros and an improved customer experience quickly convinced Bruker to incorporate AIRe Link into their standard service and support processes.

COVID-19 pandemic curtailed Bruker’s service travels in Europe

 
Being one of the world-leading analytical instrumentation companies, Bruker’s high performance scientific instruments and high-value analytical and diagnostic solutions enable scientists to explore life and materials at molecular, cellular, and microscopic levels. Today, worldwide, more than 6,000 employees are working at over 90 locations on all continents.

At its site in Brno, a team of service professionals looks after customers in Eastern Europe – including Croatia and Ukraine – who have Bruker Daltonik instruments in use. When the Corona pandemic broke out in Europe in spring 2020 and numerous governments imposed travel restrictions, cross-border travel to customers outside the Czech Republic was often no longer possible.

But thanks to an open company culture that always encourages testing and validating new approaches to improve the quality of service and support, the company had decided to test Konica Minolta’s new remote visual support tool in a pilot phase. AIRe Link enables companies to solve problems remotely and helps them to avoid traveling.

Seeing through the eyes of the customer

The company, therefore, decided to solve the problem at the Croatian customer site using AIRe Link. The customer had a problem loading the target into an instrument. “The onsite visit would have required a car journey of about 1,250km. So we decided to use AIRe Link first to try to identify and solve the issue remotely,“ says David Burian, Head of Service, Bruker s.r.o.

As a cloud solution, AIRe Link enables a technical specialist to see what the customer sees using the camera from the customer’s smartphone or tablet. The technical specialist can also use features including a live pointer or real-time drawing over a snapshot of the customers’ environment. They can also provide visual navigation during issue analysis when guiding the customer through the correction procedure.

“As a result of our team in Brno being able to observe what was going on inside the instrument via the mobile phone camera, the problem was solved quickly,“ confirms David Burian. “The customer was in the warranty period, and thanks to AIRe Link, we were able to fulfill our warranty obligations without sending the service engineer on site. This fix saved us approximately 15 hours drive and 880 euros. Also, at that time of travel restrictions, AIRe Link was the only way to get the instrument back in service for our customers in the restricted countries”.

Cost savings on both sides

David continues: “The AIRe Link solution is easy to use and offers excellent video and audio quality. AIRe Link works on any smartphone connected to the internet, so there is no cost to the customer when using this new technology.” Instead of installing an app or creating an account, the customer only has to click on an invitation link received via SMS, and a session opens in the browser of their smartphone or tablet.

Because of its benefits, Bruker decided to integrate AIRe Link into its standard service and support processes. “Very often, we can identify or even fix the problem remotely. The customer gets a faster solution to the problem, which increases customer satisfaction because they do not have to wait for a service technician. At the same time, we save travel costs and carbon emissions,” David Burian explains.