Improving the Experience for Bruker China Customers

Our China service team is hard-working, professional and understands our customers’ needs. Here, we speak to Sun Hao, our Senior Service Manager in Beijing about his career at Bruker and what it means to be part of the team.

What does it mean to work as part of Bruker’s service team?
Our long-term goal has always been clear: to set up an application centric, effective and proactive service team for the purpose of supporting our customers’ hardware, software and operational issues, as well as practical applications. I’m proud to say that our team is now up and running - every team member is not only a technical expert but also a solution advisor, and they will continue to deliver great results in meeting our customers’ needs across a range of applications.

After graduating with a PhD in 2010, I joined Bruker as an after-sales service engineer. The transition from customer to manufacturer gave me the opportunity to consider how to improve the overall service and customer experience at Bruker. In close collaboration with Bruker headquarters, we established customer care centers in China, where our local team began to provide featured services such as telephone support, local testing, repair, and training services. After becoming a China customer care center supervisor, I continued enhancing the functions of the regional operations by establishing professional after-sales service teams.

In 2016, I transferred from the service team to the application team. I gained valuable hands-on experience as an application scientist, responsible for the development and promotion of the product for electrical measurement in liquid at nanoscale. Then in 2018, the needs of the business meant I was transferred back to the service team where I have worked as a senior service manager ever since.

The area I am responsible for has now expanded to Taiwan. This is an exciting period for Bruker and it is great to see the team continually growing. In my 11 years at Bruker I’ve witnessed the development and growth of the team, and seen the breadth of experience within our business, from front-line employees to the technical experts behind the scenes.

Becoming part of the service team
First and foremost, this is a challenging job, so it is vital that team members have a positive and optimistic attitude. We need a team that can rise to any possible challenge that both external customers and internal colleagues may demand – and the team must continue to learn and grow from this. We also need team members to be helpful, empathetic and able to quickly understand our customers’ needs, in order to find a solution.

Communication skills are also key, along with the qualities of honesty and integrity which are part of our corporate culture at Bruker. We strive for our team to be courageous in taking responsibility and trustworthy in establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with the customer.

There are no rigid requirements in terms of academic qualifications for this job. The technical abilities of this role go hand in hand with communication skills to provide excellent customer service.

It is our aim to create an application centric service team, which can provide solutions beyond what is expected. We would like to create a team of smart, passionate people, who are willing to learn new things and focus on solving the problem. With the right hiring process and training programs in place, we are building a team with the technical skills to deal with both hardware and application problems. We would also like to create a team that works collaboratively, learning, working, and solving problems together, where everyone in the team grows with Bruker. Our ultimate aim is to create added value for our customers, providing an optimum user experience through the use of the latest technologies and subsequently increasing our revenue growth.

The role of the customer service team in China
We use technology to create a unique service experience, with WeChat groups based on different product lines, where customers can ask questions and get answers quickly, at almost any time. Our WeChat official account also has many technical support resources, supporting AI reply and sharing research papers that are of interest to customers.

Through technological advancements, we also provide augmented reality remote support for customers where we can guide customers to solve problems by themselves accurately and rapidly. This has been revolutionary in helping our customers, especially during the pandemic.

We also have complete hardware testing and maintenance equipment in the customer care center, which can locate problems at speed and repair critical parts. To help customers fully understand the extent of their instrument’s performance, we also provide a large number of training courses for different levels. This has enabled us to become trusted partners with our customers, helping them gain the best possible outcomes using our instruments.

Research collaboration
A major factor in our success has been our scientific research cooperation between our engineers and customers. Many application queries have been resolved by assisting customers in the design of experimental schemes, optimizing experimental conditions and modifying instruments in some cases. Over the past few years, our engineers have published more than 50 high-quality scientific research papers in cooperation with our customers, which has been hugely beneficial for both parties.

Working in collaboration with our customers helps build our reputation as trusted partners, which has been hugely important in establishing the Bruker team across this key growth region.