Interview with Lisa Hellqvist, Managing Director Copperberg

Lisa Hellqvist is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Copperberg. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, she is an expert in all topics related to the Industrial Aftermarket, Service, eCommerce & Digitization.

We from Partium asked her for her point of view on the following topics:

Lisa, what would you say are the most common challenges faced by industrial aftermarket businesses?

When we do research with the Copperberg aftermarket and service community, the following top three challenges are always mentioned:

• To get top management supporting culture transformation of your service business.

• To be able to communicate new value-added offerings to customers

• Designing new service business models.  

These are of course, three transformational questions, and we know that the new more demanding market landscape is forcing service businesses to re-think their service value proposition, which requires clear and supportive leadership.

But another one not to be forgotten is the issue of integrating new technologies into the current infrastructure, a very operational aspect, but nevertheless, something which many service leaders daily are challenged with.

In your opinion, what are emerging trends and technologies in the industrial aftermarket, and what impact do you see these trends having on the industry?

There are basically two major trends that I would like to recognize.

The first one is where we sell the customer the full solution, and we also carry all the risk; Stemming from the opportunities of predictive maintenance – moving into outcome-based service contracts, PaaS, or even in some instances Servitization or Subscription modeling. All are enabled by different sets of data: from connected machinery through IOT and customer data collection and AI.

The second trend I see is where the customer is allowed to do more elements of self-service and one-off transactions:

We allow the customer more and more responsibility, and the customer demand more and more transparency and self-service. I believe that this is a generational transformation, where the younger generation who is now the buy-side of your customer, would like to find things online. Would like to search things. Would search manuals on YouTube, order the parts online. So, if you don't exist online and the customer can't find you, then they cannot, and will not, buy from you.

We see that the ecommerce aspects of the aftermarket offering were boosted during the pandemic, when we relied a lot on remote service and self-service.

How can companies prepare for these trends?

I think to prepare for these trends, you have to ask yourself if you really know what the customer needs, not just what they want. They don't always know what they want.

But by defining your customer base and understanding the outcome they're looking for, you can also make sure that you put the right value proposition in front of them. Some customers might be more self-going, and request lower premium service contracts and some customers need more integrated service solutions that are based on outcome and the responsibility is yours to guarantee a certain uptime.

Either way, you choose this, you must make sure that you have true service leadership. So much revenue today is stemming from the aftermarket and the profit margins are increasing, for those who run it smartly. That means that to have a proactive service strategy in place, you need to have the right people in C-level positions. This business should be integrated throughout the whole company's value proposition and even be a part of the Capital equipment sales strategy. 

How can aftermarket organizations ensure customer satisfaction, and how can they improve customer experience?

Going back to the customer needs. I think we really need to define who our customers are. We can no longer assume that our current customers are the customers of the future. That means that maybe your regular customer today is not the regular customer five years from now. Any investments in technology or talent should cater to the future customer’s needs.

Therefore, we need to look wisely at: Where do our customers exist? My guess is online. You must be able to meet your customer online to survive. 

And bear in mind, that your future customer, whom you will meet online, will also have very high expectations of a seamless experience. So, it's not just enough to, for example, launch an eCommerce shop, you also have to make sure that the buying journey is adding value to the customer experience. 

What do you believe are the most important skills and qualities for success in the industrial aftermarket?

It's very hard to say. Of course, we will see different kind of technical and software skills being in dire need as we move into a more connected world. But on a personal level, I see a miss match between our commercial skill set within service and the move towards these customer-centric forms of contracts.

We need to understand value-based selling and solution selling. If you do not have the means in place to tell your customers about the added value your services can, or are, bringing them, you need to find that go-to-market plan quickly.

If the service and aftermarket unit is not going to be an afterthought but rather its own profit center it requires its own sales strategy. With the right use of customer insights and IB data, we can also smartly spread that strategy over multiple channels such as for example the distributor network or eCommerce to ensure we have the right value proposition for the customers in the different segments.

 The aftermarket industry has a specific beauty to it and that is that you can tap into new potential revenue streams, by smartly looking after your existing customers, which is also a great way of increasing customer satisfaction, building your brand’s trust, and keeping market share. Basically, a win-win!

Thank you very much for the interview!

More about Lisa and Copperberg:

In 2012 Lisa co-founded Copperberg and has since the start been the Managing Director. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, she first joined the group of companies as Marketing Director in 2009. After more than a decade of creating original content for the Aftermarket and Service industry, Lisa is considered to be a well-known subject-matter expert that still engages with manufacturers on a daily basis when also heading the Content team of Copperberg.

Copperberg is an original content creation company with an ambition to build physical and digital platforms bringing together the manufacturing community in order to grow and build relationships globally.