Where are
you playing next,
Mr. Löw?
From 7.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. at the Festo
technical customer hotline. As a con­
sulting engineer, I can get up to 50 calls
a day. Design engineers from a wide
range of industries, service technicians,
control specialists and machine operators may need
information about Festo products, may be looking for
solutions for specific and often complex applications,
or may have questions after commissioning their machine.
My job demands full concentration and the ability to switch
quickly from one query to the next. Every phone call
brings a new challenge. After a busy day at work, music
helps me to unwind. I’m a singer in a rock band and a
trumpeter in a music club.
I love to play lots of different kinds of music – from folk
to seventies rock. It’s the same at work. The variety is
one of the things I like most about the technical customer
hotline. Before I start work I never know what to expect,
what questions I will be asked and requests I will receive.
Just like rock music, talking to customers sometimes
demands an ability to improvise. But you can’t improvise
well unless you’ve mastered your profession.
The technical customer hotline team is also a bit like a
band or an orchestra. Although my eleven colleagues
and I act as soloists when talking to customers, to achieve
a good overall result we need to be able to work well
together. With around 70,000 phone calls to be dealt with
every year, you often need the support, knowledge and
experience of others – sometimes from many different
departments. Our customers notice this as well. Whether
they simply require product information or have ques-
tions about complex machines, they know that they can
expect a competent answer from us. And this doesn’t
just apply to Germany. My colleagues in the national com-
panies all over the world are always on hand to provide
their customers with advice and support.
1.2013
trends in automation
Soft Stop
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