By providing the crucial link between labs, production and our customers in the field, Franky brings unique insights to Conoptica – helping us to enhance our measurement solutions for the wire and cable industry and benefiting from the practical experience of our user community.
Franky is well-known to most of our customers because he’s the guy who manages our service team. That’s not his only role, as you’ll discover – but he’s definitely a key figure and instrumental in delivering the service quality our customers expect.
Having gained a degree in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore, Franky migrated to Norway to attend our local NTNU from where he obtained a master’s degree in Computer Engineering. On graduation, he was swiftly snapped up by Conoptica!
Initially building on his computer expertise as a Production and Service Engineer in our team, he’s now responsible for all of our service activities. This combines three principal interests to make life very interesting indeed.
First, as a computer sciences specialist, Franky has long held an interest in algorithmic programming and emerging research into AI. Second, it’s just interesting to work with hardware – so bringing the two worlds together through the medium of our instruments to deliver solutions that people use in their daily activities really caught his imagination.
Third, people! By working in our services team, Franky has a direct line to our customers – so he really understands how the impact of their problems and can work to solve them, by helping shape and optimize our tools. He’s the crucial link between their production environments and our improvement programs.
Providing the connection customers need
“We solve complex measurement challenges, but we have to do so in a way that adds value for our customers, across the different industries in which they work. Because I’ve got to know almost all of them over the years, it gives me a unique connection between lab, our production lines – and what they do in the field”, notes Franky. “I get unique insights from around the world that I can use to enhance their experiences, as well as to optimize our own solutions.”
Of course, it helps that Franky is multi-lingual and has lived in many different countries. “I speak Norwegian now, but grew up with English, French and Creole—and I think I can communicate in many more languages now – certainly, we all understand each other!”
Service begins when instruments are shipped. It means coordinating the field service team, planning their (often complex) schedules, arranging maintenance—on-site, or in-house, as required—Franky may even help with installation, although he spends less time on his travels these days.
‘Follow the sun’ support is standard for Conoptica, so this means making sure that resources are available, when required – and that the right skills are deployed to help customers and reseller partners.
Leveraging insights to drive continuous improvement
All of this means that Franky is able to leverage this knowledge and the insights he has gained by providing resources to assist with self-service and care – as well as to supervise continuous improvement programs that align with feedback.
“We’re directly responsible for the support we offer, so it has to be delivered right. I think we do. Our brand has become trusted and recognized – and people like to use our tools, because they know they can communicate with us directly and we’ll help them quickly – it creates a unique bond. We’re almost a family!”, he added. “When you help someone, you may not hear back from them for a long time – but they already know that, if they do need to contact our team, we’ll solve any problem they face, so confidence is high.”
Franky is now deeply enmeshed in Trondheim – which offers a wonderful environment. But, it’s one that remains deeply connected to the world at large. Thanks to Franky and his team, our Wire and Cable tool customers know that support is just round the corner.