Partnerships are about putting yourself in the customer’s shoes

How can we provide our customer with valuable solutions to help them achieve their business goals and realize a sustainable customer relationship? I believe we must start by practicing customer centricity and truly understanding the customer’s needs and challenges.

Understanding the customer’s need with in-depth and effective communication

First, it’s important to carefully study the customer sites and understand the status, pain points and challenges of their operations. Second, and even more importantly, it’s necessary to understand the customer’s targets and the customer’s customer needs with a clear idea of how our customer expects to satisfy their customers.

A wise Chinese saying says: “Put yourself in the place of another.” Knowing that we and our customer have the same desire to think from customer’s perspective, we see the importance of understanding the customer’s customer needs. Only when we help our customer to meet their customer’s needs with our experiences, process expertise, technology, equipment and services will our solutions and efforts be meaningful and valuable. 

Discovering the customer’s needs by studying their company culture

By studying our customer’s mission, vision, values and strategy, understanding the internal driving force of their development, the competitiveness for which they strive, and how they operate, we can help them pursue their long-term goals. We want the customer to see that we are here not only to help them to achieve their short-term business objectives, but also to pave the way for them to pursue their higher goals. By sharing more information on industry’s developing trends, our global references and experiences, and our new technology, we can help the customer broaden their minds to lead and inspire them to explore potential business opportunities.

Get it done together through close cooperation

Putting the customer at the center is one of our top priorities. We have strong R&D capabilities, from mineralogy analysis to process testing and pilot plant testing; from pre-feasibility study to engineering design; from equipment delivery to life cycle services. Our strength is in being involved in a project at an early stage by co-working with the customer on research and development, enabling us to create appropriate process and technical solutions that best satisfy the customer’s needs.

At Metso Outotec, we have set up a cross-functional core team for each of our key accounts, which formulates key account planning. It proposes forward-looking strategic actions to meet customer needs through internal cooperation. Meetings with customers at different levels realizes the timely communication between the different organizations of both sides. A position designated as the customer contact helps the communication between the two sides become more convenient and efficient.

Communication between the management of both organizations takes into account both business and cultural aspects. In the process, mutual understanding is forged and reinforced. While strongly recognizing each other’s values and finding more common ground, we have also strengthened friendship and mutual trust, which has laid a solid foundation for our sustainable relationship and further cooperation.