IMPROVING CUSTOMER SERVICE WITH THE VPS 19 SMART GLASSES
As a hidden champion, Hanseatic Power Solutions (HPS) in Norderstedt just outside Hamburg, Germany, produces switchgear for the whole world and delivers to Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, among others. With the VPS 19, HPS is now optimizing its customer service at home and abroad.
The medium-sized company, which specializes in the control of power supply in particularly sensitive areas such as hospitals, airports, banks and data centers, makes the VPS 19 available to its service technicians in the field. For more complex work, HPS can thus offer expert help from its headquarters in Norderstedt at any time. Using the smart glasses’ camera, the expert sees exactly the same as the technician on site and can, for example, mark exactly the switching points in the picture where the technician should start work.
“The pandemic has been a decisive factor in our decision to invest more in remote support. This enables us to offer our customers the best possible service even at a distance and without the risk of traveling,” explains Bernd Mähnss. The managing director and shareholder of HPS sees a decisive competitive advantage in offering innovative digital services. “Last but not least, the smart glasses save us time, travel costs and human resources. Whereas in the past our experts often had to travel to the customer for smaller repairs, the VPS 19 now enables fast remote diagnoses. We can plan our assignments more efficiently,” says Bernd Mähnss.
When a customer from Munich was recently unable to travel to Norderstedt for the pre-delivery inspection of a switchgear, the HPS team gave him a live demo of the system using the smart glasses. The customer watched the demonstration comfortably on screen in Munich.
The glasses are also to be used by customers in the Arabic region in the near future, making the long journey unnecessary. Communication via video and audio, the display of the focal points in the streamed video image and the sending of sketches makes interaction intuitive and overcomes language barriers – an advantage for international projects.
For the future, HPS is also planning training courses with the VPS 19. This will allow to record videos of specific processes or more complicated maintenance work and to provide it to the customer as an additional service. By means of the focal point display, the videos show exactly which activity the viewer must concentrate on in a particular situation.
