IDEC Engineering Insights #7, part 2: a global technical support team leader who never stops learning

The team at IDEC HQ in Osaka guides and supports our global teams in many ways. Regional customer service and technical support teams receive advice, documents, and answers to commonly asked questions from HQ members. They can share this information with their distributors and other customers, secure in the knowledge that all data is accurate and relevant to their needs.

The global technical support team in Japan is led by Shingo Morimoto. He receives numerous inquiries from our regional teams every day, covering the wide variety of IDEC products and services that we offer in each area.

In part 1 of this interview with Shingo – which you can read here – we discussed his background and achievements at IDEC. Part 2 is below.

The quality and variety of our switches, and the added value of technical support.

The switch lineup is so diverse that I believe we can offer something for everyone. No matter what the use case, we can suggest at least 1 product that meets the customer’s needs and the relevant safety requirements.

And no matter which product it is, technical support teams are in a unique position to demonstrate each product’s value.

They’re well made and reliable – more so, I believe, than many competing products.

For example, during the India project I talked about in part 1, there was a clear opening for us to demonstrate that we offered safer, durable alternatives.

The customer recognized that difference in quality, they trusted in IDEC safety, and we won their business.

The Safety Commander series.

Safety Commander builds on several IDEC strengths: the built-in safety devices, the flexibility and ease of use, and the customer focus. There aren’t many products that combine an enabling switch and an emergency stop switch in this way.

Safety products are far more sophisticated now. Today’s IDEC product lineup builds on the most effective features of previous models with newer innovations, and I’m sure future product generations will do the same.

We’ll need to know more, so that we can help others.

As products continue to advance in functionality and what customers can achieve by using them, we must understand those functions and support customer needs in the same way.

The HQ team provides the information regional teams share with customers, so every customer worldwide receives the same level of support. The more we continue to learn, the easier it is for each of us to maintain that high service level.

AI could answer questions in our place, like a chatbot, but I think it’s less likely to realize, or work to find out, what is truly being asked.

It doesn’t have that human understanding of ways other humans communicate, and probably won’t do much back-and-forth to learn more. It wouldn’t build the personal relationships that make communication and collaboration easier over time.

I’m looking forward to the challenge of providing technical support for new IDEC products that showcase even greater technological advancements.

With every step forward in tech, there’s more to learn about how a product works and what it’s capable of.

I get excited for each new product release. I know I’ll need to remember as much as I can about it, but it’s a learning experience so that’s always a good feeling.

Our accumulated technical knowledge across the IDEC Group is as extensive and wide-ranging as the product lineups we offer in global markets.