Expert Talks with Szilárd Halász: Customer Success in B2B

Daniele: Good morning, everyone. My name is Daniele Delle Case and this is Expert Talks, the Things5 podcast about technology and smart products with industry experts. Today we're joined by Szilard Halász, Customer Success and Sales Manager at Saier. Szilard has over 20 years of international experience in manufacturing, with a unique career path that took him from production and quality all the way to leading the digital transformation of after-sales at large multinationals such as Electrolux Professional, Alliance, and Riello. It's a pleasure to have you here with us, Szilard.

Szilárd: Thank you, good morning.

Why a cross-functional view matters: from the factory floor to management

Daniele: Starting from your story, you began as a Quality and Plant Manager, and now you're a Customer Success Manager. You've lived in Hungary, Italy, and Germany, and somewhere in between there was also a sabbatical year. Looking back, which of these experiences most profoundly changed the way you do business, and what brought you to Italy?

Szilárd: I think every step of my career has had an impact on my professional experience. As you said, I started as quality manager at a small company manufacturing components for the automotive industry, and then became after-sales manager for Riello and Electrolux. Those were very important steps.

Every organization, being different from the others, always gave me something more. Besides being a bit of a challenge, it gave me the drive to learn and to quickly get used to new environments. Every job gave me a great deal in developing the complex set of skills I use every day today.

Daniele: Yes, and the way you think also carries all these experiences with it, and they influence your future choices.

Szilárd: Exactly. If we start from the beginning, right after university, working at that small automotive components company, I realized that reality is completely different from academic theory. I think it's essential for people starting out to know the basics of the business, even starting from the most operational levels. This lets you develop a way of thinking that, even unconsciously, gives you a more comprehensive view of workflows and of the situations you find yourself in at any given moment.

Daniele: In your view, what are people who haven't had such a "broad" experience, and have always stayed in a vertical dimension, missing out on? How limited are they in their ability to make decisions with goals and outcomes involving things not directly under their control?

Szilárd: I think they lose the ability to understand certain situations more quickly and to have a cross-functional view of how complex a situation is. That's exactly what adds value professionally.

Daniele: Maybe it also helps you understand some problems earlier, sensing danger ahead of others.

Szilárd: Exactly, it lets you understand, from a production standpoint too, what the limits, risks, or potential of a solution or a product might be for any future request. It gives you a deeper understanding of the complexity of each case.

Daniele: Having "lived and breathed the factory" is a rare background for a manager, especially in sales or Customer Success. How does it concretely help you in your day-to-day work?

Szilárd: I probably don't even realize it when I'm making decisions. Having been "in the shoes" of the other people involved, I can understand their points of view or develop empathy for different people. In every business there are various stakeholders: those who use the product, those who sell it, and those who make it. Each has their own expectations of that product or service. If, when preparing a product, I fully understand the perspective of those who will use it, I'll know how to make it as well as possible. If I'm a quality person and I know its weak points, I know where and how to react, giving the development team the right pointers to rule out future issues or simply to improve the product.

International Customer Service: building relationships based on trust

Daniele: Regarding your commercial experience, you were responsible for Customer Service in the EMEA region. What does it mean to deal every day with different cultures, speeds, and expectations? What was the most complex challenge that really taught you what doing business internationally means?

Szilárd: In that context, you have high-level stakeholders who expect certain results. At the same time, you have to meet the end customer's needs. Finding the balance isn't easy, because you can't think only about short-term results, but about medium- to long-term ones.

The way you solve a problem today can give you advantages in the long run. It's speed, the impact on the customer's budget, and how you handle a quality defect that build the relationship with your customer. And the whole business is based on an honest relationship between supplier and customer.

Daniele: Do you think national and cultural differences play a role in this?

Szilárd: They do, but the "core" of the business is always the same: transparency and trust between manufacturer and consumer. Regardless of whether you're in Hungary, Italy, or Norway. There are cultural biases - some people are more cautious and others more open - but once you solve a problem, you gain an advantage for the business. If you don't solve it well, both the Norwegian customer and the Italian one will be left with a bad taste in their mouth.

Daniele: So it's always about winning trust. The methods change, but the goal stays the same. There are probably the same dynamics inside the company too.

Szilárd: What changes is the way customers react. In Southern Europe the reaction is more expressive, louder. A Scandinavian, on the other hand, might signal a serious problem with just a slight raise of an eyebrow. You have to know how to read people.

Daniele: When you arrived in Italy, how did management perceive Customer Care? What made you realize it could become a profit and value center, instead of just a cost center?

Szilárd: I learned that precisely in Italy. Before, working in technical support and as Technical Manager, I led the team that solved problems. We were always seen as a necessary cost center to be budgeted for.

In Italy I met very good managers and mentors who taught me that, besides providing good service, you can do excellent business. Spare parts sales, which I handled directly, were just a small part of After Sales' profitable business. That's where I understood the real economic potential for the company.

After-sales strategies: selling quality services that take the worry off the customer

Daniele: In your view, what's the best business model for After Sales? Selling spare parts on demand, or selling services connected to spare parts or to support management?

Szilárd: Selling quality services at a reasonable price. We can provide an extraordinary service: for example, imagine a machine in a kitchen or a laundry that runs 12 hours a day; the fact that it works brings satisfaction. If it breaks down and the technician steps in right away, that still brings satisfaction. But if the technician has to come back every week, it becomes a burden. The secret is to provide a quality product, but also a service that guarantees stability and peace of mind to the user running that business. If you take the worry about the equipment off the customer's mind, letting them focus only on their business, you take a weight off their shoulders. If you reach this level of understanding, you've won 80% of future orders.

Daniele: Is this message conveyed through sales, or through actions?

Szilárd: Through actions. You can spend a fortune on marketing, but "delivery" is what counts. If the user is satisfied, word of mouth is worth incomparably more than any advertising.

Daniele: This is a recurring theme in our interviews: service quality that then becomes the strongest commercial lever, especially through word of mouth. People trust you and recommend you, bringing you more business. It's a slow mechanism, if you like, but a very strong and solid one.

Szilárd: Indeed, when you lay the foundations, you build little by little, and it has a value that can't be compared with other ways of making your mark on the market. This is the strongest value, proving that it's worth working in the market.

Daniele: In your model, did you sell spare parts directly or did you have partners?

Szilárd: We worked through partners. There were service providers who did maintenance and repaired the equipment. For a global organization, keeping employed technicians everywhere would have been very difficult. It's much more agile to work with well-trained partners and commercial terms that work for the manufacturer, the dealers, and the end customer alike. Our pillar was supporting the partner so they could guarantee their service and their added value to the end user (the person using the equipment), and developing a business and logistics model that, for all its complexity, is fast and can deliver within 24 hours (in terms of documentation and spare parts).

Daniele: There's the issue of evaluating the service offered by partners. It's an exchange of trust toward the partners and the market. How did you measure the quality of the service these partners provided?

Szilárd: Mainly by comparing the quantity of spare parts purchased against the installed base and by monitoring warranty service calls. We tried to understand whether a problem was due to the product or to a technician who had to come back three times before finding the solution. With the advent of connected technologies (IoT), we began monitoring these KPIs much more deeply. When we saw that certain service centers and technicians weren't hitting those KPIs, we'd get in touch and step in with training or documentation wherever we saw issues.

Daniele: At that point there's an IoT angle: with connected machines I can know what's happening in the field, and therefore whether someone needs support to do their job better. As for spare parts, was there a problem with competition from generic parts versus original ones?

Szilárd: Always. The companies I worked for manufactured machinery and bought standard components on the market, while others were produced specifically. How much to sell, how to sell, who to sell to was always a problem. For example, bearings were a standard spare part. Our suppliers also sold the same component on the open market. When we managed to stay close to the market price, maybe with a 10-15% premium, partners bought from us because they knew that behind the spare part there was an organization providing documentation, training, and development, without which the technician wouldn't have been able to solve problems. If, on the other hand, the price was double the market price, we rightly lost competitiveness. Constant feedback from partners was essential to calibrate our commercial strategy, in terms of pricing and the behavior of general dealers. It always comes back to the bond of trust between manufacturer and partner.

Predictive maintenance and IoT: from reactive to predictive selling

Daniele: It's very interesting to see how much this affects control of the market; it keeps you from being out of line. From a technology standpoint, though, how has technology affected purchase planning, and the production and resale of spare parts, perhaps through predictive maintenance? Is it something you've explored, something you think adds value for this kind of activity?

Szilárd: Yes, when I started we had few digital tools. We relied on historical consumption data, which components were used and when, noticing seasonal peaks (for example before summer, before winter, or between seasons). In practice, every year we had two sales peaks worldwide, the same trends offset between Northern and Southern Europe. Both purchasing and preparation have to be planned to handle these requests, but they're mainly based on the history of spare parts consumption. As IoT developed, the maintenance contracts and connected services we sold to customers led us to create maintenance kits based on the installed base, the operating hours, or the cycles completed; you knew which components needed to be replaced or serviced. We arrived at a predictive selling model, not always a reactive one. I experienced this transformation in 2007 when I arrived in Italy. For example, if I have to replace a fan, I have to replace the gasket, but often it's not just a gasket problem, so we'd put everything together to avoid the technician having to come back two months later.

Back in 2007 we were already working on kits, but as IoT functionality developed, with field data from the customer, we knew which component was expected to need replacing based on the wear and operation of the machines. Today we work with online equipment monitoring: we know the exact state of wear based on the noise the machine makes. There are even algorithms that, through microphones, pick up a component making a noise that's different from normal, flagging the need for a replacement.

Digital transformation and CRM: managing the human factor in a global rollout

Daniele: Let's move on to your second working life, tied to commercial and technological CRM development. You managed the global CRM rollout at Electrolux Professional. What was the biggest challenge in creating a process that would work the same way in both Tokyo and Pordenone?

Szilárd: In fact, it was a challenge right from the start to figure out how to begin implementing the CRM. There are two models for implementing a CRM: you form a team, map all the processes, and then start, but you risk being inefficient; or you define the main processes and goals and start right away. We chose the second path: we started with Sales and gradually extended the use of the CRM to the other processes.

It was the right choice because sales processes are similar all over the world. We started with the most digitalized markets (Scandinavia and the DACH region), then moved down to Southern Europe and the rest of the world. It was interesting to see how each region took to the tool. Operational people were also involved: the sales, marketing, and after-sales teams. Each had its own goals and feedback. We always learned from all the others: we started in Scandinavia, where the implementation was lean, then moved on to Germany, adding a level of complexity, then Italy and the other markets. In the end we realized that 90% of the processes were the same; only the language changed.

Daniele: When the first CRMs came out, about 15 years ago, I remember the sales force felt monitored, felt they had lost their independence. How did you handle this human aspect? It's more a matter of empathy, of people management.

Szilárd: In Southern Europe that resistance was intense. Changing the mindset wasn't easy. In some cases we had to apply strict rules, tied for example to bonuses, to ensure the system was used correctly. It was essential to have correct and consistent data: a field had to be used the same way all over the world, otherwise the analysis would be thrown off. On the human side, we had to work harder in Southern Europe and Turkey, less in Northern Europe and America, but then again it depends on the people. It was cultural and personal work. Of course, we came across many models: in the USA, Japan, China. We then felt the need to do some fine-tuning with all the countries, but the arrival of Covid forced us to do this activity online, with less efficiency. In this case we saw the difference and the importance of direct human contact.

Daniele: On the subject of continuity and being close to people, how do you see the introduction of artificial intelligence in these areas, considering the importance of human contact?

Szilárd: AI is much faster. If the foundation is good, it can be an enormous help, but it can't replace the human side. There are stages of the business process where the human factor is essential and can't be replaced by AI. A big help from AI will be in cleaning up historical data (avoiding duplicates or input errors), but the initial decision on how to segment a customer or set a strategy still requires human input.

Daniele: There's also the matter of structuring qualitative data into quantitative data. That's another process AI handles very well.

Szilárd: I remember we also used tools to identify incorrect data. 70% of the database got cleaned up reasonably well, but the creation of incorrect data has to be minimized.

Daniele: It's a process issue. People need to align on following a structured process to get reasonably clean data. In my view, in every business activity, a good process lets you work better. And which processes were the hardest to integrate into the CRM?

Szilárd: Rather than departments, I'd talk about people and regions. The biggest difficulties came from technical integrations between the CRM and other existing systems that had been designed differently.

Daniele: What kind of insights were you able to extract from the CRM data?

Szilárd: We understood the type of customer, when they became active, what they needed to buy, or how a certain type of customer behaves: what a small laundry buys compared to a large one, or a restaurant kitchen compared to a cafeteria. Above all, we understood market habits so we could anticipate needs and create activities to support sales using these trends. If I know there'll be a certain demand in two months, I prepare in advance. Twenty years ago, salespeople sold what they had in the warehouse; with the CRM we started producing what the market actually wanted. That was one of the most valuable insights.

Servitization and TCO: becoming a partner in the customer's success

Daniele: Going back to customer satisfaction and customer success, in manufacturing people often talk about customer satisfaction, but you call yourself a Customer Success Manager. What concretely changes in B2B with this title and role?

Szilárd: The company I currently work for makes dosing systems for laundries, so it's a B2B2B model. If a detergent manufacturer wants to be efficient and successful on the market, it works with the best products. There are some very high-performing detergent products, and there are other products that require dosing systems. If we give them a product that makes them more efficient in the field, they succeed with their customers. Customer satisfaction in this case is the satisfaction of the chemical manufacturer's customer.

Daniele: Is it a matter of aligning goals between you and your customer?

Szilárd: Even more than that: making these companies working in the field more efficient. They don't just sell a product, they sell a service around cleaning a shirt or a suit. We managed to reduce field work by 60% thanks to high-quality, remotely controllable products with very high performance. This gives technicians more time to visit new customers and do other business. We become partners in their success. We focus on providing an extra lever for succeeding in the field.

Daniele: So IoT didn't just help you get to know the machines, it let you provide a more consistent, profitable, and present service to your customers.

Szilárd: Exactly. It reduced the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Going from four maintenance visits a year to just one drastically reduces commercial costs for the company providing the service, and it solves problems quickly thanks to the remote connection.

Daniele: How do you keep partners aligned on this? Do those providing service have to use the data and interact with the connected machines remotely, or are you the only ones interacting with the machines remotely?

Szilárd: We transfer all our know-how to them. We want the partner to be autonomous: we give them access to the data, teach them how to interpret it, and, if needed, integrate it into their clouds. Fortunately, our products are of the highest quality, so the spare parts business is very small. As a result, partners are happy because, even though the product isn't entry-level, the investment pays for itself quickly thanks to low maintenance and the absence of technical problems.

Daniele: Have you ever thought about "servitizing" the product, selling it as a service?

Szilárd: We're thinking about it. Given how durable our devices are, we could implement a remanufacturing model: bringing the product back in-house after a certain number of operating hours, overhauling it, and putting it back on the market, because we know that with minimal remanufacturing our equipment can keep working for years.

Daniele: One of the main issues when it comes to servitization is having a durable product, otherwise it wouldn't be sustainable, but if it's a high-quality product this becomes a competitive advantage that lets both you and your customers earn more and scale more easily.

Szilárd: Currently our largest customer operates more than 3,000 units in the DACH region, and now they're expanding worldwide because they bring competitive advantages compared to other suppliers.

Advice for SMEs: flexibility, AI, and new specialized skills

Daniele: Since we're nearing the end of this webinar, I'd like to bring the discussion back to practical topics for the people listening to us. I wanted to understand, from your point of view, what competitive advantage small and medium-sized businesses that embrace Customer Success have over large multinationals. What would you advise them?

Szilárd: The biggest advantage of SMEs is flexibility and the speed with which they can respond to the market, compared to the months large multinationals need. SMEs need to move beyond the traditional "I produce and I sell" model. They need to bring in specialists in areas like AI and digital marketing. Often in small companies the CEO does everything, but today you need specialized skills and domain expertise to take advantage of the available technologies.

Daniele: How important is it for small companies, too, to have a customer success department?

Szilárd: It depends on the complexity of the service provided, it depends on the number of customers to look after. Even without an entire department, investing in Customer Success training is now a "must" for everyone. Many SMEs are still tied to selling a product, but today you sell a service, a feeling, an emotion.

Daniele: On the other hand, what have you learned from large companies that you would not bring into a small company?

Szilárd: I don't think there are specific things. It's always a matter of personality and how you face challenges.

Daniele: How can the Customer Success process be digitalized? What are the right tools?

Szilárd: Besides traditional marketing tools, CRM, and social media, the key is real-time communication. Information from an hour ago is already old. You need to be present on digital platforms to provide constant support to partners and information to customers.

Daniele: And how do you see AI integrated into this process?

Szilárd: AI will help figure out what to communicate and who to reach out to, enabling very precise segmentation based on CRM data. Generic communication no longer works and has no impact; you need to hit the points that each individual customer really cares about.

Daniele: Are you already experimenting with something in this area?

Szilárd: Yes, we know the products we currently have are doing a very good job in a certain segment, but the market is very broad. We're trying to find solutions for both smaller and larger customers. For smaller customers, we're developing a solution dedicated to them.

Daniele: To wrap up, if you had to give three pieces of advice to yourself at the start of your career, what would you say?

Szilárd: With the mindset I have today, I'd do lots of things differently. Looking at my journey, I'm fairly happy. Maybe I'd advise myself to have a little more courage in seizing certain opportunities, while keeping the same sense of responsibility. But all things considered, I'd say it's fine the way it is.

Daniele: Thank you, Szilard, it's been a pleasure. An interview full of passion and valuable information. Let's say goodbye to our listeners, and we'll talk again on the next episode of Expert Talks.

Szilárd: Thank you very much.