As we ease out of lockdown and re-enter public buildings, we need to once again feel comfortable in urban spaces. From self-disinfecting handrails to smart people flow planning, innovative solutions that support well-being will help people transition to a new normal.
This ‘new normal’ brings challenges and opportunities for KONE, a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry. We are a people flow provider, helping to build smarter and eco-efficient cities across the globe including our elevators, escalators and automatic building doors. We ensure not only new equipment but maintenance and modernization service and solutions to add value to buildings throughout their life cycle.
How is KONE contributing to safer buildings and environment Alain Bienfait, Service Director, Asia Pacific?
Safety has always been our first priority, starting from our own employees, to ensure safety mindset and employee well-being. We support this through continuous training programs, events, right tools & equipment and supervision. Our employees, with safety and service mindset, together with our innovative solutions, are what differentiate us from our competitors.
To support our customers, we have developed customer communication packages on how they and their customers can feel safe in buildings. This includes Facility Safety Plan, an exit guidebook for COVID-19.
The guidebook follows an end-user journey through buildings with different aspects to consider for safer environment. This including how to follow social distancing measures with crowd control, personnel & team guidelines, office and cleaning safety. Following these guidelines and checklists our customers can ensure a smooth transition for building management to return back to work and give them and building users tools to follow safe practicalities.
How people interact with everyday environment and the way we do customer service is set to change and already has. How do you see customer relationship management change in the effect of this?
COVID-19 has brought about a change in the prevailing concerns of KONE customers: For most business-owners, they struggle with balancing the need to resume normal business operations as soon as possible versus the need to ensure the health and well-being of employees and the stakeholders that they interact with in day-to-day business operations.
It is extremely important for us that we stay in touch with our customers to understand how the circumstances of their operating environment has changed. Being able to build and maintain good customer relationships means that we have a good appreciation of the new and individual customer-specific challenges that they are facing especially with regards to the COVID-19 situation. This puts us in a good position to be able to act as trusted partners to our customers, partners who are able to provided practicable and relevant solutions, and in the process, strengthen existing business relationships.
So, in summary, customer relationship management is one that has become an even more important area which we are paying close attention to. It is one area in which we are putting more emphasis on increased customers engagement and communication, of course through suitable virtual channels.
Virtual ways, like webinars, enable us to reach out to larger audiences, gives us another way of engaging our customers whilst co-learning faster, but what will the future of work look like as millions of people return to their workplaces? And what could help us enter offices with confidence and a sense of well-being? For this, KONE has been working together with our customers to find solutions.
As a result, new health and well-being solutions have been launched to bring benefits and value to our customers – keeping equipment running with maximum traffic performance, reducing the need to touch surfaces and overall contributing to a healthier environment in our society.
These solutions include KONE Air Purifier for cleaner air in elevators, chemical free UV-C device for reducing germs in escalator handrails and KONE Elevator Call to reduce the wait time of passengers whilst avoiding buttons and surfaces. In India, we are providing a solution with a communication platform for ordering of an elevator touch-free.
Our 24/7 Connected Services minimizes equipment downtime with predictive maintenance and ensures a smoother user experience. Our customers have more visibility and knowledge on their equipment from their remote work locations and end-users will rarely experience disturbances in their building journeys, minimizing risk of people flow congestion.
As people flow experts, by using existing data and simulation tools KONE can consult their customers on how physical distancing measures impact people flow in a specific building, and what measures could help reduce crowding and bottlenecks.
For KONE the future of urban spaces looks different – digitalized, bright and full of people flow opportunities. We are here to ensure you feel safe in your chosen space.
For more information on KONE health and well-being solutions, visit: https://www.kone.com/en/products-and-services/APFS-advanced-people-flow-solutions/health-and-wellbeing/
