Good products are no longer enough; every successful company now invests in service excellence. Top companies in manufacturing strive now towards transparency and partnerships.
At our recent breakfast event, we gathered experts from the leading industrial companies to discuss how top industrial companies are redefining success through service excellence. Read the key takeaways and learn what drives this shift from product-focused business to service-driven growth.
1. Competing on experience, not just products
Traditionally, the industrial sector has focused on hard facts and tangible results. But today, success is increasingly driven by customer experience: by how well a company listens, responds, and builds lasting trust. Beyond reliable equipment, customers expect real-time information, seamless digital interactions, and solutions that anticipate their needs.
At the event, we had the opportunity to hear how a global industrial company, in collaboration with Reaktor, developed a customer portal designed for a more intuitive user experience. The MVP was launched in just five months, despite the complexity of legacy systems. The portal enables meaningful, data-driven interactions with customers, offering real-time insights into equipment performance and maintenance schedules.
Next, the company aims for full transparency into equipment health, creating a foundation for proactive service and stronger partnerships.
2. Transparency is becoming a new standard
In industrial services, equipment and data transparency are no longer optional – they’re expected. Customers want to understand what’s happening behind the scenes: how machines perform, where inefficiencies arise, and how issues are resolved.
“Continuous service has to create continuous value. If the relationship feels exploitative, trust disappears.”
To earn long-term trust, companies must make performance data visible and act proactively before problems escalate.
By analysing machine data, AI can detect anomalies, recommend repairs, and even generate remote fixes – reducing service visits, speeding recovery, and building data-driven trust.
3. Partnerships bring value
True service excellence goes beyond delivering products; it’s about building partnerships. Instead of acting as one-directional suppliers, industrial companies are increasingly co-creating solutions with their clients.
Many global technology companies recognise that clients bring valuable insights from their own operations. No organisation needs to be an expert in every field. Through strong partnerships, they can create solutions that benefit everyone involved.
4. Taking a new mindset across the organization
Achieving service excellence demands a shift in mindset throughout the organization. A genuine customer-first approach means rethinking how every team, from engineering to sales, creates value for clients.
The service business is profoundly a people business. It is built on relationships, trust, and understanding real needs. Technology can enhance delivery, but it’s human insight, empathy, and collaboration that turn services into lasting value.
“Service excellence is a mindset, and it includes a balance between human and technology. Technology should extend human qualities, not replace them.”
Service excellence is more than a nice idea, as it brings a clear business advantage. Since making service excellence a strategic focus in 2022, one of the global leaders has seen significant revenue growth. The organisation is challenging the reactive, maintenance-only mentality in the traditionally conservative sector by offering proactive insights and system recommendations, a change that customers genuinely appreciate.
5. Scaling solutions from day one
Succeeding in the service business requires scalability from the start.
One global industrial company saw digital channels as the key to scaling its business and meeting evolving customer expectations. The team narrowed the scope to what truly mattered and focused on delivering a purposeful MVP – nothing more, nothing less.
Success came from a shared mindset: everyone understood their role, their impact, and how every decision contributed to advancing the solution. After launching the MVP, the focus shifted to continuous learning and scaling the solution across other areas of the business.
Stop starting, start finishing
Real progress comes from bringing ideas to market and learning from real use cases.
Here at Reaktor, we help industrial companies to implement this mindset through practical and scalable solutions. For example, a repair and installation advisor, an agent-to-agent supply communicator, and a system for enhancing service operations by connecting tickets with real-time data on skillsets and availability.
These are only a few examples of how we collaborate with our industrial customers to accelerate problem-solving, minimize downtime, and ensure smooth operations at scale.
