Vicki Reeves: always by your side
Staying in step with the goals and aspirations of Perkins customers is central to Vicki Reeves’ role as service and customer support manager for EAME.
Describe your new role and how it supports Perkins customers?
My scope is to lead our teams and network in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to push the boundaries of customer support. We support every customer – at every stage of a product’s life cycle – and ensure they get a quality customer experience, alongside maximum uptime and machine performance.
What previous roles have you had and how have they prepared you for this one?
Customers have been a golden thread through every role since I joined as a graduate in 2001. My focus is always on understanding customers and giving them solutions that meet their cost, quality and performance needs. This knowledge and experience has been gleaned from roles in sales, product development, new product integration, global product marketing, and applications management.
What have you learned from your previous roles that are helping you meet the challenge of your current one?
Because I’ve always been close to customers, I’ve learned how to listen and interpret what we hear from them – driving our teams towards delivering engines and service solutions that meet their requirements both for production and once their machines are in service with the end user.
What’s the secret to building enduring customer relationships?
The first is trust; we build that by showing customers we understand their application and needs, and then using our knowledge, experience and technology to help them be successful. It’s also important to take a calm, logical approach to troubleshooting customers’ issues, so we find the best solution first time.
What do you do to unwind?
I have two children – and they keep me busy outside work. My chillout time is to go for a run. I’ll reflect on what happened today, and what I can do better tomorrow.