Customer Relationships -
Our ability to share and adapt best practices around the world is one of our competitive advantages, allowing us to provide customers with a greater range of options and solutions. The expertise of local teams and their understanding of respective markets has been a key factor in the successful implementation of various projects such as the Customer Relationship Program in Latin America.
The creation of a Customer Relationship Program in 2004 helped the customer retention rate in Brazil surge from 92% to 99% in just six years, and has become recognized as a customer service benchmark in Linde’s operations worldwide. Given its enormous success, Linde has implemented similar Customer Relationship Programs in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Peru.
Global Capabilities -
The collaboration between Linde’s U.S. Global Market Development (GMD) team and Praxair China’s Applications Equipment team is one example of a global group sharing knowledge and expertise to meet customer performance expectations.
Our U.S. group worked closely with our team in China to develop local capabilities for the design, build and commissioning of Linde’s specialized injectors and gas flow control systems for the steel industry. The Praxair China team mastered those skills, contracted several projects and executed them locally. The U.S. team continued to support these projects with process expertise and input to the computer controls and programming of the systems. Both teams came together to deliver the best combination of local equipment fabrication, onsite commissioning and specialized steel making process expertise to the customer.
Integrated Teamwork -
Teamwork among Linde’s Global Supply Systems (GSS) group is a great example of how employees work across borders to provide the best solutions to our customers. The GSS team brings technical leadership to Linde for the engineering, procurement, construction and start up of our industrial gas plants globally. Linde has ten GSS Execution Centers around the globe and 1,200 employees. These employees work together on global projects, and in many cases, complete them across different countries — designing in one center and installing the equipment in another. They also work closely with our Research & Development team, integrating new technology to be used globally to meet customer needs.
New Markets -
The Praxair India team leveraged its global experience, knowledge and understanding of the culture and business dynamics in another country when packaged gases customer M/S Bin Habit Bd inquired about the supply of argon in Bangladesh.
The team faced the challenge of securing permission to drive its delivery tankers across the Bangladesh border and had to compete in the extremely price-sensitive market in Bangladesh, which is already saturated by low-cost suppliers from other countries. Linde’s India team persevered and successfully delivered. They were able to grow with the customer into this new market and provide safe and reliable service.