1. How do you define your role at Aristech?

I lead the sales team and am responsible for partner management. I coordinate all sales matters, attend customer meetings, and advise potential customers and partners before and during implementation.

2. What are the challenges you face in sales?

The biggest challenge is to meet prospective and existing customers at their current level. Some come to us with a lot of prior knowledge, ideas and wishes; others still know very little about the automation options. In the first instance, they need advice from us on what is possible and sensible in their situation. In addition, many companies have already had negative experiences with automation and are therefore skeptical. Consequently, I focus on full transparency and try to find the best possible solution for each customer.

My recommendation for successful automation projects is to start with an MVP. Together, we identify a use case that brings the best possible benefit with the least possible cost and effort and bring it into live operation in an agile manner. This makes it clear very quickly what impact the solution will have and allows us to make a reliable forecast for a more complex and larger project.
I try to meet the customer with maximum transparency and understanding. Many companies have great fears that automation will reduce service levels. We take these fears seriously and can provide advice and support based on years of experience.

Another challenge is to reconcile the many different technical areas and groups of people. Data protection is naturally a huge issue, and collaboration with integrators and partners in particular needs to be properly coordinated.

3. What does the development of the market look like?

The shortage of skilled workers, high staff turnover and the demographic situation in particular are putting immense pressure on the customer service sector. This results in high training costs and increasing pressure to automate. It is becoming increasingly important to secure process knowledge, digitize it and make it accessible. Our automation solutions are ideal here and we are usually knocking down open doors. This is because the number of customer inquiries, whether by phone, chat or email, is by no means decreasing, but constantly increasing. Deep learning, AI, LLMs etc. have improved the technological situation tremendously. In terms of quality, today's solutions are practically incomparable to what they were just a few years ago.

4. What convinces your customers?

First and foremost, it is of course our software solutions and the projects we implement! Nothing is more convincing than a promise that has been kept time and time again. With over 12 years of expertise in the development and integration of our technology, we can guide and support our customers. We are always available as a contact partner and constantly work in a solution-oriented manner. In addition, we can offer our solutions without external partners because we have independently developed them and supply all the components required for an AI-based voicebot, such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, and NLP. This benefits our customers in terms of both quality and price.

5. What is your ideal balance to your job and how do you find it?

I try to spend a lot of time with my family. Otherwise, I exercise and cycle. After that, I find that cooking and eating something delicious is the best balance. Just having some peace and quiet and lying on the couch is also wonderful sometimes :-)