How Daniel and His Team Keep Warehouses Running
When a pharmaceutical distribution center stops moving, hospitals feel the effect. A bottleneck in order processing means care reaches the patient later. That’s just one example of how critical the work of Head of Remote Services, APAC Daniel Tok’s team is.
Supporting the entire Asia-Pacific region from SSI SCHAEFER’s Kuala Lumpur office, Daniel and his colleagues are just one of the teams in the Malaysian outfit that’s ensuring intralogistics excellence for the past 35 years and beyond.
For Daniel’s team, they cover all IT support delivered off-site from Southeast Asia to Australia to East Asia. Customers dial in when they require assistance with the WAMAS Software Suite and programmable logic controllers.
As SSI SCHAEFER Malaysia marks 35 years, the clearest measure of what those years have built is trust.
Customers come to us when they're faced with a situation they can't overcome. Every ticket we close means more uptime for them. It’s rewarding and meaningful for us.
Much of that work is invisible. Diagnosing an issue in a large-scale automated, integrated system takes time and attention to detail before troubleshooting happens. For Daniel, it’s about educating the customer and helping them understand the process behind resolving a ticket.
Another aspect that enables Daniel’s team in successfully supporting our region’s customers is their understanding of the local business environment. “Asia-Pacific may be classified as a region, but the requirements differ from market to market,” says Daniel.
For Daniel, it’s about understanding the problem, identifying any underlying causes, finding a solution together with engineering and product colleagues globally. Local understanding paired with global engineering depth is what turns a support request into delivering the right solution.
He says, “In a way, we’re the voice of the customer to the rest of SSI SCHAEFER.”
With more automated warehouses in the region, particularly with the increased adoption of AI, the Customer Service function will continue to play a critical role in the ecosystem.
Daniel adds, “Having new tools will change how we work. But the task at hand doesn’t change. I foresee the relationship will become a greater differentiating factor for customers.”
At SSI SCHAEFER, it’s about ensuring our customers’ warehouses continue to function.
"Somewhere out there, a system is running because one of us picked up the phone throughout the day," says Daniel.
