Collins Transforms Its Market Approach

Collins Aerospace has “been on a journey of transformation,” according to Cynthia Muklevicz, v-p of global airlines and lessors customer excellence. The transformation is intended to improve customer service, continue development of innovative solutions, and return a profit to shareholders.

Speaking with AIN at the Dubai Airshow, Muklevicz explained that the company’s approach to customers too often resulted in sending multiple sales experts to call on a customer, and the transformation is designed to streamline that process.

“We listened to a bunch of different customers, and we got a consensus that it would be a better way to have a single point of contact, because it would be faster, more expeditious, more accountable, and we could bring solutions across the board,” she said.

Now Collins is splitting this approach into three channels: airlines and lessors (Muklevicz’s purview), commercial aircraft manufacturers, and defense. Each of those channels will have leaders in charge of teams that will cover two to four customers—for example, airlines or lessors—and there will be only one point of contact (an account executive) for those customers.

“They will be the one point of contact to go into that airline, cultivating the relationship, or expanding on one that they have today, and then go across the Collins businesses and be the accountable party, to be that conduit into the organization so that we can be faster with our information,” she said. “We can be more aligned on when a customer tells us what their needs are, and this person can take it back into the organization and educate the organization.”

Instead of being subject matter experts, the account executives will be product-agnostic, Muklevicz explained. “They're going to be relationship experts for that airline or lessor customer.” However, Collins will still have subject matter experts so the account executives can call on them when necessary.

Collins Aerospace has some experience with this approach through its interiors team, which already covers a variety of product lines. “We’re just going to take the goodness that we’ve had on [those] products, and scale that to something larger,” she said. Plans call for an official rollout of this effort in late December or early January. “We’re populating the team right now and assigning customers, as well as getting some initial training so that we can speak intelligently about the different product lines.

“I think with that one point of contact, we’re going to try and eliminate some of the processes of trying to flow information into the organization,” Muklevicz concluded. “There are going to be fewer entry points, so we’re faster and more nimble to respond to what customers’ needs are.”