The translator in the room

Written by Allan Foldberg Iversen, Head of Customer Relations

What great customer service looks like in a technical field

There’s a version of customer service that’s about knowing everything. Having the answers ready. Moving fast and closing tickets.

And then there’s the version I’ve come to believe in.

It starts with a different premise: that the most valuable thing a customer facing person can do in a technically complex field isn’t to know everything. It’s to know who does, and to be able to translate what they know into something the customer can actually use.

At Målbar, our customers work in our LCA platform to measure the climate impact of their products. The questions they bring aren’t always simple. They often sit at the intersection of scientific methodology, software functionality and real business decisions. And the answers they need aren’t just technically correct. They need to be relevant to their specific situation, their specific product, their specific level of familiarity with the methodology.

That’s where the translation comes in.

When a customer asks something that goes beyond what I can confidently answer on my own, I turn to the engineers and LCA specialists around me. They give me the answer in their language; precise, detailed, grounded in deep expertise. My job is then to take that answer and shape it into something that makes sense for the specific person asking. Not simplified to the point of being misleading. Just made relevant. Adjusted for context.

That process, moving from specialist knowledge to customer understanding is something I’ve come to see as the core of what customer service means in a technical field. It’s not about being the smartest person in the conversation. It’s about being the best bridge between the people who are.

And there’s a side effect to working this way that I didn’t expect.

Every time I go find the right person and bring back an answer, I come back with more than just a response for the customer. I come back with a piece of understanding I didn’t have before. Over time those pieces add up. The distance between the specialist’s language and the customer’s question gets smaller. I start to anticipate what customers will struggle with before they ask. I start to understand not just what the answer is, but why. Which means I can explain it in ten different ways depending on who I’m talking to.

That kind of growth is hard to plan for. But it might be the most valuable thing that happens in this role.

None of it would be possible without the culture that enables it. The specialists at Målbar see supporting customer facing colleagues as part of their role. They make themselves accessible. They trust us to carry their expertise forward in a way that serves the customer well.

That partnership is what makes the difference. Not the tools. Not the templates. But the people and the way we work together.

If you work in a technical field and you’re thinking about how to build a customer service function that actually works, I’d start there. Not with the systems. With the question of whether your experts and your customer facing colleagues are genuinely working as a team.

When they are, everything else becomes easier.