A CHAT WITH DIRECTOR CUSTOMER TECHNICAL INTEGRATION CLAUDE LEDUC

Claude Leduc grew up on a farm in Quebec, Canada. From the countryside to aviation –Leduc discovered his passion for aviation when he joined the U.S. Air Force. From then on, he knew this was his calling. He has been dedicated to the field of aviation for 41 years.

His career started with the United States Air Force, where he became an avionics technician. He earned an associate degree in applied avionic systems technology at the Community College of the US Air Force. Leduc moved back to Canada and enjoyed working for Air Canada for 25 years, where he was responsible for different fields of tooling and technical management and logistics. Afterwards, he worked in the Middle East in Doha for Qatar Executive as a manager for logistics and warranty for almost two years. The last position he held before joining HYDRO was as a managing partner with our partner, The Liftsafe Group of Companies, in Ontario, Canada. He was the aviation support specialist there. In this long career in the aviation field, Leduc already had knowledge of and practical experience with HYDRO products and was very familiar with the overall portfolio. In fact, he has been a customer of HYDRO since 2005. Now he contributes his knowledge about customer support to HYDRO as the director of customer technical integration and promotes this important aspect of the company.

Claude Leduc is 59 years old, married and has 4 grown children. He loves to spend his spare time with his two grandchildren.

 

What’s the job of a Director Customer Technical Integration? What does your position look like?

 

With my extensive knowledge of aviation technology and techniques, I support the implementation of our products and serve as a technical advisor for our customers and my team. I am attached in the US, but my mandates are global. This implies that my position is characterized by a lot of travelling around the world. When there is no pandemic getting in the way, I travel about 50% of the month. Face time with the customer is essential, we need to engage them at an early stage and get feedback from them to improve our services and solutions. For me, it is very important to support my customers in every way possible, so they feel taken care of at all times. To name some of my key accounts, those are, for instance, Boeing, Air Canada and United Airlines. I also act as a Six Sigma Black Belt (Improvement project director) in my team and I am supporting them by analyzing data and pushing services. Customer service especially plays a major role in the future of HYDRO and I want to promote this. Moreover, we work as a cross-functional team including service, sales, manufacturing, etc., so my position is also like troubleshooting to develop improvements in customer relations.

 

Where do you see the biggest potential for HYDRO and its business?

 

When developing a life-long relationship with customers, it’s likely that you gain the place in their top of mind. So, whenever they have an issue, HYDRO is the company they call first, the company they rely on. That’s one of the potentials to strengthen the relationships with our high-quality products. Another is to think outside the box, to propose non-traditional solutions. HYDRO has a great catalogue of products and ideas, so the focus should be on customer-engineered solutions that are directly tailored to each individual customer. The goal definitely is to arrive at a win-win-situation where you have the right mindset about what best works for the customer, not just for HYDRO.

 

This requires flexibility and creativity. You need to use all your experience and knowledge to come up with something that is not offered by the competition, something unique that will improve our business and strengthen our customer relationships.

 

Are there any peculiarities in the US market?

 

There are some special requirements in the US market, but those are quite secondary. The primary function is to ensure that we support the aircraft maintenance engineer in keeping the aircraft air worthy. Whether it’s a military bomber, a luxury airliner, or a small business jet. It all comes down to the same tasks, the same requirements and needs at the end of the day.

 

What are today’s challenges?

 

Well, first of all, the pandemic has put a tremendous crimp in my customer face time. For me especially, it is a completely different working environment to communicate properly with my customers while not being able to visit them.

 

Generally speaking, now that we’re going through a reorganization - a genesis of the company if you will – we’re going to be a lot smaller. We need to be even more aware of our abilities and must sharpen our senses to ensure that we are all doing the maximum we can for the customer. Once a group becomes smaller and the team becomes more focused, the more you count on everyone doing their job even more so than in the past. In today’s world, you have to be extremely disciplined to win over the customer and to deliver. In the first place, you need to get requests and second you need to convert those requests. We have those two opportunities.

 

Over the last several years, the data has shown that converting quotations to orders could be better and we definitely need to improve that.
In principle, I highly support the process of change and I think the partitioning into business units was a very good decision. We are definitely on the right track.

 

What opportunities in general do you see in the aviation market?

 

Right now, it is all about service and customer focus. It is essential that we listen to the customer. They will tell us what they need and they will be there to tell us how the market is changing as long as we are at the front door listening. The key to success comes with communicating with the customer. Every single day, I talk with my customers and I always get feedback from them to identify their needs. Like many other market participants, our customers are struggling during the pandemic. If we can help them in their struggle, that would create an even stronger bond.

 

What are your personal forecasts for this year and even 2022? Do you foresee any improvements in the business climate?

 

I am working even harder this year to better reach our goal. Going forward, we have to work even harder to win over the customer since the customer base has shrunk. I would not even hazard a guess as to how long it will take to get back to normal again. There are a lot of different scenarios we have heard and read about. From “the world will be normal at the end of the year” to “flying will not get back to normal until 2024,” there are widely differing predictions. Personally, I believe it will be somewhere in between. My only view on this is as long we are in the front or even ahead of the game, we will be there when things change, and we will be part of the change.

 

A good day at work starts with...

positive conversations with my team members.

The first time I earned money was...

by selling apples on the street for my uncle.

If I could choose someone to sit next to me on a plane...

besides my wife - Richard Branson or Elon Musk.

I lose track of time...

by developing projects for customers.

The most expensive thing I’ve ever bought in my life is...

my home – it’s also my most satisfying expenditure.

I’ve always...

wanted to travel every corner of the world.

If you want to get somewhere at HYDRO...

nowhere – my biggest ambition is to do the best as I can at what I am doing now. I want to be successful with the team I am working with and I want to pave the way for my successor. I am very happy to work with this supportive team.

When I was 18, I wanted to...

be 21.

To me, home is...

where my wife is.