All in the Family — Treating Customers (and Employees) Like Family

A look at Lori Bell, a Sales Account Manager for Philips Healthcare

Philips is a global organization, designing and delivering a diverse range of technology solutions that improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities in the areas of healthcare, energy-efficient lighting and consumer lifestyle products. Given its size and success, it would surely have every reason to be the kind of company where people are all about the bottom line, where individuality is stifled and where employees are just necessary paychecks in pursuit of a company vision. However, when it comes to the people at Philips, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, Philips is just one big family of people who are valued and are passionate about taking care of others.

Never is this feeling of family more apparent than when speaking with Lori Bell, a Georgia-based Sales Account Manager at Philips Healthcare who has a self-described “southern-style” when it comes to sales. You wouldn’t think that a person like Bell would be competitive when you first speak with her. She has a warm voice, a soft drawl, and comes across as the friendly, next door neighbor you really wish you had. And she is. But, while Bell is a natural competitor with great drive for success, she reports that working at Philips in sales is “not a pressure cooker.” In fact, she reveals that Philips is, rather, a unique and supportive place for salespeople because, “when you’re with a company [where] you’re passionate about the products, you have good customer support, [and] you know the company supports you, it all comes together and works very well.”

Sales, certainly are important at Philips — as they are to any company. And while sales is a huge part of what Bell does, Bell believes that taking care of customers is the most important part of her job. “Service is a huge part of what we do and sell” at Philips, says Bell, and whenever a sale is made, a team is put together from across Philips to fill the needs and create the best experience for her customers. Because Philips as a company is both “supportive and approachable,” especially when it comes to meeting customer needs, Bell reports that it’s easy to give the kind of continuous customer care that goes above and beyond customer expectations.

This customer care from Philips recently hit home for Bell when she visited her brother-in-law in a top rated US hospital. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and Bell and her family went to the hospital for the surgery. Trying to get her bearings in the intensive care unit and with the situation at hand, Bell looked around her and discovered that the equipment monitoring her brother-in-law was made by Philips. Earlier that same day Bell had noticed that the equipment used to diagnosis her brother-in-law was also made by Philips. Knowing the Philips equipment intimately as it was the specific equipment Bell sold and provided support on, Bell “immediately felt better, and felt really good” knowing that her brother-in-law was in good hands. She felt in seeing the equipment which she knew provided incredible value to the hospital and its patients that she was “surrounded by family” — her Philips family.

While Philips is a large, Multinational Corporation, its employees feel it is anything but. Philips’ policy of caring for their customers and meeting the needs of people, both inside and out of the corporation, clearly sets the tone for its employees, and is one of the many reasons Philips is a great place to work.

To learn more and apply for a career at Philips visit: www.philips.com/na/careers or join Philips Talent Community at: https://philips.avature.net/talent