The Story of Sincerity Behind Vatech's Service Today

Malaysia airport security checkpoint, 2003. The officer's face tightened. On the X-ray monitor was a human skull. The bag belonged to a Vatech customer service engineer, and the skull was a "phantom skull," a test tool used to check equipment after repairs. Back then, the local distributor didn't even have this basic tool. When a customer called, the engineer boarded a plane the next day, and when the tools weren't there, he packed them in his own bag and flew them in. That is how Vatech's service began.

Boarding a Small Plane for a Single Person

In the early days of exporting, Vatech's equipment was innovative but not yet stable. Local subsidiaries and distributors often lacked repair staff or training, and couldn't even replace a generator properly. Every repair request landed at headquarters, and the engineer in charge of Asia spent more than half of each month on the road.

Once, while handling service across Australia, a repair request came in from Hobart, Tasmania, an island south of the mainland. Think of it as Korea's Marado. For one Chinese-Australian dentist running a clinic there, the engineer boarded a small plane.

The approach was the same when Vatech's push into Europe gathered pace in 2006. Orange Dental, Germany's largest dealer at the time, warned that it would end the relationship unless quality issues across its 120 clinics were resolved immediately. Vatech sent headquarters staff and finished repairs at all 120 sites in three months. It didn't stop there: it organized the repairs by case and trained the dealer's engineers with them.

Facing problems head-on and staying until they're solved. What carried Vatech past its early quality limits wasn't fancy rhetoric but engineers' footsteps.

Redefining the Customer: From Hunting to Herding

In 2013, Vatech overhauled its service operations. Sales were running ahead of what service could support, and customer complaints were piling up. Management and the CS team flew to Europe to visit dealers and customer clinics and see the reality firsthand. Chairman Changjoon Ro asked a fundamental question:

"Who is our true customer?"

The answer was clear. Our true customers are not those who might buy our equipment someday, but those who use it today. Management resources and marketing priorities shifted to existing customers. Vatech moved from "hunting" for new prey to "herding," tending to the flock it already had.

Resistance from the sales floor, where people fought over immediate market share, was strong. While competitors fought for new customers, focusing on existing ones seemed out of touch with reality. Yet Vatech fed service-site feedback into development and production to reduce failures in advance, reorganized its parts supply chain, and laid the foundation for today's customer management system, VCSM.

When Everyone Closed, We Picked Up the Phone

That attitude toward existing customers proved itself during the pandemic. When France locked down its cities in 2020 due to COVID-19, 99% of companies closed, because the government covered 85% of wages for idle employees. Opening up and putting staff to work meant losing that support and bearing the full cost.

Vatech's French subsidiary, then in its 14th straight year of losses since its founding, faced a choice. With the cities locked down, sales were hard to expect even if people came in. Still, every employee showed up, to keep its service principle: respond to inquiries within 24 hours and ship materials within 48.

While competitors shut down for six months to save on labor costs, the phones at Vatech France stayed open. One day a customer called. The problem wasn't with Vatech equipment but with a patient management software (PMS) from another vendor, whose supplier had gone silent. It was a call made out of desperation. A Vatech France employee stuck with the problem and restored the system. The customer called it "15 out of 10 service" and began recommending Vatech to nearby dentists.

When the two-month lockdown lifted, doctors ready to reopen turned to Vatech, the only one that had stayed on the job, rather than competitors they couldn't reach. Referrals from satisfied customers kept coming, and even competitors' customers sought Vatech out. In 2021, Vatech France's revenue grew 1.8 times year over year, and its French market share rose to the top three.

Sincerity as a System, People Beyond Technology

Once installed, a dental X-ray system is used for more than 10 years. It isn't just a machine but a partner that stays with clinicians for a decade. The chance of selling to a new customer is under 20%, while a satisfied existing customer buys again 60 to 70% of the time.

That is why Vatech defines service not as simple technical support but as "managing the experience across the customer's journey."

Only 4% of companies survive on a 10-year cycle. The secret behind Vatech reaching No. 1 globally by unit sales in dental digital X-ray and dental CT(CBCT) lies in that 4% survival rule: service.

The heart of the engineer who carried a skull model onto a plane has evolved into a system that looks after customers' tomorrow through data. The form has changed, but the standard behind our service has not.

Behind the technology and equipment, there are people.