Meet Tjhien Liao
The role in practice
Tjhien has been with Konecranes for over three years now as a Senior Service Designer. Despite his title remaining the same, the scope and impact of his work have greatly expanded over the years.
But what does a Senior Service Designer at Konecranes do? In addition to applying a customer-centric approach to creating innovative products and services, they also understand the complex processes that manage our company and find new novel ways to achieve a best-in-class customer experience.
“Service design is necessary in any project related to product development. The best products and services are crafted with the customer’s voice as a guiding force,” Tjhien explains.
Tjhien’s role entails exploring various areas of our business, all the way from automated industrial equipment to ports predictive services, and from digital solutions to product reliability. Thus, this is why every day is different for someone in a service designer’s shoes.
Mentoring others
In his daily activities, Tjhien collaborates with diverse individuals, making stakeholder management a vital part of his professional toolkit. He thrives when facing new challenges and uniting different perspectives under a common goal.
For Tjhien, the joy of delivering products and services that resonate with customers and handling the challenges that come with supporting them after they have been released are what he enjoys the most about his job.
In addition to enjoying his work as a Service Designer, Tjhien is driven in his role as a mentor for new service designers – particularly trainees and thesis workers in the field. Coaching is a strong passion of his, reflected in the active role he takes in developing the skills of those around him.
“I’ve been able to successfully mentor a master's degree student from a trainee position into a permanent employee at Konecranes. This is something I’m rather proud of.”
Tjhien looks forward to continuing his role as a mentor in the future, since it complements his career development within our company.
Effective communication
Tjhien reflects on Konecranes’ role in helping him develop professionally, highlighting how his experiences in the company have shaped him into a seasoned professional. He has been able to handle the difficulties of a large corporate structure with the ease of someone in a more laid-back setting.
Tjhien’s passion for stakeholder management is seen in his efforts to constantly improve our company’s communication practices. Describing Konecranes’ culture as “can-do and contributive” as well as “laid back yet corporate” indicates that Tjhien has found a workplace that enables him to propose ideas in an open-minded environment and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
“In today’s world, any product we develop as a company is only as good as the communication lines we’ve established to develop it. As service designers, we aim to bridge communication lines between different departments.”
A triathlete and polyglot
Speaking of a healthy work-life balance, Tjhien thinks that it is important to pursue interesting hobbies outside of one’s everyday work life. This is also why he has developed a true passion for cycling and swimming, with aspirations to train for a triathlon one day.
“Similar to what I do at Konecranes, swimming is all about incremental improvement. My work and hobbies seem to connect in these ways.”
At home, Tjhien is part of a trilingual family, juggling Finnish, Dutch, and English – a beautiful mixture of different things, mirroring the diversity he warmly embraces at work. Above all, Tjhien’s endeavors outside of work exemplify Konecranes’ commitment to flexibility and life outside of work.
