We love winning new customers. It’s what drives sales teams and it creates a real buzz whenever we add a new logo to our roster. It requires persistence and good timing. And it is essential for the growth of any business.

But we all know that growth can only come from a firm foundation of a long-term customer base, which means retaining existing customers. There is only one way to get that right: sheer hard work.

The big picture of what we do is to provide a remote satellite communications service. If you’re on a vessel or platform in the middle of an ocean, for example, you need to be in contact with land both for operations and for crew welfare. Terrestrial networks don’t work, obviously, so you need a satellite connection.

We need to make sure customers have the right pipe for what they need and their location. That’s the easy bit.

It is so much more than simply providing connectivity. The hard bit is ensuring our customers have the applications they need, that they work properly with their unique networks and that everything runs smoothly. That’s a very simplistic view but it illustrates the point of the first of our specialities. We know what our customers need and we understand how to make that happen.

We also take pride in being the experts in the potential of that connectivity pipe. That means we’re always ahead of the game, suggesting new ways of using it to make operations more efficient and to make life better for crews. We’re constantly moving forwards and bringing our customers with us.

As I said, this is difficult and we work very hard to keep our customers happy. Which is why we’re very pleased that Shelf Drilling has renewed with us. For the second time. Shelf has already been a customer since 2014 and that has just been extended again. That means our focus now turns to providing such a good service that Shelf will renew again when the time comes.

Most of Shelf’s jack-up rigs are in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, which is why we’re focusing our solutions on those regions. As we do with all our customers, we’ve developed a unique engineering solution that delivers the corporate and crew connectivity Shelf needs. Importantly, it’s within the tight budget Shelf specified.

It is unique because every set-up is different and every customer has different requirements. That puts focus on our second key expertise: operating within the complex environments of the energy and cruise industries, though clearly the former applies in this case. This matters because, while it’s true that every customer is unique, we have a deep knowledge of how rigs, platforms and vessels work and how to install and manage satellite communication services. Our engineering, customer support and Network Operations Center teams all understand the fundamentals.

Many of the differences typically arise when we integrate the services into customers’ networks. And that’s why our third key area of expertise is network integration.

We’re proud of our expertise and we’re always proud when a customer chooses to continue to work with us. It validates what we do.