enx magazine

PLAN “A”: Plan “A” is quite simple, actually it’s brilliant. You arrive at the customer’s location, examine the copier or system printer and supply him / her with a list of parts that are needed to complete the repair and you tell them that you will return when they get the parts in a few days to complete the repair. After supplying them with the list of parts and the toll free telephone number, I have found this way to be the best because it allows you to divorce yourself from the headache of ordering the parts, warehousing them and paying for the shipping, etc. It’s about three less jobs that you have to do, and the customer knows exactly what the real charges are. If there is a complaint, let them duke it out with Xerox®. Plan “A” works best with all your time and material customers. If the customer knows a cheaper outlet, then let them deal with that supplier. It’s all about saving money and when the customer wants cheap parts they have to acknowledge the fact that quality may have to be compromised for cheapness. What is nice about plan “A” is you do not have to guarantee any parts. If anything fails, let them deal directly with the supplier.

I was not surprised when I spoke to several independent service technicians (ISO’s) and discovered they started off in the business pretty much like me and carried a complete line of parts in their trunk just like we used to do when we were working for the manufacturer. Our goal was, and still is, to get the customers’ copier up and running as soon as possible with a minimum amount of down time. And we had the inventory in our trunks. Guess what? The customer cares a lot about that, because the sooner they are up and running, they are making money. But for you, the ISO, it’s another story. Take another guess, do you really think they care that you have gone out of your way to make sure that you have a complete inventory of HSFI parts in your trunk? It has been my experience that when a customer is separated from the manufacturer, for whatever reason, they are used to waiting for service and parts. Down time for two or three days is not uncommon. Question here is should we spoil the customer? Only you can answer that question. Is the customer always on time with his payments to you for services rendered? Or do you hear the same old excuses for not sending out the checks in a timely manner?

PLAN “B”: Plan “B” is a little more complicated. In this plan you will train one (or maybe two) of their employees to do some simple maintenance on their copier. Xerox® had a “customer maintenance plan” that actually taught the customer how to change heat rollers and replace the photoreceptor belts and things like that. With the customer doing some maintenance and ordering their own parts, it gives you the flexibility to move on to customers that want full service and are not afraid to pay for the high quality service they are receiving. The self-maintainers training can be as little as three days (on-site) and can be billed for about $ 250.00 per day for the instruction. Some on-site trainers charge about $ 4,000.00 for this service and stretch it out for five days. So at $ 250.00 per day, this is a bargain. The training is centered on the HSFI screen and the replacement of all HSFI’s. Xerox® has determined that if you replace all HSFI items when they are due, that will eliminate about 75 to 80 percent of all your problems. And replacement of the Photoreceptor belt will resolve an additional 10 % of copy quality problems. The other 10% of problems you can deal with as a field engineer. As you can see, Plan “B” has merit and customer affiliation.

In the later part of my Independent Service (ISO) career I have pushed the Plan “B” option quite a bit and to my surprise it has worked quite well with the commercial printers that wanted “rock bottom cheap”

“The Flat Rate Service Call”

Money Pit pg 1 pg2 pg3 pg4 pg5 Print Word Document

40,000 COPIES MAILED OUT EACH MONTH * FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO IMAGING INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS * COMPANY & BUSINESS PROFILE MONTHLY FEATURES