MPS – The Power of Call Avoidance Service departments are constantly scratching and clawing to save costs and increase efficiency to improve their bottom line profitability. Imagine if your dealership could resolve more than thirty percent of its break/fix printer calls without having to send a technician on site. How would this increase in effectiveness impact the department’s staffing levels? Would it allow the service department to support incremental revenue without having to hire additional staffing? What impact would this savings have on the company’s bottom line? Would it free up more cash in order for the company to invest in other areas? A call avoidance approach to printer service can significantly reduce the number of onsite break/fix calls for your service team. It comes as no surprise that labor (burdened) is 80% of the service cost when supporting MPS, and service departments have a tremendous amount of pressure to be price competitive while maintaining a desired margin. Not to mention the fact that more managed service providers are starting to make their way into the MPS space and are beginning to compete with the traditional copier centric dealers. These providers have their challenges; however, they already have the call avoidance procedures in place to maximize their labor savings. There are many benefits to call avoidance. It is possible to see over a thirty percent phone fix opportunity depending on the sophistication in call avoidance methods. Also the client can enjoy the benefit of increased uptime because they would not always have to wait for your technician to arrive on site to fix their issues. Imagine the opportunity to right size your staff, or the additional revenue your dealership could support without adding headcount, if you were able to maximize your call avoidance potential and fix 30 percent of the break/fix printer service calls without having to send a technician on site. The following is a quantifiable example of the impact of call avoidance. Let’s assume your dealership has seven technicians dedicated to break/fix printer support. However, due to vacations, meetings, sick days, or any other circumstance out of the norm, you are left with six technicians actually performing the service calls in any given day. Let’s also assume these six technicians are each able to perform 6 gross service calls per day, which equates to 36 calls/day, 792 calls/month, and 9504 calls/year. By just avoiding ten percent of the calls, one could avoid dispatching a tech out to 79 calls for the month, which also equates to just over half of a technician workload. This workload reduction provides additional time to do other things, i.e. quarterly cleanings (if this is your practice), review your printer loaner fleets, evaluate printer car stocks, staff a help desk, etc… Now imagine if you were able to avoid thirty percent of the calls (237) for the month. This call reduction is the equivalent to the workload of almost two technicians. Assuming your MPS initiative is experiencing rapid growth, the organization could support an additional $450k in MPS revenue without having to increase its labor cost. Depending on the size of your organization the financial impact through call avoidance can be significant. The way to achieve this high level of call avoidance rate is through a phased implementation approach. The first phase is through a technician call-ahead program. This has been a copier dealer best practice for years and relies on each technician’s individual knowledge. This is best tracked using a form of “phone fix” call completion code. In most cases one will see upwards of 10 percent call avoidance rate using such a practice. The second phase is through a basic customer facing help desk function. Many times this is staffed with knowledgeable personnel i.e. rotating technicians in/out on the help desk, use of shop staff, or use of training personnel etc… This phase provides a higher level of call avoidance success; however it is imperative that printer calls are routed to this support function so that the calls can be managed and tracked in the ERP system. The third phase of support takes it a step further by using a help desk function along with a dynamic knowledge base. This requires the use of a knowledge base management solution that allows help desk personnel to easily retrieve solutions by searching for key words, phrases or topics. As the knowledge base grows, less skilled staff is required to operate the help desk. Through this method your dealership could achieve greater than thirty percent call avoidance rate. This type of solution is commonly used by consumer electronics companies and by the manufacturers your dealership supports for technical support. As an example, if you are experiencing an issue with your home computer and you call the manufacturer’s help desk to get your issue resolved, the support person you are connected to is using a knowledge base solution to look up your issue and provide you with a resolution. Whichever is your current phase of implementation it is important to track your progress and the results of your call avoidance rate. Remember to quantify your operation gains through either of these methods and keep the sales team informed of your call avoidance rate; this could be a differentiator and provides increased client uptime. Ken Staubitz is a service consultant with Strategy Development, with 14+ years experience in all levels of service operations and MPS service structure. Formerly with Modern Office Methods (MOM) in various service and operational roles; was MOM’s Director of Client Services where he oversaw all service operations & managed a staff of 60+ field service personnel. Ken served on the Lanier Dealer Advisory Council & was an E-Automate Service Committee member. At www.Strategydevelopment.com