Chairman of the Circuit Boards: Nation-Wide Repair Service
A Legacy Built on Customer Service and Transparent Green Initiatives
For the past 29 years Nation-Wide Repair Service (NWRS) has been doing its part for the environment, keeping key copier parts out of landfills while helping its customers save money at the same time. In fact, NWRS was ‘green’ before ‘green’ was in fashion. Despite repairing more than 1 million circuit boards during this time span and saving customers more than $350 million, the role NWRS plays in protecting the environment remains one of its best kept secrets.
What’s not a secret is NWRS’s legacy of customer satisfaction. Founded by a former Canon copier dealer, NWRS started out in 1985 repairing printed circuit boards as a cost savings alternative to purchasing new boards from the manufacturer. That background in the copier industry was critical to understanding the service expectations of office technology dealers. That’s why the company’s mission since the beginning has been on providing complete service along with quality repair work and low repair fees. Those are traits that customers appreciate along with top-notch technical support and customer service that NWRS provides on a daily basis.
Since its founding, NWRS’s repair services have expanded and evolved with the industry and the technology from printed circuit boards to laser scanners, staplers, motors, fixing assemblies, and support on items such as hard disk drives and other memory components. In 1989, NWRS became an authorized Canon repair facility. Today, the focus is primarily on Canon and Ricoh family machines (Ricoh, Gestetner, Savin, Lanier) as well as EFI controllers. NWRS can also accommodate select Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Océ, and HP products.
Because NWRS has been an employee-owned company since 1999, all 30+ employees have a vested interest to make sure customers receive complete satisfaction. In an industry where providing superior customer service is paramount, that remains the hallmark at NWRS no matter what part or component they’re servicing.
Jeff Laughlin, vice president and general manager, reports business has been good this year and that the company’s customer base remains strong. Those customers are dealerships of all sizes with the sweet spot of the base being the midsize authorized Canon and Ricoh dealer.
About 90 percent of its customers are based in the U.S. although the company is always looking to expand, particularly into Mexico and Latin America. They’ve also made arrangements with UPS to make doing business in Canada easier.
NWRS’s 50,000 square foot facility was specially built 10 years ago to store and manage both its inventory and customers’ inventory while also providing room for growth. The facility, located near the geographic center of the United States, allows for better transit times and lower freight costs. Here you’ll find close to 100,000 items all managed by a customized computer system developed specifically for NWRS.
“We use return tags that go out to the customer and that tag has everything stored into it so when something comes back and our warehouse staff scans that tag into our inventory, it knows exactly where it has to go,” explains Laughlin. “That’s all done in a flash with a simple scan and determines whether to repair it now or place it in the warehouse for future needs.”
Why NWRS?
Customers choose NWRS because of its reputation of doing whatever it takes to take care of the customer. “As business becomes more and more complicated we just try to stay focused on being as simple as possible while at the same time providing every service the customer needs,” states Laughlin.
The emphasis is on keeping it simple and saving the customer money and time. “We don’t have a ton of policies,” says Laughlin. “Nothing really gets rejected and warranty claims get handled without notification. We’re all about making the customer’s job easier. The number one thing we hear over and over is you guys are so easy to work with.”
Flexibility is another reason that customers come flocking to NWRS. “We don’t say here’s the way it is and here’s the way you have to do it,” states Laughlin. “Some customers tweak [our Core Return Program]. They may include their own UPS return labels instead of ours, which enables them to earn credits on their UPS accounts instead of ours.”
Advance Exchange Program
In a business where speed is of the essence, the NWRS Advance Exchange Program represents a customer’s fastest service option. This program allows customers to and have it the next business day. After installation, the customer returns their non-functional part from the machine as their replacement core. According to Laughlin, some 98 percent of NWRS’s customer transactions are conducted this way.
All requests received by 5:00 pm CST, that can be filled, are processed and shipped the same day. If the part at NWRS is repaired and ready to go, NWRS can accommodate orders up to 6:00 pm Central Time. Availability is based on a first come first serve basis.
The NWRS online repair catalog has flat-rate prices established for each OEM part number. The repair price is designated for items that are sent to its facility for repair and return. The exchange price indicates the fee for ordering a part from NWRS’s facility as an Advance Exchange order. Customers can login to the NWRS website for up to date pricing or call the company’s customer service department at (866) 655-8676.
Each Advance Exchange part comes with a pre-paid UPS return shipping label and NWRS return repair tag that will be found in the box with the repaired part. NWRS encourages customers to keep copies of the return tracking numbers for their shipping records. They can then simply package the defective part in the box it came in and use the prepaid shipping label to return the Advance Exchange core to NWRS.
“It’s a great way to do business,” says Laughlin about the nearly instant gratification-like popular program that’s been in existence for well over 20 years.
The Board Bank Program
Another program that customers have found beneficial for nearly a dozen years is the Board Bank Program. Designed to expedite repair services and save customers even more time and money, the Board Bank Program allows customers to store their defective parts inventory at NWRS’s facility so that it is ready to be ordered at any time. This service is helpful for office equipment dealerships with multiple locations or limited storage space. There are no additional charges or storage fees for customers to use this program.
In the beginning the program focused primarily on larger customers such as Canon Business Solutions, IKON, and companies with multiple locations who could pool resources into one location and share their inventory. Now it’s an option for virtually any size customer. Some customers store as few as 10 boards in the Board Bank while others might have as many as 20,000 boards.
Laughlin reports there are no limits to the number of customers the Board Bank can service or the amount of inventory NWRS can manage. “We add more to the Board Bank every month,” says Laughlin. “We try to market it as a program that saves you money if you use it right. The way we encourage them to use it right is to encourage them to always keep sending inventory back. If it’s piling up somewhere then you can’t order it and you’re missing out on an opportunity to save money.”
Still Green after All These Years
With NWRS’s 30th anniversary just around the corner, its mission and not so well publicized green charter are still going strong even though Laughlin acknowledges what the company does from a ‘green’ perspective is overshadowed by all the other benefits NWRS brings to customers and that the ‘green’ benefit is somewhat taken for granted. As Laughlin told a Canon executive at a Canon dealer meeting a couple of years ago where NWRS was making a presentation, “We’ve been green since 1985. It’s nothing new. We’ve kept millions of parts out of the landfills over the years, not only saving huge amounts of money, but nobody thinks about those parts going back to us and going out to a new customer, and not going in the trash.”
He also acknowledges that this is something that NWRS should emphasize more. “It is something we point out to the customer and we probably should market it a little more than we do because we sometimes take it for granted.”
That said, a recent post on NWRS’s Website and Facebook page on the issue received a lot of feedback, including one from a customer that said, “You guys are a great source to get something fast when I need it, but I never thought that I was throwing this part away [before].”
There’s also a new green initiative that NWRS implemented that most customers responsible for requesting a part might not notice and that’s that every invoice now gets e-mailed to the customer rather than printed and mailed via USPS.
Looking Ahead
Laughlin is optimistic about the rest of the year and looking forward to celebrating NWRS’s 30th anniversary next year. “We’ll probably do some things for our customers—promotions and providing them with some extra savings.”
As always, NWRS is looking to add new product lines and whatever else can make their customers’ lives easier. There’s been some demand lately for the company to get into wide format so expect to see NWRS focus on that much more in the future. But more than anything else, customers can expect more of the same, particularly from the customer service side.
“We’re always trying to enhance the way we do business,” states Laughlin. “The rest of the year we’re just looking to take care of our customers and do everything they ask and find new ways to save them money.”
- Nation-Wide Repair Service
- 16151 Foster Street, Overland Park, KS 66085
- (866) 655-8676/(913) 387-1800
- (913) 631-8372 (fax)
- pcborders@nwrsinc.com
- www.nwrsinc.com
