It usually starts with service. And that’s exactly how things started for Nexus Office Systems, a Rockford, Illinois-based dealership where providing customers with superior service has always been part of the plan.
Indeed, the company was founded with service in mind and that’s the core of its mission statement too. “Our company’s mission is to provide the highest quality office equipment combined with superior service.”
That superior service, backed by solid metrics, is why Nexus Office Systems has been acknowledged with a BEI Services and ENX magazine Office Technology Service Excellence Award at the Diamond level.
Nexus Office Systems opened its first Chicago area office in 1982 and since then has been servicing customers throughout suburban Chicago, the 12 counties in northwest Illinois and portions of southern Wisconsin. Originally a dedicated Ricoh dealership, Nexus added Canon to the mix in the mid 1990’s after acquiring two Canon dealers.
The dealership’s expertise in digital document workflow solutions allows it to blend multiple technologies together to give customers the customized solutions necessary to succeed in today’s competitive environment. Nexus sells MFPs, printers, copiers, fax machines, scanners, and wide-format printers. Nexus’ primary competition comes from other independent dealers.
The largest vertical markets the dealership services are government, education, and medical or the traditional GEM marketplace.
Bill & Donna Rockwood
“Rockford has become a regional medical center,” says owner Bill Rockwood. “In addition to three regional hospitals Rockford is also home to Crusader Clinic, a large community based outreach clinic whose mission is to provide high quality health care for all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.”
Nexus employs 14 technicians who are largely responsible for ensuring that the dealership’s service goals are consistently met. Nexus doesn’t create its service territories based on a unit to technician ratio but instead bases its territories on geography as well as the number of images produced in each territory on a monthly basis.
“At the low end of the spectrum, we might have a technician that manages 1.5 million images per month. But on the high end, we have a select number of technicians who can manage over 5 million images per month,” explains VP of Aftermarket Support and Service Manager Donna Rockwood.
This approach has worked well for more than a decade.
“Our experience has been that you can assign several hundred Segment 1 machines to an individual technician but because of the relative low volume and the diminished service demand, a technician would not meet the optimum hours of productivity that BEI benchmarks,” says Donna. “We have a lot of high-end products that produce anywhere from 250,000-400,000 images per month. A technician that manages that kind of volume per unit has significantly less product in his assigned territory.”
One reason that Nexus can do that is the tenure of its staff. Some have been with the company 20 years or more and have been able to grow and handle more and more volume while keeping their performance up and the metrics where Nexus needs them to be.
“What we’re striving for is what is referred to as the ‘hybrid technician’ with a combination of solid electro-mechanical skills, vast service experience, and a fundamental understanding of network connectivity,” adds Donna. “This is what distinguishes us from our competition.”
As technology and the industry has evolved, Nexus’ technicians have needed to grow to keep pace with an ever changing marketplace. In order to continue to refine these skills, technicians have ongoing training both in the classroom and online. In addition, technicians are encouraged to participate in Canon’s ATSP Program as well as Ricoh’s Prestige Program which recognizes technical excellence.
“BEI’s program is a huge motivator because instead of comparing ourselves to one another we’re able to compare our individual and collective performance to other techs and other dealerships on a national level,” observes Donna. “That has certainly given us a whole new perspective.”
BEI Services’ program has only been in the picture at Nexus for a few years, but once it was implemented it had an immediate impact and continues to pay huge dividends.
“With a mature service organization such as ours, changes are not made in a sweeping fashion, they’re made through small steps,” says Donna. “BEI provides us with that step by step approach each month, identifying areas of achievement and at the same time uncovering areas that would benefit from closer scrutiny.”
Closer scrutiny has led to huge improvements in FCE (First Call Effectiveness).
“And we know FCE is the driving force behind response time,” emphasizes Donna. “Once call backs and hold for parts are stabilized to a healthy level, a solid response time seems to follow. At one time I would have said four hours was the gold standard for response time but with the advent of the MFP, four hours might seem interminable to a customer who can’t copy, fax, scan or print.”
Having this information at their fingertips and being acknowledged for their superior performance with a Diamond level award is a huge selling point for the company.
“We started the company with the idea that we wanted to provide the highest level of service of any organization in our marketplace,” recalls Bill. “I think we’ve consistently achieved that. Our whole sales effort and organization is focused on the level of customer service we’re able to provide. The award we won from BEI, from our point of view, is hugely significant because it verifies the level of service that we’ve been providing to our customers.”
Donna typically reviews the information on a monthly basis with Brad Nelson and Dave Schuster, Nexus’ field service supervisors.
“We give that information each month to our technicians, but we do a formal recognition of their accomplishments on a quarterly basis because we think the bonus aspect is more significant paid out quarterly rather than monthly,” states Donna. “That’s been a huge motivating factor for our technicians, considering one quarterly payout is strategically scheduled for mid-December.”
She adds that Nexus does give bonuses to techs that carry a greater workload at a higher percentage. “That’s a motivational tool for those techs on the lower end of the volume spectrum to take on more workload. In order to be assigned more workload, though, a technician must be able to take on the additional work while maintaining company performance standards,” notes Donna.
Talk about motivation—nearly 50 percent of Nexus’ techs have been recognized by BEI in either Diamond, Platinum or Gold categories for their performance in the field.
“The old adage of ‘time to failure’ or ‘copies to failure’ equals dollars still applies but with an added emphasis on improved first call effectiveness,” says Donna.
As a Diamond level dealership, do the Rockwoods have any recommendations to their peers who are looking to raise their tech’s performance?
“If a dealership is not currently using BEI we would recommend that as a first step,” responds Bill. “Using BEI’s performance analytics as a benchmark is essential. You can’t improve if you don’t know where you are and knowing where you are is what allows you to move the ball down the field. Then, look at the metrics they measure—FCE, callback percentage and hold for parts percentage. Those are items that we were measuring before we started with BEI. Before utilizing BEI, however, we were only able to measure our performance against ourselves.”
Is there room for improvement?
“Although we were fortunate enough to earn the Diamond Level Service Excellence Award, there is always room for improvement,” says Donna. “We are looking forward to implementing a new BEI program module on tech inventory to help drive down our hold for parts metric.”
Nexus provides company vans for its techs, enabling the dealership to determine the amount of parts that each vehicle carries.
“With the arrival of color products, the size and volume of the parts needed by each technician has increased dramatically,” explains Bill. “To accommodate this change, we recently increased the size of the technicians’ vans which should also help us in ‘hold for parts.’ They are literally warehouses on wheels!”
In an industry that thrives on service, Nexus continues to set the pace in its market and they’ve got the numbers to prove it. And thanks to Nexus’ techs their customers are enjoying a level of service that keeps them running at peak efficiency.
Nexus Office Systems
Rockford, IL
Owner: Bill Rockwood
VP of Aftermarket Support & Service Manager: Donna Rockwood
Field Service Supervisors: Brad Nelson & Dave Schuster
Number of Service Techs: 14
Lines Serviced: Canon, Ricoh
Territory Covered: Suburban Chicago, 12 counties in northwest IL, portions of WI
Why They Stand Out:
- In 60th percentile for FCE
- Hold for Parts is 13 percent
- Nearly 50 percent of techs recognized by BEI Services for Service Excellence
