Mike Hobbs
Meet Midwest Office Technology (MOT), a Des Moines, IA-based dealership with a 55-year legacy of providing industry leading business technology solutions backed by exceptional service and support to customers throughout Iowa.
What originally began as a typewriter repair company has evolved into a successful technology oriented business that’s never abandoned its original emphasis on providing customers with top-notch service. In many ways sales are still secondary to the service MOT provides to clients every day of the week.
“That’s what we attribute a lot of our success to,” says Mike Hobbs, MOT’s Executive Vice President & COO, who joined the company in 2007 after a 16-year career in the mailing technology industry.
This commitment to exceptional service is evident in the way all MOT employees clearly and honestly communicate with customers. That openness is complemented by an uncanny ability to develop simple solutions for its many customers via a combination of the appropriate products, services, and support—all customized for each client’s unique business needs.
As it has grown into an industry leader, MOT remains committed to ongoing investments in education, technology, tools, and resources that provide maximum value to clients of all sizes and across all industries. The dealership is passionate about what it does and has earned numerous awards and recognition for its achievements over the past five decades. The latest award bestowed on MOT is the BEI Services/ENX magazine Service Excellence Award in the Diamond category, meaning MOT is one of the top dealers in the nation when it comes to service.
MOT’s service techs are responsible for thousands of customers located in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. In the interest of full disclosure, MOT also has an office in Lenexa, KS. Because each company runs on two unique databases BEI service stats are monitored separately for each location. While the Des Moines office is a Diamond Award winner for Service Excellence, the Lenexa office has also been recognized by BEI, receiving a Gold Award for Service Excellence. Clearly MOT’s got it when it comes to exceptional service.
If you go by the metrics, the numbers are impressive. Overall, MOT was ranked #7 in the country among all the dealers tracked by BEI. Its Hold for Parts rate runs at 9 percent while its First Call Effectiveness (FCE) numbers are hovering around 62 percent.
It doesn’t hurt that MOT employs a team of tenured techs with the least tenured logging 10 years with the company and the most tenured at 32 years. Overall, the average tenure for MOT’s Des Moines office service techs is 17 years. That experience is a huge contributor to MOT’s service excellence.
Farley Cornia
Service Manager Farley Cornia, who joined the company in 1991, left in 2000, and returned in 2003, keeps close tabs on the performance of his techs thanks to the BEI software that the company has been using for nearly 11 years now.
Cornia has been around the service block, so he understands the challenges of meeting customer expectations. Ever since the technology went digital and more features and applications became bundled in one machine, if one device goes down, it has the potential to cripple an entire office. And when that happens, the pressure is on MOT to get the customer up and running again as quickly as possible.
“They want you there faster than ‘now,’” acknowledges Cornia.
MOT has a lot of geography to cover, which adds to the challenge. “In Des Moines there’s a lot of concentration, but once you get outside of [the city] there’s a lot of miles between towns,” explains Hobbs.
One strategy that’s helped MOT’s techs keep pace with servicing a large geographically dispersed customer base is cross training.
“The goal of cross training is to get to the customer as fast as we can,” emphasizes Cornia. “Out of town there are a lot of miles between Point A and Point B. In town if I have a tech with fewer calls vs. a tech who is loaded, I don’t have a problem having somebody else cover their territory to get a machine up and running faster.”
Data is essential for providing prompt and accurate service and MOT relies heavily on BEI for this data. Now that the dealership has switched to e-automate from another program, Hobbs says this critical data is much easier to access.
Neither Hobbs nor Cornia remember the original inspiration for bringing in a tool like BEI, but Hobbs suspects it goes back to the company’s origins as a service company and MOT’s commitment to exceptional customer service. “It’s a tool that helps us analyze, identify, and improve our service that we offer to our customers,” he says.
A commitment to continuous improvement has seen MOT’s service operation improve year over year ever since it’s had access to key service-related data.
“When we started this, we were not anywhere near where we are now,” recalls Cornia. “Basically we strive to improve every year and up to this point we’ve been successful.”
Asked what improvement he’s most proud of, he identifies MOT’s First Call Effectiveness (FCE) numbers.
“It means we can get in and get out on a first call,” states Cornia.
As mentioned earlier, MOT’s FCE numbers are an impressive 62 percent. Prior to having this data, MOT’s incomplete calls were in the 22-23 percent range. Cornia’s content too that Hold for Parts now consistently ranges between 8-9 percent, which is ideally where a strong service-based dealership ought to be.
“That’s always one of the goals,” says BEI’s Steve Sharkey. “There are very few companies that can achieve that and maintain it. That’s the big thing, you can hit it once in a while, but to maintain it consistently is the true benchmark and indicator of how well a company is performing. It’s a great job on their part of managing that inventory and making sure technicians have parts when they need them.”
The metrics are shared with techs on a monthly basis although Cornia says he usually doesn’t have to badger techs about keeping track of their numbers. Often, they’ll be proactive, asking him about callbacks and what’s going on.
“The techs do a good job of proactively managing their numbers,” adds Hobbs. “It’s not just waiting until the charts and graphs are posted for everyone to see how they rank; they’re aware of their callbacks, their Hold for Parts, their FCE before the numbers are even posted. By them being aware, they’re more likely to go to Farley or another technician if they feel they need help, which ultimately results in the customer getting better service.”
Neither Hobbs nor Cornia think MOT’s service numbers are as good as it gets. Cornia wouldn’t mind seeing an improvement in inventory management.
“As the technology changes faster and faster that continues to be a challenge,” he says. “We want to make sure the techs have what they need to fix it right the first time, but we also don’t want to be overstocked on parts at the end of the life of a machine. We want to continue to manage that and improve in any area we can, whether it’s FCE, Hold for Parts, or call backs.”
BEI has a new tool up its sleeve that will likely result in greater improvements to MOT’s service operation. An Advanced Inventory Management Module is an all inclusive tool to help dealerships manage their warehouse operations and car stocks based on technician machine assignments.
“It ensures that they have right parts in the right vehicles at the right time and also makes sure they’re managing that backend operation so they don’t have a bunch of parts that are being written off at the end of a calendar year,” explains Sharkey. “That just became active in the last few weeks and is going to become more prevalent for our customers in the coming months.”
Should Hobbs or Cornia run into another dealer interested in enhancing their service operation, what recommendations would they have?
“If there’s a dealership out there not on BEI right now, you need to do it,” says Cornia. “All the tools it brings are invaluable, once again being able to manage car stocks, manage territories, and ultimately being able to bring those FCEs and Hold for Parts and call back numbers in line. I’d shudder to think how to do the job without it.”
“Dealers need to know their numbers and the ERP system is only going to tell you part of the story. BEI helps fill in the gaps,” adds Hobbs.
Achieving service excellence requires the right techs and the right tools, and without the right tools Cornia concedes that MOT might not be as good as they are today at providing service.
“We’ve got such good tenured people we’d still be providing good service, but not at the level we want and that our customers have grown to expect,” he concludes.
Midwest Office Technology (MOT)
Des Moines, IA
Executive Vice President & COO: Mike Hobbs
Service Manager Des Moines Office: Farley Cornia
Territory Covered: Des Moines and surrounding rural area
Why MOT is a Diamond Award Winner
- Number 7 Ranked Dealership in the Country
- Hold for Parts – 9%
- FCE – 62%
