In an industry where 10 percent annual growth is considered good, more than 50 percent is nothing short of phenomenal. That’s what Hendrix Business Systems achieved in 2016, growing from $8.1 million to $12.3 million. Much of that growth (73 percent) was the result of new business driven by the company’s solutions and production print sales. When you factor in the 96 percent retention rate that Hendrix Business Systems has achieved, you can see that this dealership has a bright future.

That retention rate is no accident. Hendrix Business Systems attributes it to the excellent service it provides. “We have run our business and we will continue to run our business as a people organization,” said owner Roger Hendrix. “You deal with a real person. You deal with an employee that has the ability to make decisions for the particular customer.”

Hendrix Business Systems

“We tailor our solutions to solve the customer’s problem. If a customer is round, we will create a round solution for that customer. If a customer is a rectangle, we’ll create a rectangle solution for that customer. Whatever the shape is, we will change ourselves to make sure we can fit the customer’s need.”

The results Hendrix Business Systems has achieved with its service has earned this month’s BEI/ENX Service Excellence Platinum Award.

Roger Hendrix, Owner/President

Hendrix Business Systems was founded in 1976 as a typewriter and calculator dealer. It became one of the first Canon C-Series copier dealers in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been primarily a Canon dealer, having added Xerox when it acquired another dealer last year. “We changed over to full-line Canon about eight and a half years ago,” said owner Roger Hendrix. “Since then, we’ve doubled almost three times.” During that time, the company has grown from 10 to 56 employees and from one to four locations.

“We do very well with down-the-street, 50-employee or less businesses, because that’s where we came from, but we also are doing extremely well with the more major account sized businesses and the national accounts,” said Hendrix. “We’ve progressed up through the ranks all the way into production now.”

Jeff Whitlock, Director of Service

The company started selling solutions and production print about four years ago. Hendrix says most of the growth is coming from production print, selling mainly to centralized reprographic departments (CRDs).

Solutions sales, mostly of Canon’s uniFLOW, are important in part because they are driving sales of machines. Director of Service Jeff Whitlock estimates that Hendrix Business Systems placed 300 machines in 2016 because of solutions sales, bringing the total number of machines under contract to 3,500 in 2016 and building to over 4,000 in early 2017.

Service Is Job #1

Regardless of what Hendrix Business Systems sells, both Hendrix and Whitlock consider service the company’s main business. “We’re in this business because of the service. Service is the driving engine for this industry, and that’s why we’ve put all the resources that we can into continually upgrading and extending ourselves to provide more from the service standpoint for our customers. We want to become as much of a consultant with them as we can.”

“Service techs see your customers the most and communicate with them the most,” said Hendrix. “They’re almost like our customer service representatives. [Customers] know they can count on them, and that’s important.”

Providing that kind of service requires extra attention to the company’s bottom line. “Our biggest challenge is getting that balance between providing premium service and maintaining profitability. We seem to handle that very well,” said Whitlock. He noted that production print customers are more demanding in their service expectations.

Hendrix said it is a struggle to stay relevant and make a profit when the market cost per copy (CPC) continues to go down. “The manufacturers are coming out with machines that operate at a lower CPC, but it’s also been our experience that the direct operations continue to drop those CPC prices in the field,” said Hendrix. “That’s the reason I give Jeff a lot of credit. You have to look at parts more closely. You have to look at truck inventory more closely. You have to look at the rolling stock of drums and toner more closely, ordering more often but ordering less so that you’re not tying up too much cash on the shelf. You can’t afford to do that anymore.”

He added that they’ve closed some large service deals where their bid was actually higher than the closest competition because the customer saw the value-add. “We work real hard to make sure the customer understands our value-add proposition,” said Hendrix.

Charlotte NC Showroom

Both Hendrix and Whitlock agree that a positive company culture makes a difference with the quality of service. “It’s more of a familytype atmosphere, which leads to better employee morale,” said Whitlock. Service techs are also empowered to make their own decisions in the best interest of the customer. “If an employee feels like they’re not valued and that their hands are tied, then they can’t do their job properly. We appreciate our employees.”

“Some of the strongest and best attributes as a company that we have come directly from our employees. I would like to say it was all me, but it was almost none me,” said Hendrix. “That’s what I give Jeff a lot of credit for. When he sees a service employee or any employee in his department that has shown the ability to make good solid decisions, then he gives them the room to make more of those decisions.”

Measuring for Better, Profitable Service

The desire to better serve customers while remaining profitable was a key reason Hendrix Business Systems implemented BEI. “We specifically needed help with increasing our FCE (first-call efficiency) and getting our parts usage under control. Our incompletes and our callbacks were through the roof. Our parts spend was astronomical before we started with BEI,” said Whitlock. BEI has met those expectations, and as a result the company has met its goal of higher customer satisfaction and surpassed its profitability goal.

“In these days and times, there’s not enough room to be sloppy anymore,” said Hendrix. “BEI has been extremely helpful with showing us where we’ve been and, better still, where we need to go. It also helps us understand all this data that we have in ECi eautomate. We spend hours upon hours putting data into eautomate, but then it’s almost impossible to ascertain anything from it in a timely manner without the help of a company like BEI.”

That data has also provided insight that has improved the way Whitlock coaches his service techs. “When we do our oneonone meetings with our technicians, we have the data that we need right there in front of us to discuss what their performance was for the last month. BEI also allows us to see how our technicians and our equipment are performing compared to the world. That’s an invaluable tool to me because that helps me judge how we’re doing as a service organization.”

Because of the process efficiencies and coaching, Hendrix Business Systems has been able to grow without adding a lot of service techs—essentially just the two service techs that came with the acquisition. That brought the total to 15. “Here was the big thing with BEI,” said Hendrix. “It helped us take the service team that we had and accomplish more with them. Plus, we have plenty of bandwidth to accommodate further expansion.”

Another big plus is that Hendrix Business Systems customers are confident that they are going to get good service. “They really appreciate us getting their issues resolved the first time that we visit them. They also like that after we perform our total call procedure, they know that they’re not going to see us again for a while.”

Although Whitlock said his service techs were hesitant about BEI at first, they quickly came around once they realized how the company was using it. “Again, I use it to coach them to be better technicians, not to say, ‘Oh, you’re a bad technician. These are your numbers. You need to get these better.’

Morrisville NC showroom

“One of their biggest concerns was that they would lose that ability to make decisions in customers’ accounts when something needed to be done in their opinion,” said Hendrix. “Jeff assured them that that’s not the way we were going to use it. We were going to use it to learn where we’ve been and to map out where we need to go.”

BEI will continue to be an important tool for Hendrix Business Systems going forward. “We would always be interested in anything new that BEI comes out with because it’s been a proven product. We made an acquisition in 2016. Jeff implemented the BEI pieces up there also for the techs and for the service department. That’s run smoothly. Without question, BEI is a longterm partner for us.”

Hendrix is proud of the respect his company has earned with Canon due to its focus on the customer and service. “There are things that we do not do or products that we do not service, but for what we choose to do, we’re always going to work to increase our ability to make it the best service that’s available. That’s why Canon USA will use us to alpha and beta test in the field.”

Looking Ahead

Hendrix sees no reason why his current business model won’t be just as successful in 2017. The company hopes to expand geographically with another acquisition, and that means expanding service as well. “Jeff is always looking at new talent to bring on board to expand the service and IT departments,” he said.

The company is also building out its current facilities. “We’re expanding our production showrooms in uptown Charlotte. We’re expanding our production showroom in Raleigh, and we’re creating a production showroom in Greensboro, North Carolina,” said Hendrix. “That’s an exciting piece, because we’re providing something different than a lot of other places.” He noted that having a production lab allows customers to be involved in an actual working environment. “That has been very successful for us.”

Wherever the market takes his company in the future, Hendrix believes it will be interesting. “That’s the one thing I like about the industry. There’s always something new. It always will take a 90 degree turn and tear off on a tangent on you if you’re not careful.”