The da-com team
Meet Da-Com Digital Office Solutions, an office technology dealership with a 65-year history of providing technology and outstanding support to businesses in and around St. Louis, MO and Southwestern, IL.
Da-Com began in 1948 selling typewriters and cash registers—leading edge technology at the time. The dealership would eventually grow to become one of the nation’s largest 3M dealers, selling Thermofax machines, copiers, and overhead projectors. Throughout the years Da-Com continued to roll with the technology flow, bringing leading-edge products from world-class providers to its markets.
In 2002, Da-Com moved into its new state-of-the-art corporate headquarters in Shrewsbury, MO. That was a start in its efforts to bring more value to the markets it serves along with its customers. The construction and expansion of its Service Center in 2005 and the enhancement of its state-of-the-art Customer Support Center in 2012 further underscore Da-Com’s commitment to strengthening its resources to better serve customers. This commitment to exceptional customer service and customer satisfaction is what drives the entire organization and nowhere do customers experience that more every day than through interactions with Da-Com’s service department.
Proof of how well Da-Com cares for its customers is illustrated by its recent acknowledgement as a BEI Services/ENX Magazine Service Excellence award winner in the Platinum category. The dealership ranks 13th overall of the 176 dealers in the BEI program.
Its service-related numbers are impressive. For example, Da-Com’s current First Call Effectiveness (FCE) rate is 57 percent and its Hold for Part rate is 11 percent. The dealership’s 20 service techs (Da-Com has four additional techs who handle its IT customers) are responsible for 6,000 devices, which produce approximately 38,000,000 pages per month. Among the brands Da-Com’s techs service are Lanier/Ricoh, Toshiba, and in certain markets, Kyocera. Techs also service a sizable Risograph population. While techs service all brands, Da-Com specialists tend to focus on the Lanier/Ricoh production devices.
“We have the largest Ricoh national account MIF of any dealer in the country,” says Scott Shanafelt, senior VP and general manager. “Some days that’s a curse and some days a little bit of a blessing. That makes us unique because we provide service and support to Fortune 1000s in St. Louis. Because we were a Lanier dealer forever and had a huge national account base we had an exclusive in this market. That’s kind of where our high-end, high-volume [business] comes from.”
Most of Da-Com’s customers can be found throughout 77 counties in Illinois and Missouri. They are primarily SMBs, particularly in the rural markets. The dealership’s bread and butter is still the $8,000-$10,000 machine sales in towns of 2,000 people where one will find 100-150 businesses.
“Where they have a need for a copier we may have a 50 percent market share,” states Shanafelt. “That’s not uncommon in our rural markets.”
Covering such a wide swath of territory in two states is a challenge, but Da-Com has been meeting the challenge for as long as they’ve been taking care of business in these territories. The challenges from a service perspective revolve around parts distribution, response time, and mileage.
“When a territory is two hours away from the office there’s a lot of guys a long way from home,” acknowledges Shanafelt. “BEI Services has made a difference in allowing us to manage it better.”
That’s something that impresses BEI’s Performance Analyst Steve Sharkey.
“When you look at their data and numbers and when you consider the many different product lines they’re servicing and that the vast majority of their technicians work on those product lines and they’re able to maintain that hold for part rate, that speaks phenomenally as to how well these guys are staying on top of managing parts inventory and their car stock. That’s a tough monster to collar when you have that many product lines and everybody servicing them.”
Da-Com has been a BEI Services client going on 10 years. When the program was first implemented, Bob Thompson, service manager at the St. Louis operation was a service tech and Shanafelt was VP of sales.
“Our ownership bought into the tech compensation idea, ‘How do we pay these techs to do better and how do we challenge them to do better?’” recalls Shanafelt.
Of course the data was helpful to the VP of service and that information continues to make Thompson’s job of managing his techs so much easier, especially when it comes to industry wide service data for specific machines and how Da-Com stacks up against its industry peers.
“The things I’ve seen and utilized with BEI is not only we need to pick up this machine and put it under service, but I can look at the numbers to see what the series is doing for us in given parameters,” adds Thompson. “It shows how good we are vs. everybody else.”
Thompson also likes the personal knowledge he derives from the program, which validates whether or not he’s on the right track based on what the numbers are saying. And when it comes to all the data that is now available at Thompson’s fingertips, there’s a lot to comprehend.
There’s a lot of information to digest and that’s something else that can be a blessing and a curse with Shanafelt explaining that the program can make a big difference when one takes the time to go through it and use it to one’s advantage.
“There’s so much information I can’t utilize all of it, but I can’t imagine not having that data to talk with a tech and see what their mindset is and why they did what they did,” emphasizes Thompson. “It makes it so much easier to break it down and have the tough sessions with the techs to make them better.”
“Bob uses tech grading effectively, whether or not it’s perfect, it at least gives him a launching point for a conversation,” says Shanafelt. “It gives us a great baseline to know if we’re making money or not on certain gear, or do we need to do something different, or change out the tech. Originally tech comp was a big factor and there was too much that wasn’t tracked or known. We had very few statistics.”
“As my understanding has grown it’s been trying to get the techs to understand as well,” adds Thompson. “They get more reports out of it than I ever did. They can see what machines they get called back on and what parts they’ve been put on hold for.”
Da-Com is also using one of the newer components of the system, a territory mapping tool.
“It’s been helping our call load,” notes Thompson. “It’s just another piece we weren’t utilizing, but now that we are, I just can’t imagine not using it. There’s so much information and it’s easy to use, but overall what I get out of it and what I can give to the techs to have better conversations about what they’re doing and for coaching them; now that I understand it more, I can coach them in how to get better.”
The tech compensation element of the program has been a key motivational tool as it is in most dealerships. Thompson says that techs have a keen interest in how they’re doing each month and it’s not unusual for them to come in the first or second day of the month to find out how they did the previous month.
“They appreciate the transparency,” says Shanafelt. “And they appreciate the feedback. If that wasn’t there they’d feel more like robots, but now that there’s a talking point and here’s your numbers, you’re doing a good job or you have to work on this. It’s just a quick way without [our service managers] having to go through a bunch of calculations and getting documents ready to review and discuss with them. Plus it’s an independent source vs. your manager putting [something] together and saying here’s what you’re doing; they tend to argue with that more. Now it is what it is; the numbers don’t lie.”
Would Thompson recommend this program to other dealers?
“I honestly wouldn’t know what to do without it now that I understand it,” he says. “I like it and it helps me better identify issues with the techs. It’s a great tool.”
Da-Com Digital Office Solutions
St. Louis & Columbia, MO
President & CEO: John Tipton
Sr. VP & General Manager: Scott Shanafelt
Service Manager: Bob Thompson
Number of Techs: 20 (+4 IT techs)
Number of Devices Serviced: 6,000
Why they’re a Platinum Award Winner
- First Call Effectiveness = 57%
- Hold for Part Rate = 11%
- Ranks 13th overall of the 176 dealers using BEI’s program
