Service Mantra Employed By Diversified Business Solutions Harkens Back to Era of Customer First

People of a certain age fondly recall the days when their parents would pull into a service station primarily to fill up the gas tank. A small cadre of service attendees would storm the car like a NASCAR pit crew, washing the windshield, checking fluid levels, and ensuring the tires were properly inflated. A smile and a hearty wave later, it was back to the open road.

Sadly, customer service has endured its share of bad press recently, and quality service can be the exception rather than the rule in some business circles.

“In the outside world, it’s a struggle to find quality customer service in everyday business,” said Jeff Theilacker, president of San Diego-based Diversified Business Solutions (DBS). Both Theilacker and Joe Prazak, the firm’s director of service, believe that society as a whole has accepted this diminishing level of customer service as a fact of life. In some sectors, service is a premium offering.

Jeff Theilacker, left, President of Diversified Business Solutions, and Joe Prazak, Director of Service.

DBS has served the greater San Diego area’s small- and medium-sized business (SMB) community as an independent copier dealer for nearly 45 years, providing copiers, printers, multifunctional devices, managed print services, and document management software while using customer service as its overarching value proposition.

The dealership has raised customer service to an art form, and its performance in this area has earned the company this month’s BEI/ENX Service Excellence Platinum Award. DBS has peaked at No. 14 among the 185 dealers tracked by BEI and enjoys an average response time of 1.8 hours.

The firm, which debuted in 1973, was purchased by Jeff and Rachel Theilacker 11 years ago. DBS serves clients from the Mexican border north to Camp Pendleton and Oceanside. It sources and services equipment from vendors including Toshiba, HP, OKI and Lexmark, along with Square 9 and Laserfiche document management, and Kodak and Fujitsu scanners, among other gear.

Toshiba is one of DBS’ longest-running partners.

“The copiers and printers we service are broad based,” Theilacker observed. “Color is beyond what I thought it would be, and customers are mostly buying color units. Toshiba did a good job structuring the way their devices were built that there were only two families of color, but each covers about a dozen models. That makes it possible for the customers to streamline the different speeds, but it also makes it easier on us, because there’s only two families of parts we need to carry.”

With $3 million in annual revenue, DBS enjoys a rich mixture of small- and medium-sized clients including law firms, courts, government agencies, education, mortgage originators, accounting/CPA firms and manufacturers, to name a few. The dealer isn’t vertically driven; rather, it focuses on how to best assist the SMB set from the back-office perspective.

“Our service approach is highly flexible and customized,” Theilacker explained. “Our whole goal is to be the firm that can create a program that works for our customer. As an example, we do just-in-time ordering, so we literally hold no equipment stock here, aside from loaners and demonstration machines. One reason is it’s an economically good choice. Another reason is, at end of each period, quarter, month or year, I don’t have inventory I’m trying to shove down someone’s throat. They get to choose, with our help, what is best for their business. If there’s an emergency situation, we loan them something until we get them the exact thing that they were looking for.”

Experience is a key factor in DBS’ success. Many employees—particularly the technicians—boast at least 15 years in the field, with the Theilackers and Prazak bringing 25-plus years to the table. The client-facing employee is more than equipped to handle any and all needs.

“We’re not hiring 20- or 30-year-olds with zero experience, putting them in the field after they’ve been here a month, and expecting them to take care of people,” Theilacker said. “We put a lot of thought and effort into what we’re putting in front of clients.”

Some observers may be surprised to know that an organization as successful as DBS has a technician crew of only six, but with a first call effectiveness rate of 63 percent, the results speak to their effectiveness. Another key element, aside from their experience, Prazak noted, is that technicians carry comprehensive inventory to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

“We try to do everything we can to allow techs to get it right the first time, to help them and not hinder them,” Prazak said. “Our motto is to under-promise and over-deliver. Our first-call effectiveness is so good, we have techs waiting for calls to come in. Because of that, we have a good response time.”

Personal service is a philosophy that permeates all aspects of DBS’ operation. An example of this: toner is personally delivered to customers rather than shipped from a neighboring state. DBS may come out on the losing end from a cost perspective, but the personalized approach builds equity in the eyes of the customer.

“One of our mottos is ‘training for life,’” Theilacker noted. “We tell customers that when they get a new employee, call us and we’ll come out and train them. We’re trying to make them feel we’ll do almost anything they need us to do.”

The upshot of offering the value-adds as part of the overall service proposition is that DBS can measure how much clients value their service. When clients opt out, they soon find the missing customer-care component has a measurable impact, and DBS enjoys a high percentage of return business.

Finding quality employees, not surprisingly, is among the toughest chores for DBS. Theilacker seeks out individuals who understand the value of customer service, rather than experienced candidates who exhibits indifference toward the philosophy. Knowledge can be imparted, but attitude is innate.

The San Diego market is hotly contested from the dealer standpoint, but DBS has found its sweet spot within the SMB space. Still, the competition is practically knocking on DBS’ door; one manufacturer purchased a dealership and moved the business into the same complex as DBS. That created more than a little frustration for Theilacker and Co., but instead of worrying what the competition was doing, DBS chose to concentrate on its core competencies and let the customer decide which was best.

In doing so, DBS has sought out technologies to make its operation more effective. The fleet of filing cabinets is long gone and the dealership is utilizing software to enhance internal efficiencies and strengthen its go-to-market approach. As a smaller operation, DBS is nimble and responsive, and the firm has avoided the cardinal sin of trying to be all things to all customers. By focusing on the MFP business, along with support and software, DBS is able to score high grades in a concentrated core of offerings.

The BEI program, first initiated at DBS in 2006, has gone a long way toward quantifying the company’s claims of service excellence. Initially, the dealership used it as a measuring stick to get a better grasp on its cost-per-copy challenge. Prazak said the company had a difficult time obtaining benchmark figures from the manufacturing community. Through BEI, the dealer found areas where it could dial back its charges and other aspects where the firm could be more aggressive in its pricing structure.

“When we first got BEI and looked at their top performers, we were like wow, how can we do that, how can we get there?” Theilacker said. “In the beginning, some of those numbers were shocking to us, because I thought some of our numbers were pretty bad. When we compared them to the world population, I thought we were doing a bad job, and we were.”

“There’s definitely been an uptrend from when we first got BEI until now,” Prazak added. “We were performing well below the national average on a consistent basis when we first deployed BEI, and now we’re consistently performing above average.”

First, DBS had to learn the ins-and-outs of BEI as a productive tool. The dealer instituted a bonus program, with first-call effectiveness as the highest level benchmark employees can be paid on. The uptick along the key metrics has bolstered confidence and satisfaction for customers, employees, and DBS management alike.

But quoting performance stats won’t quell the fears of a client battling a deadline. That’s when the calm, reassuring voice of a trusted partner comes into play.

“When you call us, you get a person who will go out of their way to find someone who can give you an answer,” Theilacker said. “We will call [a tech] on their cell phone, hunt them down in the office, find someone who can help. That’s a big deal. We also have local supplies and parts; with most manufacturer locations, their parts and supplies are not in San Diego county and if they need a part, you’re looking at a 24-hour turn time, minimum. Lastly, it’s service and attitude. People hear it in our voices.”