Doing More with Less: Resource Management Critical for Maximizing Technical Service

The quaint, Rockwell-esque portrait of the service technician wearing grease-covered overalls while lugging a toolbox hearkens back to the golden age of American manufacturing. But unlike the Maytag repairman, this ideal isn’t quite on the road to obsolescence. It does, however, require a new brush stroke to characterize the current state of the office equipment service technician.

This month’s State of the Industry report on technical service isn’t so much a “tech of the future” look. It’s more an overview of how dealers have reallocated and redefined service assets in an age when the pandemic and market conditions have prompted them to take a deeper dive into how they are being managed and molded to fit forward-looking needs.

One thing the pandemic has shown Gary Harouff is that the more fluid a dealership’s technical service arm can be in serving various (and often new) product and service components, the better it can maximize resources. The president of Advanced Imaging Solutions (AIS) in Las Vegas noted that previously, much of the company’s service offerings—copier/MFP, telecom, managed network services and now temperature-scanning devices—operated in silo fashion with separate help desks. That caused some of the dealer’s resources to become underutilized while others were taxed, which became a headache from a managerial perspective.

Future Tech

The answer for AIS was cross-training: a basic office equipment tech can now do level-one IT equipment repairs or IT voice support, creating that “tech of the future” that can add the flexibility AIS craves. Those techs are being molded through AIS’ new training program that will incorporate Tier 1 network support as well as telecom. It also makes a career in the dealer’s tech service division a more enticing proposition.

“It’s not always easy to find someone to bring on board to do all office equipment repairs,” Harouff said. “But showing a young professional a career path that leads them to start as a delivery guy, then a set-up/installation guy and then a primary office equipment guy—we can then give you a progression into IT and the training behind that. We have a career path that we’ve never had before.”

AIS is also modifying job descriptions, determining requisite and uniform certifications, and working with the director of the three previously siloed departments to carve out the service roles and their ultimate goals. As 40% of the dealer’s business is derived from the education vertical—and schools within the market have been shuttered for 10 months—AIS is seeking to minimize furloughs and is using the time to bridge its silos through service training.

“We want to level up our people so we can handle where our vision is taking us,” Harouff noted.

Service management is now more streamlined, with one vice president of service overseeing all of its services. That has enabled cross-training to run more effectively.

We want to level up our people so we can handle where our vision is taking us.

– Gary Harouff, Advanced Imaging Solutions

“When we looked at who we’d want for this role, I thought it was vital for us to look outside the industry—I didn’t want an OE person,” he said. “Sometimes I think our industry is so close-knit, and we’ve been doing the same things over and over for many years. I wanted to bring someone in from the IT or telecom/VoIP industry to look at things differently and challenge some of our current operations and what we could be doing differently.”

Technical service is definitely a critical component to the success of GoodSuite. In fact, the Woodland Hills, California, dealer netted a lucrative IT services contract with one of the largest accounts in its market in 2020. Active on the M&A front, GoodSuite has been fortunate enough to acquire companies with strong technical service staff in recent years, reducing its need to hunt for candidates through Indeed and other outlets.

Jodie Grice, vice president of customer experience for GoodSuite, notes that the biggest boost to its technical advancement was becoming a Sharp dealer roughly five years ago. Manufacturer training has greatly bolstered the dealer’s technical proficiency, and GoodSuite added a master technician from one of its acquisitions.

Beyond Screwdriver

According to Colby Noji, vice president of service for GoodSuite, its IT service component is forcing techs to become more adaptive and technology oriented. While the mix has been 70% screwdriver turning and 30% IT work, the ability to hook up a laptop to a copier and be able to use diagnostic tools represents a bare minimum of required proficiency.
“We try to keep everyone on the same level; basically, we mold them identically,” Noji said. “Some are more skilled than others, but we try to raise them all to the same level. We want them all speaking the same language from a terminology standpoint.”

Noji delegates much responsibility for field management to his top two technicians, while he will come into the picture to smooth over any customer dissatisfaction. “I’ll take the brunt on the phone call, but one of the two (lead) techs will go onsite to resolve it using field specialists,” he added.

We want (service technicians) all speaking the same language from a terminology standpoint.

– Colby Noji, GoodSuite

Parts and inventory have become more of a focal point for Noji. Helping to manage his expanding oversight is a solid, direct line of communication with Sharp. That direct contact with his OEM rep, for example, enables Noji to get quicker answers to inquiries as opposed to CC’ing multiple contacts in an email request.

In an effort to see its first-call effectiveness hit the benchmarks for industry standards, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based UTEC turned to in-house technical workshops several years ago. Subsequently, when the pandemic struck and furloughs became necessary, it was imperative to further enhance its efficiency rate, according to Tom Wykowski, UTEC operations manager. Today, the dealer has a staff of 10 break/fix techs and 13 IT tech service specialists, with Wykowski working alongside Aaron Gurgul, the company’s IT director.

“About eight years ago, we farmed out the IT side of our business,” Wykowski said. “We hired Aaron and he started us down the road of becoming an IT company. Aaron has taken us to areas we hadn’t been in previously and has really grown that side of the business.”

The Age Gap

The break/fix side of the house skews older, with many techs in their 50s and 60s (the youngest is 38) while the IT age range is early to mid-20s. The age gap adds value to the practice of training some of the IT techs on the break/fix side. But what has also helped UTEC is an internship program it operates out of an education customer’s site. Three techs interact with students and staff, responding to job tickets at the school. The internship also acts as a feeder system for UTEC’s IT department for those students who wish to pursue a career with the dealer.

UTEC’s IT tech staff has access to continuous training through ITProTV, and Gurgul assigns course work to his techs. “The goal is to get top certifications for techs on staff. Developing a standardized training program has been my push for the last few years.”

Subscription-based recurring revenue has been a focal point from a managerial aspect, according to Wykowski, especially in light of declining clicks during the past year. Using a device-as-a-service approach with maintenance contracts baked in to produce a flat rate can be a leap of faith, as it’s based on previous usage. But Wykowski notes the dealer has forged several successful deals with end-users.

For Gurgul, the key was standardizing UTEC’s IT service component and moving away from the previous à la carte offering that was priced inconsistently. Gurgul built the tech stack and trained techs on what is being sold, ensuring customers are supported profitably.

Developing a standardized training program has been my push for the last few years.

– Aaron Gurgul, UTEC

“As we’ve standardized our tech stack, the onboarding of new customers has become easier and more efficient since we are working with familiar products,” Gurgul noted. “Those contracts are fairly profitable, and we’re looking forward to adding many more this year.”

Armed with a strong personnel pitch and a pipeline of prospects fueled by employee recommendations, finding quality tech service talent has not been an issue for Virginia Business Systems (VBS) of Richmond. The biggest changes have come in training; during the pandemic, online instruction has enabled the dealer to save on travel expenses normally incurred at manufacturer sites. It has exacerbated the process of bringing industry novices into the tech service fold; fortunately for the dealer, its techs’ average tenure falls in the 15- to 20-year range.

Career Paths

Barry Burress, vice president of operations for VBS, strives to develop promotable people within the company. Techs can forge a career path not only to supervisor or service manager, but can also make non-linear delves into logistics, production print (analyst/sales), or a general sales track. That bolsters the company’s ability to maintain talent. It wasn’t always the case.

“We’ve had people in the past who were that dinosaur—really good at the break/fix component, but their capabilities beyond that weren’t to the level we’d like to see,” Burress said. “During COVID, we emphasized training on standard networking, for example, to help get customers up and running quicker than waiting for a network team to get out to the devices. We’re a Konica Minolta ProTech dealer, and they allow us to send our techs to A+ or N+ school, and we’ve seen great ROI there. With the training comes a minimum two-year commitment to VBS to protect our investment.”

With a strong core of managers in all its branches, including sister company Edwards Business Systems, Burress is able to rely on his managers to handle day-to-day operations. Weekly manager meetings help ensure all VBS’ tech players are on the same page strategically, as the company seeks to do more with fewer resources.

We’ve had people in the past who were that dinosaur—really good at the break/fix component, but their capabilities beyond that weren’t to the level we’d like to see.

– Barry Burress, Virginia Business Systems

“Our mentality is simple—there is no job that any of us won’t do,” he added. “If it involves jumping in a truck and delivering a machine, we do it. If the logistics or setup team is backlogged, we’ll chip in. The people who aren’t here today didn’t abide by that belief, so we made ourselves stronger through attrition.”

One of the biggest changes, according to VBS President Jim Dotter, was service leadership becoming more aligned with inventory, financials and overall company performance. Such conversations were previously siloed within the service department, but the sales and finance departments now have greater insight into tech service.

“It’s seldom that service is doing something that might come into conflict with what sales or finance is looking for,” he said. “All the departments now discuss issues and try to determine the best way forward. Service is involved with inventory, working with NEXERA (formerly BEI) so that we can model financials. We share the model of our results every month with managers. When everyone has all the information, we can work together on solving issues.”

When everyone has all the information, we can work together on solving issues.

– Jim Dotter, Virginia Business Systems

Beyond the Resumé

When the decision was made to assemble a culture-driven staff at XMC Inc.—based in the Nashville, Tennessee, suburb of Bartlett—its human resources department shifted prioritization from skill sets and aptitude to culture and core values. The Visual Edge Technology family member’s service leadership team, which includes the director of service, field managers, help desk and parts managers, meets weekly in a traction format to ensure all parties are aligned to the same goals. According to Mike Brown, COO, the team has a shared accountability to training, impacting the customer experience, service performance metrics and profitability.

One of the aforementioned managers is a certified trainer who provides most of the dealership’s internal instruction, although all managers are accountable for monthly staff training. When it comes to new hires, even experienced techs must first get hands-on equipment experience before riding with technicians and completing product certifications.

Decreases in revenue due to market-driven pricing and increases in labor expenses mean all service management has to be dialed in to their budget well in advance in order to manage to the industry model.

– Mike Brown, XMC

“A lot of our success and setbacks (excluding COVID) have been centered on growth,” Brown noted. “Over the last eight years, we have experienced significant growth in our aftermarket business. It has afforded us the opportunity to grow beyond the office space to managed services, production and solutions. While we are now very successful in these various spaces, getting there rapidly provided challenges as we learned to navigate and overcome the new obstacles and expectations in each space.”

Brown prefers to onboard a mix of experienced and new techs with a proclivity toward molding. More than 75% of its techs can install, connect and train, with most having experience in multiple product lines and some assisting with managed services. Critically, techs are expected to help with managing inventory and operational needs of remote offices—giving them an ownership stake of their territories, so to speak.

With an abundance of new data to which he can align, Brown believes the biggest change from a managerial standpoint is balance. “Not too long ago, if you managed a service department, your day was all about keeping the techs moving, customers happy and parts costs low,” Brown said. “If you managed those three things well, your job was pretty simple. Now we have more channels within the business to manage. Multiple product lines, solutions, connectivity and/or managed services are nearing an equal workload to break/fix support. Decreases in revenue due to market-driven pricing and increases in labor expenses mean all service management has to be dialed in to their budget well in advance in order to manage to the industry model.”

Value of Feedback

Finding appropriate candidates hasn’t been a factor for EO Johnson Business Technologies of Wausau, Wisconsin, especially given the growth of specialized online sites and communities. Training was complicated by the pandemic in the sense that online instruction is not a full substitution for the in-person experience at a vendor location. One of the more notable changes in recent years is providing techs with more feedback, notes Frank Paulich, vice president of service.

“This is good for everyone overall, but it’s something that we need to be focused on more, as it helps the new employees grow faster and feel more secure in their roles within the organization,” he said. “We’ve had some success recruiting and retaining people who worked maintenance in manufacturing or machining and wanted to get away from second or third shift, as our work schedule provides them more time for family.”

Financial stability of the organization benefits employees and customers alike, so it is important that we have open discussions about making positive improvements that eliminate revenue loss while reducing expenses. 

– Frank Paulich, EO Johnson Business Technologies

Paulich stresses that with field technicians taking on increasing degrees of responsibility, they need to be empowered with customer decision-making autonomy. Today’s tech should have the requisite mechanical ability, but interpersonal communication skills and IT/network-related acumen are in high demand. The modern tech must invest his/her own time to keep pace with the evolution of the machines in order to properly train customers on their use.

From a tactical standpoint, field service management must be more attuned to the budgetary impact of its decisions and goals. The decline in 2020 click revenue brought focus to the sources of income and expense within the service department.

“This information merges with meeting the evolving customer needs, and meeting our employee needs,” Paulich added. “Financial stability of the organization benefits employees and customers alike, so it is important that we have open discussions about making positive improvements that eliminate revenue loss while reducing expenses. Technician assessments and evaluations have increased, so we can coach and educate techs on how to be part of the improvement process.”

Specialized Service

The movement toward product diversification has altered RJ Young’s training and service team management, creating the need for specialized service groups such as networking, IT and production print specialists. The evolution in product offerings and the increased effectiveness of the machines have driven the Nashville, Tennessee-based dealer to reevaluate benchmarks by which it measures success, notes Chip Crunk, president and CEO.

The dealership has focused much of its effort on reorganizing the career path and progression of its technicians in order to provide exciting new opportunities. RJ Young employs a tiered approach that enables new techs to gain the knowledge and skill sets necessary to be successful while creating opportunities for existing staff to learn valuable new skills.

“This approach has reenergized many of our long-tenured technicians to learn these new products and skill sets while allowing them to also mentor new technicians,” Crunk remarked. “Further, we do expect all our technicians–new and existing–to learn and adopt the new technologies and offerings we are delivering to our customers. We don’t expect each one individually to know everything, as that just isn’t feasible. But, we do want them to embrace one or two of our additional offerings that they naturally gravitate toward.”

We do expect all our technicians – new and existing – to learn and adopt the new technologies and offerings we are delivering to our customers.  

– Chip Crunk, RJ Young

In an effort to set the bar high, including from a managerial standpoint, the dealer has reevaluated and increased virtually every print-based key performance indicator (KPI) for its service group. This reflects the increased efficiency and effectiveness of the equipment RJ Young is servicing and encourages a more proactive service approach. Service managers and leadership compensation is tied into the KPIs, but the dealer also incents for increased efficiency, allowing them to drive much of their own financial success through exceeding established goals.

“Our belief is the ROI on this initiative will be through enhanced customer experience, and thus, customer retention,” Crunk added.

Jason Habbal has gained a deep appreciation for the responsibilities handled by his now-retired vice president of service. Habbal, the vice president of sales for Vision Office Systems in Charlotte, North Carolina, has his hands in all aspects of the operation, and points out that when his service VP called it a career, the dealer needed to hire two people to fill his shoes.

Finding qualified service techs to onboard is pretty tough in Habbal’s back yard; the pandemic didn’t exactly flood the local geography with furloughed candidates. Fortunately, Vision Office Systems wasn’t in the market for techs (and the sometimes-high price tag that technicians from the OEM direct branches carry). That just places a premium on the value that quality, reliable service techs offer.

“These devices are so much more than copiers these days, they’re more and more feature-rich with software in the mix,” Habbal said. “Techs need to have technology proficiency so they can handle connectivity as well as the break/fix jobs.”

Techs need to have technology proficiency so they can handle connectivity as well as the break/fix jobs. 

– Jason Habbal, Vision Office Systems

As for the service VP role, it is currently filled by a promoted manager who’s been with the dealer for nearly 25 years and served as the lead whenever the now-retired VP was out of the office. As a complement, Vision Office Systems hired an IT manager prior to the pandemic to handle internal and external IT needs.

“We’re all aligned with the same goals,” Habbal noted. “We are taking a much more tight-knit approach than we have in the past. Our retired VP handled it all, and we could count on everything being 100% accurate. With the two new roles, we take a hard look at everything and make sure it falls in line with what we hope to accomplish, just as before. We were in a good place on the tech service side, and we don’t want to mess that up.”

Fresh Perspective

With many dealers reporting that their technical service staffs are skewing more towards team members above the age of 50, there is a notable trend by companies to onboard techs with no experience in the copier field. That’s the case for CPI Technologies of Springfield, Missouri. Erik Crane, president and CEO, notes that the upside of hiring inexperienced candidates is there are no habits that need to be eliminated, and the dealer can train from a clean-slate perspective.

Conversely, it also means a longer lead time to get service professionals field ready. To combat this, CPI utilizes in-house trainers to speed up the training process. The dealer strives to ensure it’s providing cutting-edge tech for its field service technicians.

By providing the best technology and software, we have given the techs autonomy by allowing them to dispatch and close calls from their mobile devices in the field.

– Erik Crane, CPI Technologies

“By providing the best technology and software, we have given the techs autonomy by allowing them to dispatch and close calls from their mobile devices in the field,” Crane said. “This has increased their efficiency and productiveness. We do not allow technicians to opt out of this program; they’re all required to utilize them.”

Through the years, CPI Technologies has maintained consistency in its goals and expectations of service management. That includes margin and revenue projections, as well as goals.

“We have expected the VP of service to be more engaged with the technicians, providing support and encouragement to the field techs via Zoom since the face to face contact is greatly reduced,” he said.