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im curious to know what others do within their companies when it comes to initial connectivity and connectivity issues after the sale. I see competitors saying they will network 3 computers and after that it is 130.00 an hour. I usually use this against them as we will connect an entire office during install regardless of the number of people. I can't imagine someone giving you something like 10 machine for 200 users and you saying we will do 3 of them included....

After the initial install our clients get opted IN to a network agreement automatically by mail for 20.00 per month per device. They can opt out from the mailer and then every call for print drivers or scanning issues is 130.00 per hour. If they are under our network contract they can call us every day if needed. We had about 75-80% of clients keep the network agreement. It is a nice revenue source each month thats for sure.

What do your companies do for this?

 

"If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water." - Ray Kroc

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K, we include up to six devices to be connected for printing and scanning.  At this time we are not offering an agreement for the connectivity of the device.  They can call us when they have an issue, if we find out it's our device, we will repair/fix/update at no cost to the end user.  However, if the problem is with the clients network, we will advise the client, offer to fix for $150 per hour. 

I like your model, 20 bucks a month is nothing nowadays

We offer a 5-hour time block for $295 with only a small percentage opting in.  If they don't  opt in we charge for IT help.  As a sales rep who knows the IT side I am conflicted and always fear a customer will leave over being charged for IT helpdesk calls and have had several do so in the past.  When a customer is getting a monthly service invoice they don't always understand why IT help isn't included.

Another take on this:  Dealers and manufacturers need to make MFP connectivity as easy and pain free as possible.  We are seeing a very steady decline in clicks.  Instead of viewing a customer call for minor IT support as an inconvenience or as an opportunity to bill them an IT charge view it as a necessity to keep the clicks flowing.  We want them making clicks......don't we??!!!!  Do we want them to get discouraged from having connected MFPs???

Why is it that I can use a free app on my phone from Hammermill Paper to easily find and print to any printer on a network I am attached to yet my customers need an IT tech to go on site or remote in to set up printing from a PC or scanning to a PC.  My phone also has a free app that magically lets me print and scan using my Ricoh devices with minimal set up yet for some reason printing and scanning with a PC or Mac remains stuck in the year 2000?????

We need to make using our devices as easy as possible for our customers to give us clicks before the customers stop making clicks altogether.

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