Weekend Service

We have customers who ask for this or 24/7 coverage from time to time. And we do provide it on an as needed basis. The funny thing is you use the word "reasonable". The definition of this word varies greatly depending on who you ask. The customer thinks it's reasonable to not charge extra, or to charge very little extra, or maybe only charge them IF the service tech has to actually go onsite, but not if they have to be "on call" or "Remote in" to fix a problem. Most Sales people will agree (as long as it doesn't cost him / her anything more, or anything out of their deal). But the VP of Service or the Service Manager has a very different definition of reasonable. They have to work out the details of getting a number of Service techs to be "On Call"... This costs money. You have to pay someone to put their life on hold. So they can't make any concrete plans if they are "on call". And that includes sleep. Yes they can go to sleep but must be willing to be woken up, take a call, remote in, or get dressed and drive to the customer site. What is "reasonable compensation for the tech? By the way, the Dealer must pay them for travel time too! Does the customer pay for that? Should the Service Department make a profit if they offer after hours service? If so this means a mark up of their costs. Don't get me wrong, we do, and I think we should offer after hour service when requested. But you need to be careful on who defines what a "reasonable" cost is. That's my $0.02 Vince

Thanks for the reply Vince. Here is my thinking. Find a tech who will work Wed -Sunday and find a dispatch to do the same. No need to pay overtime or special pay. The tech is ALWAYS working on the weekend. Plan for some repairs on the weekend. Imagine how productive a tech could be without all the distractions that happen Monday-Friday. Hotel staff work weekend,, all hospitality industry is working weekends. Sure... you could charge a slight premium but no need to charge too much that it is cost prohibitive. 

I work weekends now when I need to. My admin people do the same. Why not provide that as a competitive service offering? The VP of Service of Service Manager are not seeing the whole picture. They are judged by their financial performance and are not motivated by expanding t6he service offering.

So now...here's the challenge. If we can paint a financially profitable picture to the ownership they would be inclined to motivate others. So what I am searching for is someone who knows the financial side of the service. Let's say I charge 200 a year per machine to offer weekend service. If we sell 50 machines in 12 months that's 10,000. How many more deals would we win by offering something our competition is not. I wonder how many current customers would choose to pay an extra 200 a year to have weekend service? It really is a customer focused solution.

Just to help prepare you for the battle that lies ahead...You're Wednesday through Friday scenario would require the tech to be as productive on the weekend as a tech is during the week which I think is a stretch. Assuming you would give him calls to do during the weekend, they would have to be calls for companies open on the weekend which narrows the scope of possibilities considerably. That tech would also have to be trained on everything from top to bottom, B&W, color, wide format. You might say that they would only need the common models but it isn't the common models that are most likely to pay for weekend service. It will be the Production units and specialty machines. Everything else the customer can get done down the hall or across the street if need be so they won't pay extra for weekend service. Depending on the geography of your territory, your tech may also have several hours travel time between calls.

 

There is no way you could justify weekend dispatch unless that person also did something else like filing or cleaning the floors or something. I would think you would have to have all dispatch calls forwarded or have a special weekend only number to call.

 

The other problem, which is common with any start-up, is the cost of start-up. How long would you be in the red until your contracts would be able to cover the cost? You would almost have to get a ton of pre-commitments before launch. Then, what if things didn't work out and the plan had to be scrubbed...what would be the fall-out?

 

About the only way I see something like this coming together is with a major takedown that would serve to spring board the program.

We have a weekend service phone number on our answering machine.  Someone in management carries that cell phone on the weekends.  We do our best to help them out on the phone and only send someone out if the situation calls for it.  Heck, Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend I drove an hour each way to help an urgent care center in a resort town that was down with a jamming issue.  They are a golden account so I have no problem taking care of them.

I also believe there are certain OSHA or Labor laws that say a manager has to be on duty if a tech is working after hours etc.

 

We usually quote something ridiculously higher than our normal rates and most decide 24/7 is not that important for the cost. We usually will triple the monthly base rate plus travel fees for trips on weekends. Rarely have we had someone take us up on it.

We did have a tech work offset hours (10AM - 7PM) and we had trouble keeping him busy. I think this is best handled on a case by case basis. Where you know what the fleet consists of and you can work out profitable accommodations for the technician(s). I think the case for the pitfalls was made very well in the above posts. The first question that has to be answered is "What is the demand for 24 Hour service?" Then what will the market bear for cost? If there is a market then the market will respond a provide the necessary service. But if you try to create a service without enough demand your 24 hour service offering will not generate enough money to support itself. Since none of our companies are non profit organizations we MUST make a profit on what we offer.

 

Let me piggyback on what Vince just said about making a profit. Many sales people think that making a profit on the hardware is what we are here for and it isn't. In our industry, companies hope and pray that the sales department can at least break even. In other words, the profit generated by hardware sales only pays for the generation of hardware sales. In most cases if the clicks aren't profitable, there is no reason for the sale. Selling hardware is our job but it is for the profit generated from clicks, not for the profit generated from the sale of hardware.

People people let's think out-of-the-box here. Restaurant hotels churches and hospitality industries are open on the weekends. In 2014 our industry needs to think of ways to be more competitive. The product has commoditized. The Internet has diminished profitability. Service is what defines a business in part. What if 20% of the workforce in the service department was shifted away from Monday through Friday and now works on Saturday and Sunday. I believe in today's labor market a dealership will not need to pay a premium for those people to work on the weekends. From a sales perspective it has always seemed to me that the service department is trying to catch up.
Now as a dealer you've differentiated yourself and you can offer wekend service at no additional charge. If you want tack on a few extra dollars maybe $100 a year and that would be increased profitability. The piece I don't know about is if we could make the service department productive on the weekends. So if you're a service manager what do you think? If you can make that work, now as a salesperson I can offer weekend service and have a competitive advantage. What if that increased sales by 15%, that would increase service revenue by 15%. If you could offer weekend service and not gouge the customer by doing so you would have a distinct advantage and a great story to tell. Your dealership is customer focused. You are available when the customer needs you.

Restaurants, hotels,churches, etc. may  have functions on weekends but they do their administrative activities 8-5 m-f for the most part. The fact that they are open on nights and weekends does not mean that they require a functional copier during that time. If you are going to go down this path, you need to focus on hospitals, police departments, fire departments, 24 hour P4P's or printing operations that run three shifts like newspapers. However, I still feel you are trying to create a market that just isn't there.

In the New York market place with my dealership that I had in the eighties and early nineties. We hooked up with a shipping agent, they handled much of the shipping traffic in and out of New York and New Jersey Harbors. 

 

We had to be on call 24 hours and weekends to service copiers on those ships.  Can tell you that we charged double to be on call for weekends and after hours, we have half of the money to the tech that wanted to be on call.  Back then we were charging $125 per hour.  We also charged from the time we left for the call and the anticipated time we would return. It was lucrative.  Sadly, our agent passed away and eventually the business did also.  But, I was on call also from time to time and we usually averaged billing for $400 per call.  Plus, all of the units we sold because the ships were only in port for 24-36 hours and never enough time to get parts if they were not in stock.

 

Just a thought if you've got a harbor near you, if so, finding the shipping agent and cut a deal, you'll be glad you did!!  Plus, the cruise ships had huge copiers!!

 

 

That sounds like a great deal but I wonder how many copier decisions were effected by the 24/7 service availability. How many ships would buy a particular manufacturer based on 24/7 service at just one port. Now if you could make arrangements for afterhours service at every port they frequent, that would be a deal maker!

Actually only the ones were we could not get parts in a timely fashion. Yes, sometimes we had to drive back to the office and then back to the ship, but the billing was incredible. New York & NJ have three main harbors which are Raritan Bay (tankers, cargo), Hoboken/Elizabeth (tankers, cargo & cruise) and then NY City (tankers, cargo & cruise).  We were busy most weekends because of the cruise ships and then a few times a week after hours for the cargo and tankers.  One of our guys actually had to climb a Jacobs ladder up one of the ships with his tool bag. I'll never forget because he stated he would never do it again!

 

quote:

I believe in today's labor market a dealership will not need to pay a premium for those people to work on the weekends. 

 

Good luck with that! I know I wouldn't change from M-F to working every weekend without some benefit to me. I am always happy to work after hours but that is because I am making more money doing it. 

 

Also hotels, restaurants, and churches do not need after hours service. Sure they are open then but like others have said they do most of the printing during the week and in most cases if the machine breaks on the weekend they are fine until Monday. Your W-F scenario is also missing that hotels, and restaurants are open 24/7 are you only planning on adding 8 to 5 service on Saturday and Sunday what about 5pm to 8am. 

 

The places that actually need after hours are the production print places that run 24/7.