Service Department Suggestions?

Not exactly the same thing, but here goes. A few years ago I bought out a small company with 60 or so accounts. The owner had several clients who were "friends" or perhaps "mooches" would be a better description. Anyway. He did a lot of misc service for them for free. When they called me to do a service call even after hours they would throw an absolute hissing fit about having to pay for service.

Basically you guys have created a situation where clients expect to be able to get free tech support. If you start charging them and have a scripted response that says that due to the increased cost of doing business you must now charge for phone support... some will understand, and more than you might think will throw a hissy fit and cancel service with you.

The fact that you have so many with no agreement that pays you for anything tells me you will have some issues that will be hard to work around. However you need to risk some clients in order to fix this. The first rule of business is get paid for your work.

Perhaps a published policy of some kind like,

"Monitored clients with current accounts (paid bills) may call for upto X free tech support calls per yer as long as remote programming is not required, the call does not exceed XX minutes, and a site visit is not required or requested immediately after tha call. Tech support calls over X will be charged at the following reduced rate."

I would think long and hard, and then put pen to paper to write up some service and payment policies.

One policy I have is that I will not perform service for a client with a past due balance. Its hard and fast. It has saved me a lot of headaches.

How about running an MS Exchange server? Use the Outlook calendar for scheduling and inter-office communication can be mostly email. As for a database look at Salesforce.com (web-based).

I would use a "main office" / "branch office" model.

Move everything you can to the main office and have only what is needed at the branch office.

Say you have a sales manager. Sales manager works out of main office, but travels to branch office as needed. Branch office might have a "lead salesperson" who is in charge there.

Same thing with installation and service.

All calls routed through main office pretty much, but have the ability for people to call the branch office directly as needed.

Then so far as communication between the two offices, historically and formally this has been done with lead people, supervisors, and managers.

So far as technical questions and information goes, every rule in the "chain of command" book has been broken for this. Direct lines of communication should be available from any employee to any other employee. Say you have a guy in one office who has expert knowledge of something specific. Make that persons knowledge easily accessible to everyone company wide. Tweak this as needed. If one person is asking the expert stupid questions which someone else could answer, limit that person's access to the expert.

So far as forms, paperwork, billing, etc. These things are "management systems". The systems are usually designed as a manual (non computer) system initially. Then automated and moved to computer when the system is working well. A system is a system. Can be manual "paperwork" or on computer. Do what works best and is as simple as possible (less training). Sometimes a simple 3 x 5 paper card (non computer) system is the easiest and best thing for record keeping.

For example for a service call. The call goes to main office and is recorded there. Then main office dispatches tech from main office or branch office as needed. Technician completes service call and fills out paperwork. Paperwork is returned to branch or main office. Someone picks up paperwork from branch office and takes to main office daily or whatever. Retain copy and mail if out of town branch office.

Then once you get the main/branch office model working, you get economy of scale and synergy. Instead of having two of everything, you can have just one of some things in the main office.

Also with all calls being routed to the main office, you can then study the types of calls you are getting. If you get frequent calls asking the same questions, you can route these calls to a "free" question answering phone system or a person who answers frequently asked questions. Also could set up a web site which answers frequently asked questions. And set up a notebook with an index which has answers to frequently asked questions.

So far as charging for questions asked on the phone, if they are paying for monitoring or have a service contract, I would provide a certain number of answers for free per month. If a local system, then provide answers for free for a few years after installation. Otherwise might want to charge a small fee for answering questions if the question is answered on your web site or phone system, yet they insist on having someone answer their question on the phone. Answer new questions for free, then add them to the website, phone system, and notebook. Over time this should reduce your time spent answering questions.

So far as designing management systems, don't make the mistake of having only managers design the system! Ask the little guy.Ask the person answering the phone what will work, what they want, how the system is working. Ask the installers. Ask the service and salespeople. The "little guy" is the boss! These people spend 8 hours a day doing their job and they know best what will work, what is most simple for them, and what is a pain in the a$$. Get frequent feedback from these people about how everything is working. (Sometimes managers don't have a clue about what will work best. And the employee will tell everyone else *but* the manager that something is a silly stupid system. So need to have an atmosphere where it is OK to tell the boss what is needed.)

And don't be afraid to change things. If something is not working or is ticking some people off, find out what would be a better system, then make changes as needed.

Several individuals have offered some really good suggestions.

As for telephone technical assistance, go with a 900 number. You can tailor this with a minimum upfront charge (like $30.00 - $40.00) and no per minute charges so they don't feel "pressured" by the time it might take to come up with a solution.

You can share an Outlook calendar over internet connection..actually I think it uses email updates behind. I used to use it to schedule my techs.

7 | >or 8 service techs in two locations providing service (phone and field), | >doing remotes and inspections. We currently use ALARM software from | >Z-Micro. Also checking out google calendar (web-based). We're using an | >older dos-based database for our tech detail/documentation and are looking | >for a good program to use as we upgrade things. | | | How about running an MS Exchange server? Use the Outlook calendar for | scheduling and inter-office communication can be mostly email. As for | a database look at Salesforce.com (web-based). | | | | -- | | -Graham | (remove the double e's to email)

That only happens at bassburglaralarms.

Heh. You'd have to head a lot further north. It's presently 31 degrees C "out there".

31 degrees Canadian?

:-)

If you use the Exchange server they can access it from any Internet connection over the web to see their calendars and read & send email. Also you can give supervisors access to view & create calendar items.

Is that what you have?

Here's a demo of what I'm talking about:

username owa\\spell password spell

No. I don't use it any longer. I got rid of most of my techs and all their whining problems and demands.