The Employee: David Priest

Location: Little Rock

The Customer: Many Production Clients

David Priest recognizes that, generally speaking, production equipment operates the same as your standard copier.

But David works on a bit different playing field. And he does so with the speed, precision and expertise to keep production customers – whose livelihood rests on these machines every day – up and running with minimal delays.

“Technically, he’s not wrong; all the machines we work on have similar functionality, from a small desktop to a 40-foot-long machine,” Datamax Arkansas Director of Service Mark McKinney says. “However, it takes a tremendous amount of training, a tremendous amount of time on the computer, to learn these (production) machines, as well as the software that accompanies them.”

Among the many production clients David works with, he's developed a strong rapport with delivering Raving service to them all regularly. 

The Playing Field

Working primarily in the production arena, David sees the same handful of customers over and over again. So building that solid relationship over time is huge.

“You become friends with them all on some level,” Priest says. “I try to shoot them straight when I’m working on their equipment – I want to tell them exactly what’s going on, and exactly when they’ll be back up again, so they can tell THEIR customers. Honestly, I get the same satisfaction whether it’s a big machine or small one; I like to see it go from “not working” to “working” as quickly as possible. I get really bummed out when I’m stuck on a machine because I know how the customer is feeling.”

But at the same time, he recognizes that the playing field is different for these customers.

“The customer expectation is high (with production). This is their livelihood. It hurts a lot more if they’re down,” David says. “These customers don’t have time to waste. So I go straight to it – I try to get them up and running. If I feel like I could be second guessing an issue, I’ll change gears and look at it in a logical way, from a different perspective. But if I’ve seen this issue before on several occasions, I’ll go ahead and knock it out right there.”

The Raving Results

For McKinney, recognizing David’s expertise in his role isn’t about what he hears. It’s what he doesn’t hear.

“In every production environment, the machines are their way of lie. If it doesn’t run, then 10 kinds of hell will get raised. It’s a good thing if I don’t hear from them,” Mark says. “I don’t hear from these customers that they’re down. David has spent many, many hours training on and perfecting his knowledge of the production equipment … If I need something done, David is one of those guys. He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t say ‘I don’t know how to work on that.’ He just knocks it out.”