So, what really goes into the Secret Sauce?
We know our IT and Copier Service teams Create Raving Fans… But how do they do it?
What ingredients go into their execution every day? Industry-leading response + resolution times, a litany of advanced certifications, a 9.8 NPS recommendation score speak for themselves. But we wanted to know more.
Below, we reveal 12 things that make our service teams ones worth raving about — some you may not be aware of.
Service Secret Sauce: 12 Essential Ingredients:
1. They start early, and they stay late.
Not only do Texas IT support teams offer after hours support, they rotate 5:30 a.m. shifts to review offline server reports. If servers are offline, the employee on call starts working toward a solution.
“Offline server reports are reports that alert us if a client’s server is not checking in with our management software. This could be due to a server being completely down. It could be that a service stopped working. Or it could be that the internet at the clients site is down. Each situation is handled differently," DFW IT supervisor Richard Martin says.
DFW Service Supervisor Curtis Whitlock gives customers his work cell phone number for the sole purpose of providing after-hours support if needed.
“Maybe it’s something we went over in training, and the client has forgotten how to do something at the machine. Whatever it is, it's my main job is keeping customers happy,” Curtis says.
2. They (copier techs) are IT-savvy. And vice versa.
The days of the copier being “just a copier” are long gone.
“As technology has progressed, we’ve got to be more involved with the IT part of the technology environment,” Little Rock supervisor Ken Miller says. “It’s not always mechanical. I would say more and more of the issues we solve are logistical or network-related.”
The same can be said for systems engineers, in reverse.
“We cross each other’s paths very often,” Arkansas IT manager James Sutton said. “A general call is, ‘we can’t print, or we can’t scan. If it’s an IT customer, we’ll initially try to trouble shoot the problem and determine if it’s a network problem, a computer problem, or a copier problem. If it’s a print driver or connectivity problem, we’ll take care of it.”
3. They aren't afraid of creatures.
Tyler Service Manger Justin Harper remembers the time a snake was wrapped in a reader unit, preventing the reader from moving back and forth.
“We started taking the side cover off, and we saw the tail inside of the machine,” he recalls.
Another call, years ago, came in when a copier jamming out of drawer 4. When they pulled the feed unit out, there was a rat stuck between the gears.
4. They’re a great ally to sales.
Sulphur Springs Business Process Consultant Johnny Wetzel had discussed the need for an upgrade on more than one occasion to a local car dealership. But when technician Brandon Brock went onsite, he made note of the age of the equipment, and communicated that parts would be difficult to come by, and service calls more frequent, the customer paid mind.
Especially when Brandon was right back on a service call.
"He's out there on a regular basis, and he keeps that constant chain of communication going," Johnny said. "When Brandon had to go back out there, they were like 'have a sales person come out here. We're ready to upgrade.'"
5. They're inherently unselfish.
"Volunteering for whatever needs to be done. Working till the job is done no matter the time. Taking toner or parts whenever or wherever they are needed," Little Rock Service Manager Mark McKinney said. "I had a tech (Lee Norris) get picked up by a local police department during the snowmageddon of 2021. While the Datamax office was closed, they picked him up at his house took him to their office where he fixed the machine and then they took him back home. I called him and said we are closed but they need their printer. He said 'Let me call them , I’ll take care of it.'"
6. They’ve got attitudes. Great ones.
“One of our biggest wins for having the service team we do is attitude,” Tyler IT Service Manger Justin Martinez says. “We have a team full of positive energy and self-motivated people who love helping others and helping one another. That close knit bond helps each of us want to see one another succeed.”
7. They follow up.
If Tyler technician David Olliff has had an issue with a machine, he usually gives it a few days. And then he’ll call back and ask how the machine is running.
“It’s just my own way of following up,” David says. “I think that they like the personal attention. They like me taking the initiative to calling in and checking on them. They just want to know – hey we’re not ignoring them.
David of course risks his own call back numbers when he does this. But that’s not a concern of his. “Bottom line, your issues are my issues,” He says.
8. They value creativity.
When it comes to technical support, Daniel Williams has a creative mind. Take the time he helped a customer fax with their VoIP Phone System.
The customer had this to say: “I am writing for high praise for Datamax connectivity specialist Daniel Williams. Today he showed me a solution for our admin bldg. users where we can send a fax from our desktop through a fax/copier that is in another building … Daniel went through a very thorough test to make sure things were set up correctly which I was able to replicate. If you all don’t do gift cards for outstanding employees let me know, I would be glad to send him a Starbucks card for his time!”
They also like to get creative on installs. That is to say - when there's a viable solution that they think new customers can utilize, they don't hesitate to make it happen.
"When we are doing the installs or preinstalls we are always looking for ways to utilize software or applications (like Universal Login Manager) to improve the customers workflow," said Dallas/Fort Worth Service Manager Daniel Ketchum.
9. They’re ALWAYS learning.
Arkansas IT senior network engineer Brad Russell says, that sometimes, the client knows specifically what work they need us to perform, such as an application installation. Other times, we have to listen between the lines of what is being said, and paint a picture of what that should look like. That takes continuing education … continuously.
“We study new technologies. We learn new operating systems. We implement new solutions every week. We learn constantly,” Brad says. “We have a choice every day to be average, or amazing; mediocre or magnificent; to be par for the course or to raise the bar.”
10. Their performance is measured every day.
Technicians’ first call completion rate, parts usage, productive hours: These are all numbers that measure their performance out in the field. On the IT side, courtesy, competence, timeliness and likeliness of providing a recommendation are all measured in a post-ticket survey.
11. They communicate.
“We (IT support) have policies in place that keep us accountable for keeping frequent contact points with our clients while providing service, to ensure they know that we are working their requests or service issues and not leaving them in the dark to wonder “well what’s the status of my ticket?” Justin Martinez in Tyler said.
12. They don’t accept anything but resolution.
At a major account some time back, the client was faced with installing printer drives on 170 work stations … manually.
“Joshua (Singleton) came up to me toward the end of the day, and said, ‘give me some time, Steve. I’m not accepting that…. About three hours later (about 9:30 p.m.), he calls me and says, I think I’ve got it fixed,” VP of Service Steve Kennemer said.
In short, Joshua figured out a way to get the driver to push out to each client on its own, enabling the automated download of 170 print drivers. The next morning, Joshua and Kennemer tested his hypothesis and, within a few tries, knew they’d found a viable solution for their client.
