SubscribeWhile the service industry continues to evolve to keep pace with changing technologies and customer expectations, printer solutions organisation pks services has adapted its portfolio of services but never lost sight of its customer service ethos.
"Our original aim when we began the company back in 1998, was to incorporate exceptional customer service with the highest levels of technical expertise to provide customers with a solution that is second to none," explained Lisa Holland, business development director of Middlesex-based printer support specialist pks services. "We started the company with a focus on printers and to that end we have not changed but the company has evolved to move towards the type of solution that customers both wanted and needed. When we began, the operation was very much in the mould of the traditional return to base repairer but now our service has moved on to incorporate on-site repair, preventative maintenance and a technical support line for our customers," she added.
One development that the company has recently introduced is a fuser refurbishment service. "Fusers are now widely considered as a consumable item and by offering customers a repair and refurbishment service on all fusers including colour units, we can deliver tremendous cost savings. By performing the refurbishment in-house we also can control the whole process and together with the logistics and on-site service option where we can offer an advanced exchange unit and arrange for the failed unit to be returned, we can gain further economies from streamlining the whole process," Holland said.
pks underlines the company's commitment to colour laser printers. "Many people still appear a little nervous about addressing the challenge of colour laser printers but rather than shy away from these devices, we took the decision a while ago to support them and we have invested in both equipment and training to allow that," Holland acknowledged.
While developments in the technology continue to offer challenges to the printer support industry, Holland notes that the industry, and the expectations placed upon it, continue to alter. "The industry has moved on and nowadays companies are judged on far more than merely repair turnaround times," Holland explained. "Quality has always been a factor but customers are now also looking for proactive customer service. An example of this has been the tracking system that we have installed that gives total visibility over the repair process. Customers can have access to information such as the fault reported, what repair was undertaken and the parts used as well as the status of the repaired unit," she said. "We have also performed special projects on behalf of customers, one example being a customer that had standardised on a manufacturer's product that was no longer supported and we supplied engineering drawings for a failed part through to a complete production run," Holland revealed.
But in addition to higher expectations of service, companies are also changing the way they approach the subject of support. "There does appear to be a transformation happening in the market recently with end-users no longer having the fixed annual budget for contracted IT support and are therefore moving more towards a break-fix, ad-hoc approach to support," Holland said. The industry has changed before to a contracted support arrangement and it could yet shift again. It does not alter our approach; at the end of the day a customer is a customer whether we are representing a third party service organisation or directly for an end user," she added.
While companies are becoming more reactive in their approach to repairs, the need to be proactive to minimise their exposure to printer failures is offering pks a growing opportunity. "Preventative maintenance is an ever-increasing part of the business," Holland admitted. "Where once people would run printers until they stopped, companies now are taking a more proactive approach, realising that by carrying out preventative maintenance they can significantly reduce failures and the overall running costs of their printers. With our field service operation we can perform the maintenance on behalf of customers but for those companies that have their own IT departments we can provide complete maintenance kits and access, if needed, to our technical support line," she added.
Despite all the changes that the industry has seen and is continuing to experience, managing director Steve Orkney is proud that pks has retained its customer-centric focus. "The whole ethos of the company was founded on not just servicing printers, but servicing customers and it is the level of customer service that we offer that sets us apart and gives us an edge in what is a competitive marketplace," he said. "With our strong foundation built on the technical expertise that we have here, customer satisfaction remains our ultimate goal," he concluded.
