How to Create a Profitable Service Center Prepared by: Marty Smith, General Manager AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center First Rule (The Golden Rule) (a.k.a: the Service Rule): Confucius lived in the 500s BC, and his secular philosophy was put in writing by his disciples after he died. These writings include “Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.” AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center It doesn’t matter whether it is your employee or your customer – treat them like you want to be treated. You employees will do a better job of taking care of your customers. Your customers will show their appreciation by becoming more loyal customers. AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Focus more on customer service and the bottom line will show that. If you have systems in place, have a competent staff and things well organized, the bottom line does tend to take care of itself, allowing you to focus on meeting your customer’s needs. AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Have qualified staff in place: competent Service Manager (both field and office experience are almost a necessity) competent Assistant to the Service Manager competent trained Technicians (AFAA course attendance and NICET certification are a must!) AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Service Manager: preferably a former Senior Technician (so that the other technicians can relate to him / her and so that they have the necessary experience to know what it takes to do the job in the field) it is good to have one main liaison to the factory’s Tech Support & Engineering groups AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Assistant to the Service Manager: Must be well organized Let them focus on the more administrative aspects of running the Service Department so that the Service Manager is more efficient and able to stay focused on more technical and customer issues AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Technicians: Focus on ensuring you have the best trained technicians in the industry! Do not subscribe to the theory of “if I train them, then I am just helping my competitor because they will leave and go to work for them” – the opposite is true – if you don’t train them they will leave and go to work for your competitor (and they will indicate the reason they are coming there is to get training) AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Provide in house and on the job training to supplement factory training and to provide training on older systems where factory training is no longer available. AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Utilize a mentoring philosophy to bring newer technicians up to speed on the way your company does things as well as to gain training and experience from a technical standpoint AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Store programs for fire alarm systems on a dedicated server or a dedicated partition on an existing server so that technicians can dial in to the server and update and download the latest copies of programs (this issue challenges many companies) AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Post schedules for technician on a private section of the Company’s website to make it easy for them to access their schedules. Equip technicians with digital cameras to take photos of items in the field to be able to email to the Service Manager, Engineering Manager, etc. AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Ensure that time sheets are filled out completely and accurately. Ensure that Daily Work Tickets are filled ot completely and accurately and signed by the customer. Ensure that time sheets and Daily Work Tickets are cross checked. AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

From the advice of my Service Manager: “bill early and bill often” Do not let time slip by before tickets are billed (take away reasons for not getting tickets in – give each tech a fax machine when he is hired – let them fax them in daily or scan and email them – however they need to get there, let them get there) AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007

How to Create a Profitable Service Center Thank you! AFAA Annual Meeting - Colorado Springs, CO April 19, 2007