Top-quality printing equipment can only function to its maximum efficiency if related after-sales service and customer support is as reliable as the product itself, notes leading document management and printing expert Oc'e South Africa.
With a comprehensive variety of printing systems ranging from wide-format, to cut-sheet and continuous-feed - Oc'e South Africa national service manager Gary Hall points out that the company offers a full range of value-added services to meet specific after-sales requirements for all of its clients.
“Oc'e South Africa deals predominantly in the production printing environment, where good after-sales service is essential. If a printer breaks down in a large corporation, it creates a massive knock-on effect in other departments, which ultimately leads to a decrease in efficiency and productivity,” he explains.
“Oc'e South Africa is committed to living up to its responsibility of ensuring that the client's service levels are consistent, and we aim to exceed customer expectations at all times.”
Hall highlights the fact that Oc'e South Africa provides a 24-hour after-sales support service for all of its clients, seven-days-a-week.
“If a client experiences any technical difficulties, Oc'e South Africa will endeavour to have a technician on-site within four hours. The Oc'e South Africa service department aims to achieve all expectations of the customer, by backing and supporting them through every aspect of after-sales support,” he explains. “The work ethic of Oc'e's engineers is unrivalled, and they understand the urgency of getting the job done to the highest standard, and in the quickest time possible, in order to avoid any unnecessary downtime.”
In addition to providing around-the-clock technical support, Oc'e South Africa national training manager Percival Mchunu points out that all Oc'e clients are provided with full operator training and certification in order to ensure that the equipment is utilised to maximum efficiency, thereby reducing the inherent risk of failure due to user inexperience.
“After installation, all clients undergo an initial user-training programme by the installation technician, known as 'green button training', to get the customer operational. Thereafter a formal training programme is conducted by an experienced training officer, and this can take from about an hour to a full day, depending on the model of printer. This provides each user with an insight into the functionalities of the specific model that has been purchased,” he explains. “We first seek to understand the client's workflows, in order to customise the training to meet their precise business requirements. This adds value, as it improves productivity, and provides the client with a better understanding of our equipment, which ultimately leads to the equipment being more efficient, with fewer breakdowns.”
Mchunu regularly receives advanced training from Oc'e's international departments in Germany and Netherlands and has, to date, brought those skills back to South Africa, where it has benefited more than 40 local technicians. “Continuous training and certification of our technicians and clients is important, as it provides a mutual benefit for both parties involved. A fully-trained customer will not make incidental calls regarding avoidable mistakes, while a technician will have a comprehensive understanding of a technical fault, should one arise,” he continues.
Hall notes that Oc'e South Africa has set itself the challenging target of achieving 95% uptime on the company's entire range of equipment. “Achieving the highest levels of equipment uptime is without doubt one of the most critical aspects of the production environment. This can be challenging at times, due to external factors such as client locations, or environmental damage such as lightning strikes,” he explains. “The service department at Oc'e South Africa never passes its problems onto the clients, and always devises a plan to ensure that we achieve our target, or get as close to it as possible.”
Howell highlights the fact that Oc'e South Africa regularly exceeds customer expectations, going above-and-beyond the call of duty, in order to ensure that uptime is maintained. “A large petrochemical client needed to have its payslips printed urgently at the same time that a new system was installed. The Oc'e technical team committed to ensuring that this was achieved, by re-installing the old system to print the payslips, before installing the new system straight afterwards.”
Mchunu points out that Oc'e South Africa has service centres in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. What's more, he notes that approved dealer networks are provided with full training in order to improve service nationwide. “The same training standards are applied to Oc'e technicians and Oc'e-approved dealers, in order to ensure to ensure that performance and service delivery are constant.”
Oc'e South Africa senior account manager Michael Howell points out that if a client is confronted with any difficulties relating to the equipment, the problem is communicated to the Oc'e South Africa executive committee, and not just the service department. “The executive committee of Oc'e South Africa is regularly updated on clients' status during monthly site meetings, and any issues that arise are sorted out as quickly as possible.”
Howell notes that living up to the Oc'e motto, 'Printing for Professionals', is more than just words, but rather a principle for undertaking business everyday for its clients. “Partnerships between Oc'e and its clients are genuine, and we strive to become a part of the business by always having a familiar and trusted face on-site. Oc'e South Africa has never lost a site to a competitor, and I strongly believe that we can attribute that to our unrivalled quality of equipment and after-sales service,” he concludes.
There are numerous photographs specific to this press release. Please visit http://media.ngage.co.za and click the Oc'e link.
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Oc'e is one of the world's leading providers of document management and printing for professionals. The broad Oc'e offering includes office printing and copying systems, high-speed digital production printers and wide format printing systems for both technical documentation and colour display graphics.
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