Get home safe and intact every night to your home and family. First rule of service, no-one dies if their business equipment or similar (excluding Medical Technicians, X-Ray Machine technicians etc) does not function correctly. Your life is worth more than correcting any machine problem, ask your partner or family for their opinion if you do not believe me!
2. Protect the Safety of End Users and their Environment. Do not override or reset or compromise any safety features, fuses, interlock switches, even when ordered by your management (try to get the instruction in writing = it will never happen!) or requested by the customer, even as a temporary fix. Do not ask the customer to help you move, install or repair a machine. In the case of any incident you will be found personally responsible and liable and no one will have any recollection of ordering or requesting you to take such an action.
3. Do not make any problem worse.Do not complete (bodge) a poor repair and then dash off to the next call only to do another poor repair. Many do just this; however have some respect for yourself and especially your colleagues that then have to later follow you and undertake work you should have already done. If your own reputation is not important to you and you do not take pride in doing a good job and employing your skills then find some other trade.
5. Work on the faulty machine you are actually attending, in a timely manner, until it is completed. Do not worry about the next call and its response time, down time, contract etc. These are and must be the responsibility of someone who earns a lot more than you! This is usually the same person who hustles you to get to on the next call then blames you for not completing the previous call correctly at your next review meeting.
6. The End User/Customer is not your friend. They may be very friendly and you may be friendly with them but when things go wrong none of this will matter and they will drop you in the crap without a second thought. As a secondary matter, always check that the fault the customer is describing and reporting is actually what is wrong. Do not waste time chasing your own vision of what you think may be wrong.
7. Resist the temptation to have or begin a relationship with your call despatcher, controller or route planner, no matter how attractive, kind and friendly they sound/appear. When it ends, as it surely will, you will discover very often that at the end of each working day you could not be further from your homebase or each first call in the morning is in the very worst commuter traffic area. Payback is a bitch!
8. The official Service Manual, published by the manufacturer, is a good friend, there to assist youDemand adequate training on the machines that you are required to service. Technician Training is always the first thing to get dropped or skimped on. The customer is paying for, and assuming, that he is getting a competent trained Technician to attend and not you, standing there not knowing where to begin. Lack of training injured or killed many willing and helpful technicians and made many faults far worse.
10.Look after your company vehicle even if only just enough so it remains safe, if that is your choice. Do not drive an unsafe vehicle as any people sending you out in it have little care for your welfare. Similarly, do not drive like an idiot or try to do too many calls or too many miles in a day. See Rule 1 if you need to find a reason for this rule.
So, there you have it, good advice that many of you will probably laugh at and ignore but if it makes one of you think and reconsider an action thus preventing an accident or serious mistake then I will consider the time taken typing this well spent. Be careful out there !
2. Protect the Safety of End Users and their Environment. Do not override or reset or compromise any safety features, fuses, interlock switches, even when ordered by your management (try to get the instruction in writing = it will never happen!) or requested by the customer, even as a temporary fix. Do not ask the customer to help you move, install or repair a machine. In the case of any incident you will be found personally responsible and liable and no one will have any recollection of ordering or requesting you to take such an action.
3. Do not make any problem worse.Do not complete (bodge) a poor repair and then dash off to the next call only to do another poor repair. Many do just this; however have some respect for yourself and especially your colleagues that then have to later follow you and undertake work you should have already done. If your own reputation is not important to you and you do not take pride in doing a good job and employing your skills then find some other trade.
5. Work on the faulty machine you are actually attending, in a timely manner, until it is completed. Do not worry about the next call and its response time, down time, contract etc. These are and must be the responsibility of someone who earns a lot more than you! This is usually the same person who hustles you to get to on the next call then blames you for not completing the previous call correctly at your next review meeting.
6. The End User/Customer is not your friend. They may be very friendly and you may be friendly with them but when things go wrong none of this will matter and they will drop you in the crap without a second thought. As a secondary matter, always check that the fault the customer is describing and reporting is actually what is wrong. Do not waste time chasing your own vision of what you think may be wrong.
7. Resist the temptation to have or begin a relationship with your call despatcher, controller or route planner, no matter how attractive, kind and friendly they sound/appear. When it ends, as it surely will, you will discover very often that at the end of each working day you could not be further from your homebase or each first call in the morning is in the very worst commuter traffic area. Payback is a bitch!
8. The official Service Manual, published by the manufacturer, is a good friend, there to assist youDemand adequate training on the machines that you are required to service. Technician Training is always the first thing to get dropped or skimped on. The customer is paying for, and assuming, that he is getting a competent trained Technician to attend and not you, standing there not knowing where to begin. Lack of training injured or killed many willing and helpful technicians and made many faults far worse.
10.Look after your company vehicle even if only just enough so it remains safe, if that is your choice. Do not drive an unsafe vehicle as any people sending you out in it have little care for your welfare. Similarly, do not drive like an idiot or try to do too many calls or too many miles in a day. See Rule 1 if you need to find a reason for this rule.
So, there you have it, good advice that many of you will probably laugh at and ignore but if it makes one of you think and reconsider an action thus preventing an accident or serious mistake then I will consider the time taken typing this well spent. Be careful out there !