How Many Service Completed A Day

[time2fly]

How many service calls a day completed should be expected from a Tech with three years experience? The company I used to work for expected 6 to 8 calls a day, not keeping track of call backs and not including toner deliveries.

[fixthecopier]

You should get a lot of different responses on this one. The company I work for does not have a set limit. I have left the shop with as many as 37 open calls on my schedule, but the most I ever completed in a day was 14. They were pretty close together. I have spent all day on one call and have had days were I did not complete anything. I think I averaged 6 to7 a day last year, and I have to deliver toner to all of my customers. Remember that it is not quantity but quality that counts. If the customer is happy, you are doing a good job!

[schooltech]

Yeah, you'll get a lot of responses on this one. I think the industry average is still something like 5.2-5.5 calls per day. There are so many variables that are in play here though, so it's hard to pin down an actual, uniform number. If a company is expecting you to consistently perform quality calls @ 7-8 calls per day, not counting call backs and toner deliveries, then their service-matrix sounds completely out-of-whack. It doesn't sound as though they understand true burden rates or even calculating opportunity cost. There's a value associated with everything, and having people run all over the place is not appreciating that value.

Realistically, especially with some of the more labor-intensive color boxes, there is no way one could reasonably be expected to perform proper maintenance if one is worried about zipping off to the next call.

Another variable is networking boxes, as some techs are beginning to dive more into this time-intensive portion of the copier industry.

I would say, speaking in generalities, that somewhere between 4-6 calls, on average, sounds pretty reasonable. Again, there are a ton of variables though, so it can vary quite a bit.

I have mixed feelings about toner deliveries, as some companies assume that techs should just do it. I think that sales should do it over service if I were to pick, because it's nice for them to drop in on 'their' customer sometimes. :)

With what I do now, I can do nothing for one week, and three or four calls in a day, and no one gives a crap. It's quite a difference from being watched by 'the man,' that's for sure.

[The Otrain]

The above posts are so true. Oh man Jerry, 37 calls? I don't miss those days. We average about 4 to 6 in our case. Of course, it depends on how far apart the calls are as well. At times, I have to drive 80 miles to get to a hospital in my territory. Just the travel time alone cuts the number of calls I have to do. Of course, we don't do toner deliveries or things like that unless it is an emergency. (Thank you UPS!)

[OMD-227]

I personally get 4, maybe 5 fully completed per day.
Nothing but color & production series machines, so every job is abit more complex & detailed than the other guys, who normally get 6 or 7 done per day. No deliveries, detours or other work related issues involved.

Problem is, the other guys generally have an area to cover (Melbourne has 4 Million population... bloody big area in total). My area is all of Melbourne. Got to go where these particular machines are.
In a way, I think I am lucky working only on the bigger machines. I get alot more respect from the clients, and am generally treated alot better by everyone. Its a pretty good gig.:D

[time2fly]

In my case I have training on Canon and Panasonic copiers B&W nothing color. Canon I've been trained on everything up to a iR6570, Panasonic DP6030. The machines I was working on were Konica Minolta old ones; DI550, 470, 250-351f, 650 even analog. Color copiers were part of the group to, oh and some newer one's like DI2010-3510f, CF2002-3102, C250-450 and bizhub pro c500 (What a piece of SH#* would make a great boat anchor if it wasn't for the toxic toner). As you all know when you have a call to go to it's never about that one problem it's usually several and not always close together and had some clients that were over an hour drive away and was expected to finish 5 to 6 calls. I don't think that Tech's should deliver toner, it's not cost effective not at all, if a tech is going to a call that also needs toner then yes it makes sense. Thats something sales should be doing schooltech has it right on the money, it's a chance for a sales person to say hi and to see how things are going and what issues the customer might be experiencing. This is a response I got from the owner of the company I used to work for after asking for a letter of recommendation:
Tim, I got your voice mail yesterday and I must admitt, when we spoke briefly the other day I had someone else on the other line and you put me on the spot. I have been thinking it over the past week and frankly I am struggling with writing a letter. The frank truth of the matter is in the 8/9 months you worked for us you completed less than three service calls a day which is about a half of a tech. You never hit the manuals hard enough to know your job in any kind of professional leval. I could not get you to go out and collect money on billings or very rarely; frankly if you had done any kind of resonably good job for us you would still be employed. In reflection it was actually generous of me to have simply laid you off and not fired you for lack of performance. You did pick up one or two accounts for us but you lost us just as many. (****/*****) went with sharp an account we had for over ten years. I cannot in good conscience come up with anything other than your a pretty nice guy. Good luck

I was with this company for approx. 8-9 mos. Just FYI I was completing 4 to 5 calls per day I was given a spread sheet every week so I could be reminded on how little I was doing. I was hired for the mere fact that the owner would eventually have a reason to fire the other tech because he was paying him to much and he thought he was stealing his clients ( what a paranoid AS*HOLE). I don't know if I'm being out of line or not, if I am I'm sorry I'm just fedup with greedy people who don't care about anything else but themselves and can't figure out why they are losing there client's.

[schooltech]

Wow! He actually spent the time to write such a condescending letter, yet he could have spent half of the keyboard characters and written something a bit more neutral.

Hey, it's in the past and you've moved on. From what was written, it sounds as though he sees the tech as only one thing, and that is a commodity. This commodity, in his eyes, are a line-item expense and you are as expendable as making the decision to buy or not buy the extra box of tissue paper for the office, as it directly affects the bottom line.

Without technicians, copier companies would never stay in business. They would all just fold up, as larger companies like Staples and Costco just sell items without any service.

That's what I mean about too many variables:

---Drive time

---Specific machine training: Segment 1-6, color, networking, PM, 'front line techs'

---Toner deliveries

---Shop work

---etc, etc, etc

The last company I was at, before my current gig, liked all of my stats except drive time. They said I had, "too much windshield time." Well, my territory included an area 75 miles away. They dad a whiny salesperson who loved to baby this bank up there and he made sure that when they called, I was to "take care of them." Ok, so when they called, I left. I was up there three to four times per week, as they had quite a few machines in the various branches in the surrounding small towns in the resort community. Damn double-standards. Out of twelve statistics, eleven were great, and the one was too high. Well, did they have any alternative methods of changing the geographic situation? Of course they did not, so back the **** off of me then. But I digress. :cool:

It looks as though you made the correct decision, as some companies will never be happy. Despite all of the positives one would do, they'll find more negatives to rip you apart. Life is too damn short to deal with people that hate themselves more than everyone else; they just take it out on others to make them feel better.

[fixthecopier]

everybody needs a job, but if you can, try to avoid working for assholes. I have had my moments with my manager,[as The Otrain can testify to], but all in all I love the small company that I work for. It is not easy to get roots here. You are pretty much going to have to train yourself but I think people who can survive in this type of environment are better techs. I have a lot of freedom as long as I take care of business, meaning that once I get a service call, it is done. No problems or complaints from customers. I find my own part numbers and vendors if I have to, solicit new business, make sales and do other things. The key to sucess is knowing your bosses personality and working around it. The owner wants everyone to work as a team and the general manager does not want problems that she has to get involved in. When you work for a small company it works in your best intrest if you do that team player thing. Not everybody at my company is willing to do that. I am the second most senior tech, but when I ran out of stuff to do today because my territory was shut down, I went back to the shop and helped the warehouse guy strip some old machines to throw out, then I helped him with his clean up in the shop and office, took out the trash, restock the fridge with drinks, clean the break room ect, ect. without being told. This is one of those little things that I know means a lot to the owner and manager. The computer guys would never think to offer to help, and some techs go home every chance they get. In a small company like mine everybody has a different pay rate and some times it can be the little things that count as to how much you make. This year some got pay raises, some did not and some got their pay cut. Number of calls per day did not have as much to do with getting a raise as the overall picture as a tech. Being self reliant counts the most. Showing up every day and working when you are sick counts for a lot also. I could make more money elsewhere, but I would not like it as much. Not a lot of other places would let me celebrate Hawaian shirt friday, have a boss that brings in breakfast every Friday or throw a kick ass Halloween party every year. Good luck to you and I hope you can find a place to call home.

[The Otrain]

OH YES! I miss Hawaiian shirt Friday's. I wanted to go with NO SHIRT Friday, but our HR dept shot it down here. :eek:

[TonerMunkeh]

We're targeted on 4.5cpd. As a rule I'll manage 4-6 a day, on a bad day 3, on a good day possibly 7. One thing that isn't taken into account is the distance we have to drive, the time it will take to fix stupid faults, return to fits, repeat calls etc. We're targeted on phone fixes too, that helps bump our cpd up.

[mjarbar]

As everyone has said there are many variables but on the whole each tech does around 4-5 calls a day including RTF's. If there is an install or networking then the other tech picks up any calls.

As for toner neither the tech or the salesman delivers toner, we send these direct from a couriers warehouse, that way we don't have to hold mountains of stock, just a few emergency bits and bobs to cover, and it goes direct into their network ensuring nextday delivery.

One thing that has surprised me in this thread is that companies send out the tech's to pick up payment, I thought it was mostlly direct debt, cheque, or money transfer with only cash calls being done here and there!!! But then I figured that if the bulk of a companies work was non-contract 'walk in' type of business then this makes sense.

At the end of the day it's a combination of teamwork, careful route planning (where would we be without sat nav), and an 8hr response time (although we are usually there within 4).

All the best folks.

[rthonpm]

My company says we're supposed to get in 4 to 5 a day, but I have such a spreadout territory, probably about 1000 square miles, and a time zone shift (60% EST, 40% CST) that I usually hit about three a day depending on the model of machines.
I work on everything from 13 to 135 pages a minute so there's really no telling how long a call can take.

[apache_cat]

Interesting thread this one.
My experience of the industry so far mirrors much of what has been written re : how many calls a day bla bla bla. Its a weird industry where customer satisfaction is not something that is promoted. At least not in the two companies I have worked for in the last 7yrs.

I am a fitter and turner by Trade and had it ingrained in me that if you are going to do a job you may as well do a bloody good job. Of course the realities of the copier industry is that time does not allways permit to cross the T's and dot the I's. However I have made my own rules about what is fair and reasonable.

Customer satisfaction is a lot higher on my priorities than the companies that I have worked for.

However once the feedback starts coming in from customers no one bothers me about how many jobs I do or don't do.

[Frit0z]

my manager likes us to spend at least an hour at each call to make sure the machine is clean, and running as smooth as possible. there are times when you get in there and its a 5 min fix though and you cant waste an hour wiping down the machine. but he expects about 5-6 calls a day 2-3 hours of travel time, picking up parts. we dont do toner deliveries. i personally am an onsite technician and some days i wont get any calls and have to just find something that isnt working and other days i get 20 calls. most ive ever finished in a day was 16, i ended up working a bit late that day though.

[time2fly]

I say amen to that apache, I personally think that if you want your customers to buy a copier from you when the lease is up then it's important to take good care of that customer and to treat all of your customers the same with a smile and just be polite. Each customer has there own quricks and problems about them but the end result should always be the same, satisfaction. I really can't stand working for assholes that only care about getting as many calls crammed into one day as a tech can manage because we all know the copier is not getting the proper repair done, not enough up time and a unhappy customer. I've tried to look at this from a owner POV and it still makes no sense to do something like that. Customer loalty is very important, word of mouth goes along way. When your customers knows what to expect from your service dept. and that the result is more often than not a good result then when it's time to get that new copier no matter what deal they might get from another competitor, I think most of them will chose ol' realible because they know what kind of service and treatment they are going to get from the service tech's. One more note: I recetly had had an experience with the APPLE Computer and iPOD store in Salt Lake City, I have to say that if any one wants to know what customer service is all about then just spend a day or two at one of these stores there (in my opinion) customer service is second to none!!!!! HAVE A PERFECT DAY I DO...............

[JVergin]

It just depends. Our company isn't enormous, but it isn't small either. We only have two techs in Omaha but we can handle the service call load because we take care of our machines and usually get service calls responded to and taken care of same day with few call-backs. We have a large number of churches in our area so Thursdays and Fridays are normally fairly busy. We also have a large number of schools so the beginning of school is a busy time of the year. There's no telling how many calls we do per day because it all depends on how many calls there are. sometimes once a month or so we may have a day where there are absolutely no service calls. Maybe once a month we also have our days where there are 20 service calls to be split between the two of us. But even if there are 10 service calls to complete in one day, you can't half-ass service calls just to get a certain amount of calls done, that will result in call-backs, and even more service calls. I've never liked the idea of having a set number of calls to get done in a set time, that's ridiculous, and I'm happy my company doesn't do that. As long as I get my work done, and the customer is happy, the boss is happy.

[Cipher]

6-8 calls a day is about right.

Sometimes you get bogged down and other times the calls are quick and simple fixes.
Our boss cares little for such targets as long as the work is done and customers are paying their bills.

[Titan1969]

We try to get everyone to 5 a day. Obviously location, model mix, experience are things that the service manager takes into consideration. Techs will try and BS me about this and that, but I was a tech for 15 years so pretty hard to BS me. Often when I have a tech thats not reaching 5 a day and I think he can, we build a plan of attack. I try to eliminate items that hes being involved with, that he shouldnt be. IE-Techs calling him for help a lot, techs calling to have him look up parts numbers, not having his laptop wiht him when he walks in the account, talk to the customer BEFORE he starts working on the machine so he understands the complaints, well I could go on and on. But many techs that fail to reach a "real" call per day are working HARD but not smart.

Well then theres the lazy ones, that leave real quick when they figure out how much work being a tech is:D. I had one quit after 6 weeks and he was unemployed for a year! He had potential, but I made him move everyday and I dont think he was up for it.:rolleyes: