Uncategorized Archives

Preparing for another season

by admin | Jul 27, 2016 | Uncategorized

As the summer passes by and we approach September, we instinctively feel the urge to start preparing for the upcoming season. Vacations end, new-hires and seasonal employees come on board, all gearing up for a great season, a better one than the last. You’ve gone through this process many times and you’re probably good at it; however, I strongly suggest adding a few items that could yield stress-relieving and profitable results to your season. A few years ago, the Angus Energy team put together a “Timing is Everything” seminar that many marketers found worthwhile. I begin with the premise that you know very well what happens within your operation every fall/winter season and that things could actually run smoother if you were to be more proactive than reactive in certain instances. I felt, with the timing of this newsletter, it might be worthwhile sharing a brief checklist of suggestions from this seminar for your consideration. It’s stuff that never gets old: Training – Who needs training and what type of training do they require? There is job-specific training, cross-training, ridealong introductions, back-office system training, performance measurements training and perhaps other vendor-specific training to consider. Your environment continues to be going in the direction of less clerical and increasingly more knowledge-based. Appreciate the fact that your customer service group and those in the field are your front-line representation. Ensure that they are versed in all aspects of your company and its offerings at all times and can perform to the best of their abilities. Set seasonal goals – Both financial and non-financial goals should be in place for the entire year. Your prime season for making money is limited and recovery from poor performance is often non-existent. Knowing what your desired results are and keeping...

HANDLING EXCESS CALLS IN THE SPRING

by admin | Mar 30, 2016 | Uncategorized

By definition, a successful product or service generates more revenue than the cost to produce, sell and service it. In our industry, we’d like to think that a standard service contract, typically offered in the range of $200 to $300 (depending on the coverage specifics), qualifies for this designation. Across a broad spectrum of BRITE subscribers, our data has shown that a fully loaded service call will cost ~$140 (do you know what your cost is?), which means the revenue received for the contract will cover approximately two calls per year. We also know that one of those calls will be the preventive maintenance call included in the contract and performed proactively. Therefore, the threshold for breakeven on a service contract will occur after just one unscheduled call from the customer. The hedge that we call a service contract will work well for approximately 80% of customers who, on average, will experience two or fewer service calls per year. However, it’s the remaining 20% that should be a focus for your service department. How can BRITE help? Excess Calls Widget If not yet on one of your customized dashboards, visit the Widget Library, scroll down to “Service” and add the “Excess Call” widget; once placed on your chosen dashboard, you will see the number of service locations qualified as in excess on the report for the period in question as well as the number of calls for the highest service location on the Dashboard View. With a single click to the Expand View, you will be provided visibility into customers and equipment, in any date rage desired, in reverse...