Comparing itself to the police, the fire brigade and the ambulance service, a motoring / breakdown organisation once described itself as ‘the fourth emergency service.’ By that logic, Paul Edwards could single-handedly claim fifth place: since January 2018, he’s been the man you connect with when you make a distress call to our help desk. Put another way, he’s the triage nurse who is an engineer’s first contact when a machine needs some first aid: he goes through the diagnostics of any given issue and if necessary, escalates to a product specialist who’s ready to parachute in as required.
Use any analogy you like, but in his position, he’s heard it all. Whatever the problem, he’s solved them all; from genuine head-scratchers to ‘are you sure it’s plugged in?’
In recent months, though, he’s witnessed a sea-change in the calls he receives. ‘The operating system on our latest equipment is so much easier for operators to work on than our older kit’, Paul said. ‘The software on our new machines, such as Krea Touch and Kalea is genuinely intuitive. Our customers are amazed when they realize how the software makes tasks such as creating drinks simple. These machines are so easy to navigate. If you put in ‘coin’, for instance, it reveals a whole series of situations and more often than not, the answer you’re looking for is right there. It makes helping people over the phone so much easier, too: I can get to the bare bones of any issue much quicker than before and that means machine down-time is reduced. What’s more, much of our latest equipment shares similar set-ups, so when an engineer has learned one machine, basically he’s learned them all.’
So, to encapsulate the change: we now have a five-man team covering customers’ queries and Paul takes overall responsibility for, and ownership of, the help desk.
‘It’s a change that’s enabled us to improve our service’, Technical Director Craig Jukes said, ‘but the major improvement has been in the availability of ‘self-help’ solutions. Our manuals, but most of all, our on-line resources, make it so much easier for our customers to conduct their own successful troubleshooting. It means more and more customers are now seeing the help desk as a last resort. The number of calls we handle has reduced and consequently, so has the waiting time. It’s been a win-win.’
So there you have it: thanks to our best-in-the-business back up, you can solve most issues under your own steam; but when all else fails, Paul Edwards is your man.
