NE South Dakota Clark, SD | I am on the sales and support side and we are trying to figure out the best way to handle this. I feel I supply very good support, but get stretched very thin during much of the season. We have been providing free phone support for PA equipment we sold. I also help out some people that have purchased elsewhere, but lost their dealer. They have become good customers now.
The problem we have is every year we sell more new and that snowballs every year on the support end. If there is no revenue stream, it is hard to hire additional help to cover support. A $10,000 sale 4 years ago that still requires a few hours of phone support every year continues to eat profit made at time of sale. I sometimes envy the general equipment salesmen from our company that will never get a call because the customer cannot remember how to put the hitchpin in his 4 year old chisel plow.
A vast majority of my calls are not truly problems with the equipment, but forgetting how to make a configuration or setting an AB line. We are going to have to starting charging for this type of stuff or risk getting stretched too thin to provide excellent support. I have not figured out the best way to handle software glitches from the manufacturer. It is not my fault or the customers fault. However the manufacturers do not have any reimbursement to the dealers. Even on warranty issues they only fix or replace the components. They is no labor reimbursement. |
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