Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Perks of Remote Maintenance


Recently, our company adopts e-payment when dealing with suppliers. This way, we are helping suppliers eliminate the need to travel for check collections and countless trips to the banks. It’s a small deed done from us for suppliers to save their time and cost. A little effort to reduce some processes might add user-friendliness element to the business world, be it environmentally by reducing carbon footprint, or efficiency by reducing time taken to complete the whole payment process.

Remote Support
On the same issue, I read this related article from Detektor, a security magazine, November/December 2012 issue entitled, “Remote Maintenance: The Key to 21st Century Customer Care”; which stated that despite the obvious benefits of using high-tech maintenance solutions, some installers are still reluctant to embrace the change. A desire for face-to-face interaction, tradition, and caution about the ramifications on their business model are the key hurdles to this hesitancy.

All these years, we at FingerTec set remote maintenance as one of our business goals, and we focus hard to make sure that we reduce sales follow-ups to conclude sales in no time, and reduce on-site technical supports along the way. Our holistic self-sufficient online model comprehensively handles everything from marketing material to sales resources, from training to warranty claim process plus 24/7 online technical supports by deploying online tools. Our somewhat trivial move to print support@fingertec.com beneath the logo on FingerTec hardware products largely shows our commitment in sharing the end-customer’s support responsibilities with our worldwide partners. 

If majority of our resellers share our resources and adopt our remote maintenance strategy to a certain extend in their sales and technical supports, I reckon they would increase their sales revenue and make better profit by improving the overall process.

But the truth is, the reluctance is still abundance amongst our partners. The article also mentioned that quite some installers perceived loss of potential revenue by not sending a technician out to fix a problem. In fact, this is not the case if installers can work out their math to see if they can manage the problem remotely and satisfies the customers at the same time. And, with more and more services offered online nowadays, I would say that customers are used to and willing to accept remote services, even when maintenance contracts are signed. Because, solving the problems is their utmost priority and they would consider any means possible to get it done.

It is such a waste to not tap on the remote strategy if the tools are widely and cheaply available. Combining this with green environment concerns, who would refuse the rewards derived from remote maintenance??

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