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Kodak India focusses after-sales service with efficiency and dependability
In today’s competitive world, selling of any hardware or software is
not that tough, provided the buyer has full confidence in your policies
with regard to after-sales service, says Vijay Kamat from Kodak India.
In terms of after-sales serviceability,
gone are the days when engineers from
manufacturer’s site used to travel to the
customer sites for attending all sorts of
operational complaints. Today, no customer
can afford to keep an equipment ‘in waiting’
for the service engineers to come and rectify
the problems. At no point, one will like to
disturb his production schedule which
otherwise would cost him very high. Keeping
this in mind, all progressive organizations plan
different levels of service approaches so as
to be able to solve the problems as early as
possible and to keep the equipment running.
Recently, P&P editor, S K Khurana had an
interesting interaction with Vijay Kamat,
manager-service, Graphics Communications
Group (GCG), Kodak India, on what kind
of policies they are following with regard
to ‘service’ issues.
“At Kodak, we have developed a new
concept, where in we keep an engineer who
work as ‘Operator Guider’ on site for 3 months
after the inkjet printing system is installed.
Since our equipments are generally ‘new’
to the buyers, the unique 90-days, presence
of the engineer gives them a sense of
confidence and that in-turn helps us to get
bare minimum service calls. The operators
are generally able to rectify if any minor
problems arise,” mentioned Vijay.
If the problem is not solved at the first level,
the distributor promptly deputes an engineer
to fix up the problem at the earliest. And
if need arises, the Kodak expert team of
service engineers are immediately deputed
to the customer site. The availability of spare
parts is also kept handy in Delhi, Mumbai,
Kolkata and Chennai – depending on the
installation base of various equipments.
Axcel (a DHL group company) provides
logistic support to Kodak India. All the service
staffs are available 24/7 with their mobile
never on ‘off’ mode.
Vijay also points out that barring NexPress
digital production press and document imaging
systems, which Kodak independently looks
after, the exclusive distributorship rights for
Computer-to-Plate (CtP) workflow systems;
Versamark Inkjet Printing Systems has been
allotted to Pune-based Insight Print
Communication Pvt Ltd, and Gurgaon-based
Creed Engineers respectively.
Each of the distributors is equally serious in
providing all kinds of support services to
their existing customers. They are fully aware
that if once a service demand is not met,
the chance of getting a repeat order for any
product gets bleak.
“So, in the process, for all our equipments,
the first level of service support is handled
by our distributors; second level, if required,
goes to Kodak India’s engineers team and
in the exceptional cases as the third level
of support, the regional centres at Shanghai,
Singapore or Australia provide the necessary
service. Some times, our teams at Vancouver
and Israel travel to India for installations or
to handle any issues,” he added.
The advent of remote logging facility has
made it possible for Kodak engineers to
diagnose the problem easily in case of such
need. For CtP equipments users, an extended
2-year warranty programme on laser heads
acts as an insurance.
To keep distributors update with existing
and new products, Kodak India arranges
advanced training sessions for distributor’s
engineers and has recently sent Creed's
engineers for training in the Kodak Dayton
facility in the US. A number of engineers
from Insight Print Communications regularly
visit various Kodak training hubs for
further enhancement of their hardware
and software skills.
Despite the fact that arrangement of overseas
training requires a lot of investment, Kodak
India doesn’t shy away from making it for
the sake of offering complete service to its
customers. The company is fully aware of
the fact that customers always want to talk
and evaluate service support before buying
any equipment.
Kodak India is also conscious about the
drastic change occurring in the market
scenario. It understands the fact that
competence level needs to be improved
even in press room and as such integration
of electronics, engineering, printing and
software activities is much needed now.
With the concept of CtP plates outsourcing,
where printers themselves supply the plates
to the bureau (like older days for PS/wipeon
plates), Kodak India recognises
‘customised solution’ as the ‘key’ and in
collaboration with their distributors, are
arranging training sessions for engineers to
get a know-how of the demand. To make
a start in this direction, Kodak introduced
intranet training modules as an attempt to
increase the knowledge base for each product
lines, Insight Print Communications has
initiated Kodak Workflow demo centres in
Mumbai and Chennai.
Another offering from Kodak’s graphic
communication business is the document
imaging solutions that benefits
organsations like banks and insurance
companies etc. For this particular segment,
efficient support service is being provided
by Kodak’s distributors/channel partners,
due to which Kodak India is able to
execute good number of orders. As a new
initiative by Kodak, all high end scanners
service is directly handled by their
engineers similar to NexPress range of
high end digital presses.
In the concluding note, Vijay mentioned
that experience and knowledge sharing
around the globe is a regular activity within
Kodak staffs. Resultantly, there is hardly any
knowledge gap between Indian engineers
with their overseas counterparts.
With expert service, Kodak India can be
easily accessed via its toll free number
1800228989- that is now available from
Monday – Saturday, which will soon be
converted into 24/7.
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