Most office imaging owners and senior managers have a difficult time answering this question: is your service team efficient? Most dealers feel their team is competent, and their service technicians go “above and beyond” for the customers, but answering the question about how efficient you are, requires comparing your performance to other dealerships. Looking at your Service Cost Per Page (SCP,) and comparing that to other dealers, is the simplest way to measure efficiency—and if need be, focus on lowering those costs if they are high.
Shoot For the Top 20%, Not the Middle
At BEI Services our clients manage almost 4 million devices and over 850,000 service calls every month. That data gives us clear insight into the best practices of our customers. Our customers have the ability to tap into that data and help you benchmark your performance against similar companies. Benchmarking service can be a pain because there can be so many numbers to track. The simplest number that all executives should be aware of is the average SCP. Take a look at the graphs below.
In simple terms, there is no reason for any dealership to have ongoing SCP costs significantly higher than the average of the top 20%. In the dealership world, your hardware costs and supply costs are predictable—almost fixed. Customers tend to print what they print, and when you average those numbers across thousands of devices, supply costs are similar from dealership to dealership. Why then does the SCP differ so much from dealers? When you compare the top 20% to the bottom 20%, the costs are almost doubled.
Hold Your Service Team Accountable
Far too often we let our personal relationships with longstanding employees replace our need for concrete measurement. You would not allow sales representatives to consistently underperform without acting, so why does the service team get a golden pass here? As an owner, you don’t need to micromanage the department, but a poor SCP number provides evidence that the service team is not using the tools they have from BEI to improve your numbers. Remember, lowering your SCP will flow directly to your bottom line profitability.
What Could Be Causing a High SCP Rate?
- A low First Call Success Rate (FCSR)
- A High Hold for Parts (HP) Rate
- A low percentage of billable hours
- A high Parts Cost Per Call
- Not doing a “Total” service call
BEI Services not only helps keep track of your performance, it helps provide executives with visibility on their service costs. It helps service teams pinpoint where performance can be improved, and profits maximized for your dealership. It all starts with one number, your SCP. What’s your number? Contact Us today to find out.
