Posted in Press Releases on April 14th, 2009
- New technical escalation support system meets ISO 20001 standards
- Provides fast, tracked Colortrac wide format scanner support internationally
Colortrac, the leading large format scanner innovator, has implemented an on-line Global Technical Help Desk system designed to meet ISO 20001 standards. This new, purpose-built technical escalation system gives Colortrac’s support team the ability to quickly identify and resolve product issues while giving its international customers fast, tracked technical support 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
The Global Technical Help Desk system is a database of every scanner the British manufacturer has built. Each scanner’s build and service history, including Production and Quality Control reports, is available immediately to Colortrac’s support staff. The Help Desk service management system is a knowledge base of every technical solution Colortrac has identified. As such, it provides Colortrac’s customers with very quick answers to technical problems, as well as practical advice for common, everyday questions.
Colortrac’s Help Desk is geared to the needs of its international distributors. At any time from anywhere in the world, they can go on-line to view the progress which Colortrac’s support teams are making to resolve any reported technical issue. Authorized users logging onto the Help Desk will receive a ticket number which is unique to their issue. The system ensures that every Colortrac customer receives a first response within two hours of a ticket being issued.
Each ticket is tracked with a full communications history between Colortrac and the distributor.
Colortrac distributors can now advise customers on the support status of their scanner immediately on request. By logging on to the Help Desk, Colortrac’s distributors will know where a scanner is, what is being done to it and by whom. As the system demands that action be taken by Colortrac within a specified time, the customer will be advised of exactly when any work will be done, if this is needed. By logging onto Colortrac’s Help Desk, a distributor responsible for local technical support in a given region can instantly track the relevant problem / ticket, get the facts and a support schedule and give the reseller or end-user up-to-date, clear-cut advice on every technical support situation.
Simon Wincott, Colortrac’s International Technical Support Manager, has the responsibility for planning, integrating and coordinating all elements of Colortrac’s customer-facing product support activities.
Wincott joined Colortrac as a senior management appointment in 2008 and was tasked with strengthening its manufacturing and technical support activities. Implementing the ISO 20001 IT Service Management System (ITSM) standard, Wincott has specified and managed the development of the new Colortrac Global Technical Help Desk system.
“The Help Desk allows Colortrac to provide global service support” said Wincott. “It links my Service Support teams in the UK, USA and China so that I may provide a global Service Support presence for the global working day. As a result, we can now, for example, take an international support request in China from our Australian distributor, fix it in the UK and test it in the USA before presenting it as a solution to our Australian distributor the next day.
“Colortrac’s senior management can now extract reports which highlight any common or repeated problems by product, distributor or region from the system’s database. Colortrac’s Problem Management Review Board can use these reports to identify any developing general trends, like a common fault within a product. Using this information, Colortrac is able to quickly and effectively address any technical issue in production.
“One of the main benefits of the Global Technical Help Desk system is the visibility and control which it gives Colortrac in managing support calls worldwide. With global visibility, our Colortrac staff can maintain an overview of the progress to resolve support requests to the satisfaction of their customers; can prioritize support tasks worldwide; can maximize efficiency by directing support requests to the team with spare capacity, or the team with the appropriate technical ability; can capture corporate technical knowledge globally feeding this into future product design and support. Within the Help Desk, Colortrac has a record of every product Colortrac has ever made. It will soon to be configured to accept support requests in Chinese Mandarin, illustrating its ability to remove language as a barrier to global support. This ensures that our Service Support teams have the knowledge they need immediately to hand to help resolve a service support request,” said Wincott.
Peter de Winter Brown, Colortrac’s Sales and Marketing Director, said “A key Colortrac performance indicator is customer satisfaction. One of Simon’s key objectives was to research, identify and implement an on-line customer service system that would provide faster, more efficient support to our distributors and service partners and detailed metrics to help management prioritize resources where they are needed most. Simon’s success in building the Help Desk has made an important contribution to improving our performance in this area.”
Malcolm Lane, President of Colortrac Inc., is impressed with the Global Support Help Desk system’s immediate management focus, flexibility and ability to allow Colortrac support staff to respond quickly to problems and share the solutions. “This new on-line Global Support Help Desk system will help improve support to our worldwide customers, especially in my regions’ time zones of the Americas and Japan. It is truly a “leadership” initiative by our support staff and will give extra confidence to our channels in supporting their customers,” he said.
