How are you educating your Service and Maintenance staff on new equipment?
Heavy equipment functions and technology have rapidly changed over the last 10 years and owners and their staff find it hard to keep pace.
"Technology is killing my business and the dealership and manufacturers hold us hostage"
We have all heard the stories and opinions from the owners and operators in the many trades that touch the heavy equipment & construction industry. We have heard the rants of "technology is killing my business" & "the dealership and manufacturers hold us hostage" from many in the industry. The construction industry and trades have long-rooted traditions of pride and self-sufficiency in the service and maintenance of equipment however not all traditions have grown at the same rate the technology has grown in the equipment. Today's equipment has brought us operator comforts like air-conditioned and heated cabs, pilot controlled hydraulics, heated and ventilated operator seats, radios with Bluetooth connectivity, integrated grade control, and the list goes on. But where the real changes in machine performance live is where the industry sometimes fails to educate, the machine powertrain. So many of us started our time in this industry being taught that once you start that diesel engine just let it run all day, they love to run and it is best to keep them "chugging" along. Those were the days, make smoke and run it hard when needed, but times changed and so did the social and governmental opinions on what was being pumped into the air for all to consume. Not all of the changes were unnecessary, but they did drive a trend into automotive markets, industrial markets and manufacturing, and finally the heavy engine industry. We survived the longest but it was just a matter of time before compliance would happen and it was not a short road there. All through the change dealerships were inundated with requirements for new training for technicians, new tooling available for repairs in the shops and field services, and new problems arising with their customers. The industry failed to educate the end-user on how to help themselves, how to understand the changes in operations, and the change in mindset of how a modern diesel runs. This created customers whose habits created problems, not because they were abusing the equipment but because they were not educated on the new equipment. This created tension on dealer customer relationships, brand image and reliability issues and most importantly poor levels of customer satisfaction. How is this overcome? In so many of these cases offering the customer an amount of time to go over the new equipment and the differences from their previous equipment solves the problem, at first. The real opportunity is to partner with your customer and teach them the benefit of seeing alerts in the machine, using the information gathered by telematics systems, and keeping a dialogue and service schedule with the dealership. Communication and education is one of the largest ways to reduce machine downtime. Prevent the problems before they become a problem, react proactively to your customers, and be a partner in their success.