We have all been there. There is a machine down and the company is starting to lose money. Production and maintenance managers everywhere know that this is the time to break out all the tricks to get that machine up and fast. As a repair company that deals with this situation every day, we have a one trick that surprisingly gets overlooked – the video chat.
When it comes to communicating with vendors, OEMs and MRO suppliers, the maintenance world tends follow methods to which I am referring to as “old”, like the phone call into the tech support hotline. When calling into a tech support line at an OEM, a good amount of the time you will reach what is called a tiered level of support. One tier will be what we call “technical sales” they are the folks that read from a script based on the information you are telling them about your failure. They will then read from a manual what to do trouble-shooting wise, at a very basic level. This can be frustrating for two reasons. Reason one is that while you may get lucky and the “out of the handbook” advise works – often it will not – leading to frustration and extended downtime. The second reason is that often, the first tier of support has another goal in mind – to sell you a new device. While this can be non-disastrous if it works (albeit expensive) often this will just lead to more downtime as you wait for the part to come in and then find out that it was not the root cause of the problem and you are back to square one.
Well it is now the 21st century. We have better tools at our disposal than a simple phone call. One of the things we are seeing work really well in troubleshooting is video chat. Nearly every smartphone these days has this function. Simply tell the tech support service that you want to call someone on video chat such as Face Time for the iPhone or services such as Skype or Google Hangouts. While some may be reluctant at first or may not be used to providing this, we are finding more and more companies are very open to the idea. And this makes good sense from a troubleshooting standpoint. Ninety percent of the battle of a tech support phone call is properly describing the problem and having it understood on the other end. Describing what a certain cable looks like, what button was pressed when and where or even what part of the machine you are looking at can be very daunting to explain. If you had the tech support engineer looking at exact what you are explaining in real time could save hours of not only your time, but his as well, making the phone call more efficient and rewarding for everyone involved.
By whatever method you wish to reach us, trust the experts at Global Electronic Services to repair your equipment and get your machine back up and running. Be sure to visit us online at www.gesrepair.com or call us at 1-877-249-1701 to learn more about our services. We’re proud to offer Surplus, Complete Repair and Maintenance on all types of Industrial Electronics, Servo Motors, AC and DC Motors, Hydraulics and Pneumatics. Please subscribe to our YouTube page and Like Us on Facebook! Thank you!