Evens won the award for his efforts over the past 30 years implementing best practices and standard procedures that have improved both Marco and the copier industry. Evens played a key role in bringing Marco’s copier service department from lower performing to high performing by helping the company establish what “good” looks like. This was done by implementing policies that decreased waste and increased technician accountability. As a result, Marco saw a dramatic improvement in copier performance and the amount of copies generated between service calls.
Throughout his career, Evens applied these strategies and proven metrics to 27 acquisitions. In each case, he worked with the company being onboarded to improve margins and reach Marco’s profitability and customer satisfaction benchmarks.
To reach those customer satisfaction benchmarks, Evens helped Marco create a customer service model in which every product serial number is assigned a primary and secondary technician. As a result, technicians acquire a sustained and deep understanding of their end users and their end users’ environments. Evens said the model creates relationships that can make the technicians feel like an internal resource.
“Our techs become so welcomed that they often get adopted by the organization and are invited to company parties,” said Evens. “Customer service isn’t about executing on one thing. It’s about executing on everything. It’s communication, it’s training, it’s parts availability and it’s a sense of urgency for the assigned technicians to bring a level of service that thrills the customer.”
To accomplish that, Marco’s customer service model includes a total call policy. When a service call is placed, Marco technicians are committed to calling back within an hour to establish an arrival time that works best for the customer. Then, when technicians make their service calls, they complete a “top to bottom, left to right” analysis of the machines to uncover issues that may arise down the road.
“When a tech goes on a call. We will not thrill the customer just by fixing that one issue. It’s now the technician’s job to find the next two issues that the customer isn’t aware of. We spend time with that machine to find and fix issues that might be right around the corner. We don’t leave until it looks like we just refurbished that piece of equipment,” said Evens.
Customer service practices such as these have helped Evens and his team add 20 points of profit to Marco’s P&L throughout his career. They’ve also helped Marco win the Protech from Konica Minolta award for exemplary service every year since 2007.
Evens started at Marco in 1990 as one of the company’s 12 service technicians. Over the next 30 years he would transition to Service Manager, Director of Copier Services and eventually Vice President of Copier Services. Today he oversees 228 technicians and managers, and he participates on service advisory councils for Konica Minolta, Sharp and HP.
“Dale has provided tremendous leadership in Marco’s copier service division over the past 30 years,” said Jeff Gau, Marco CEO. “His unique ability to collaborate with technicians, sales representatives and customers has made him a key difference maker as Marco has become one of the top copier and print dealers in the United States.”
To view the full list, visit: www.enxmag.com/twii/difference-makers/2020/05/the-art-of-success-saluting-the-2020-difference-makers-of-the-imaging-technology-world/.
