Pre And Post Sales Service Support

15/12/09

By David Hart, International Service Director at Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies

As the economic climate continues to hit hard so businesses in the print and mail arena are evermore conscious of driving added value from supplier partners. Pre- and post-sale service support is emerging as a key differentiator during the downturn. But what does good service look like, and what are the challenges facing suppliers in a competitive and demanding marketplace?

This artilce will explain how the company is setting the industry’s service support benchmark through innovation, integration and continued investment.

Within the business-to-business arena the typical view of the service function —...

...and indeed, the reality in a great many cases — is of a reactive resource, a band-aid only required if something has broken and needs fixing.

At Pitney Bowes we’ve built an operation that turns this rather negative, fire-fighting approach on its head, instead looking to pro-actively engage with customers on service and support activity.

Quite how seriously we view service support as a differentiator and as a vital tool in growing our European customer base is evidenced in the level of investment that Pitney Bowes has made over the last few years. The company has invested some $2m in its International Technical Support Group (ITSG), a business function aimed squarely at delivering and sharing technical support excellence throughout Europe.

Previously, service support was provided on a country-by-country basis, with centres of excellence created in the more established territories. This approach — common to many multi-national providers - was recognised as being disjointed, with some of the smaller European countries not enjoying an equal level of technical support. The ITSG has been created to both drive and deliver best-practice across the entire European region.

Today, data analysis forms the cornerstone of Pitney Bowes’ service approach and we are one... continued on page two >

 

 

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