At your service: why customers love Canon’s community of engineers

You’ve no doubt seen our vans bearing the Canon logo driving around in your local town or city, but did you know that inside there is way more than you might imagine? Because each day, alongside their trusty toolboxes, our engineers carry with them encyclopaedic technical product knowledge, immaculate customer service skills and an understanding of their customers’ – and Canon’s – commercial needs.

So, we are understandably proud of our huge service community. They are face-to-face with customers more than anyone else in our organisation and consistently receive exceptional feedback. “We, of course, monitor customer satisfaction,” explains Andreas Schneider, Head of Customer Service and Operations for the Integrated Printing & Services Group at Canon EMEA. “And for many years we have heard from our customers that there are two areas they rate above everything. One is the quality of our products. The other is our service community, especially the field engineers.”

It may surprise you to know that success in both is equally by design. And while it’s well-known that our products deliver and are consistently excellent, it’s also clear that our service engineers bring something very special to the huge number of customers they visit every week. And it’s the job of Andreas and his team to make sure our service offering is rounded, efficient and the very best value it can be.

Learning never ends

It’s an absolute priority for Andreas that his teams are nurtured, developed and share their expertise. “Because their role has changed massively in the past twenty years,” he explains. “Way beyond the ‘screwdriver and customer service’ days. Today, our engineers work with incredibly complex machines, like those in our production print business, and understand just how our customers are using them. This means they need a comprehensive knowledge of everything from day-to-day office print needs to the graphic arts world to high volume book printing.”

So, as we stay ahead of the market to meet our customer’s needs, our engineers must too. The release of new products, issuing of software updates, even the re-engineering of ink formulas mean that learning and development are at the very centre of their working lives. And, as Andreas stresses, “Knowledge is key and something that must be shared widely. Many of our engineers have been with the business a very long time – many for over thirty years – and in my experience their incredible expertise is a real source of pride that drives them. We, of course, provide excellent learning and development for our service community, but they also learn from each other and there are few things more motivating for an engineer than this kind of knowledge sharing.”

They also pull a number of new skills from other areas of the business, as well as from our dedicated Learning & Development team. This means their ongoing training in new products and customer service excellence sits alongside areas like commercial skills, communications, information security, networks and complex diagnostic tools. A blend of classroom, e-learning and on-line platforms, together with regular reviews, paints a picture of exactly where people are excelling, if they need some extra support, what kind of targets they have set themselves and where they want to be in the future.

Meeting customers where they are

Another significant way that our service community has evolved over the past two decades is more obvious – everyone communicates more digitally. And while we still have plenty of Canon engineers in the field, customers now have a choice of options as to how we look after them. Today, we offer three separate support channels to our customers– digital, telephone and field service – with each offering deep knowledge and expertise guided by what suits customers best.

“We receive around 1.2 million customer requests a year and every need is different,” explains Andreas. “Many are very simple, such as a copy of an invoice, which can easily be solved through our digital service. Others might have an issue which can be resolved over the phone. This means that when our field engineers are deployed, it’s for tasks which absolutely require their expertise”. And in a world where time is of the essence: the faster the fix, the happier the customer.

Working hand in hand with our technology

As time goes on, our machines themselves are increasingly becoming another valuable knowledge partner to our service community. The introduction of predictive and preventative maintenance features means that they can move beyond the role of being a responder and into a space of ‘strategic partner’ to customers. Remote sensor monitoring and ‘health’ tracking give a full understanding of what’s going on with the printer and allows them to get ahead of any potential issues before they arise. It’s a win for everyone, as customers then have the bare minimum of downtime and there are fewer surprises for engineers!

“Their experience and knowledge are what we value about our service community, but also the critical thinking they bring to the table,” says Andreas, adding, “the fact they're problem solvers is so very important for their roles”. Combine this with the necessary human touch that can transform potentially stressful moments into a smooth and reassuring experiences (or better still, their ability to step in way before any problem arises!) and you have a sense of why our customers sing their praises time and time again.

Learn more about service at Canon