Contact Center Solutions Industry News

TMCNet: Mobile solution brings smarter franking system maintenance

[December 30, 2008]

Mobile solution brings smarter franking system maintenance

Pitney Bowes employs 276 engineers to service franking machines and other mailing equipment. Until 2004 it used a central service system, mobile phones, pen and paper to manage the operation. Calls came in centrally and staff used their judgement to choose an engineer, phoned him or her and provided details of the job. Engineers filled in a manual report, signed by the customer.
Antenna software mobile solution revolutionised the way Pitney Bowes engineers work. Service calls are now automatically allocated to the right engineer on the basis of the engineer’s location and skills set, and the necessary information is sent to the engineer’s handheld device.

“Our system records the skills of every engineer and where they are located,” explains Ray Lawes, Vice President EMEA for service operations. “If an engineer is ill or on holiday, he is taken off the system. If an engineer doesn’t accept a call within 60 minutes, it bounces back to base so that management can find out why and/or relocate the job. This is especially important when we are dealing with customers who have two or four hour response times although the average is six hours.”

“Engineers then file service reports over the system recording the details of the problem, what spare parts were used and so on. The customer can sign the report digitally if needed.”

Pitney Bowes obtains a wealth of information from the system,too: average response times, average repair times, first time fix rates, recall rates and similar details. Any weaknesses can be picked up and struggling staff re-trained.

“Mobile system speeds up the whole process, takes out human intervention, reducing the number of people in the call centre, and increases productivity of the engineers by at least eight percent.” Lawes adds.

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