Throughout 2021, the printer company Konica Minolta added AIRe Link as part of their remote-by-default strategy. As a result, Konica Minolta was able to test the remote visual support tools to see how it impacted their overall ability to support customers. This article will go through the benefits Konica Minolta noticed. In addition to highlighting use cases in which AIRe Link worked well to support both technicians and customers.
Benefits Konica Minolta noticed from AIRe Link usage
The benefits Konica Minolta noticed from AIRe Link’s usage came directly from their dashboard statistics. Which highlights how impactful remote support tools are as a part of their team’s toolbox. When it comes to new tools, service teams might find it challenging to understand the impact AIRe Link can have on technicians’ jobs and the overall customer experience. That’s why Konica Minolta decided to share their statistics. Which we will break down to give perspective as to how beneficial they can be.
Number of calls handled remotely
From the dashboard’s statistical data, we can see that Konica Minolta handled a total of 10,868 calls during 2021. That’s an average of 905 calls per month or 30 per day handled remotely using AIRe Link. From the call duration, we can see the average call time was 5 minutes and 14 seconds. Suggesting, the majority of issues were simple, and could easily be resolved very quickly remotely.
Improved customer experience based on feedback
The overall customer experience can be calculated from the feedback provided. We can see Konica Minolta received a total of 6955 feedback reviews at the end of support sessions. Which is 65% of all total calls. From the feedback collected. 6317, or 90.8% were positive and marked as “resolved issues” while 638, or 9.17% were negative meaning the customer issue was not resolved. This proves that if technicians use AIRe Link’s remote support tools, the majority of issues can be resolved successfully. Discover more strategies to improve customer satisfaction with AIRe Link.
Cost saving based on saved callouts
Konica Minota noticed through their use of AIRe Link. Remote visual support was directly responsible for reducing the number of required engineer callouts, which as a result also reduced their operating costs. We can even calculate their ROI (return on investment) from last year.
On average, each engineer callout costs Konica Minolta 42 euros. Based on positive feedback from support sessions, 6317 issues were resolved remotely. Totaling an outstanding 265,314 euros in cost savings. Were as before. Konica Minolta would have been forced to spend this on engineer callouts, however, through the use of AIRe Link, these were avoided.
Ability to recognize the best technicians for their efforts
AIRe Link enables administrators to compare the performance of team members and as a result can view the top-performing technicians. Thanks to this feature, Konica Minolta was able to discover 20% of their technical team was responsible for resolving 76% of all remote issues.
As a result, they were able to personally thank those hard-working technicians, in addition to promoting them to help train the existing 80% and new staff. Being able to track your best technicians allows you to improve knowledge sharing. You can promote them to train less knowledgeable team members.
Example use cases from Konica Minolta
There are many different ways AIRe Link’s remote visual support platform can be utilized by service teams. Konica Minolta shared their top three use cases for which AIRe Link works perfectly so that other services teams can be inspired and adapt them to best suit their business requirements.
Remote-only customer support
One use case for AIRe Link’s remote support tools is the remote-only customer support approach. This use case for Konica Minolta has been proven to save on-site visits. Which in turn reduced operational costs while ensuring customers received the support required faster than usual. A good example provided by Konica Minolta is a paper jamming issue. When resolved remotely the engineer saved a long journey of 352km.
The customer contacted Konica Minolta regarding an issue and was connected to a remote technician via AIRe Link. During the support session, their technician requested the customer to demonstrate the issue. And in doing so was able to spot a paper tray setting error on the control panel thanks to visual capabilities.
The technician was then able to advise the customer of this error and guide them through resolving the problem. Most importantly, all of this was done remotely without the technician having to leave his desk. Not only saving time and money but also reducing Konica Minolta’s carbon footprint.
Hybrid support. Remote issue diagnosis
Another valuable use case for AIRe Link is the hybrid support approach. This use case involves using remote support tools to visually diagnose all customer issues prior to sending service technicians on-site. Not only will service technicians be better prepared, and aware of issues present, the issue could be resolved entirely remotely. An example from Konica Minolta involves their customer, Premier Labels UK Ltd, which prints essential labels for the pharmaceutical industry.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Premier Labels faced image quality issues with one of their AccurioLabel 230 printers at the time of lockdown. They required a fast fix to minimize the knock-on effect of disruption to their customers. Konica Minolta utilized the hybrid support approach to remotely diagnose their issue. The technician was able to identify which machine parts were faulty and as a result, ordered the spare parts that same day, and delivery occurred the following morning. The field engineer was already aware of which parts required replacement, therefore was able to bring the correct tools knowing the spare parts were already on-site resulting in a much faster fix for the customer.
Without AIRe Link’s remote visual capabilities, the engineer would have arrived on-site to diagnose the same issue, then would have waited for the spare parts to be delivered. As a result, the customer was able to get operations up and running quickly while Konica Minolta was able to save time, money, and CO2 emissions.
Hybrid approach. Support on-site technicians
The hybrid use case implies both on-site technicians and remote support staff work together to resolve issues for customers. Konica Minolta discovered this approach works perfectly to up skill field engineers using remote expertise and advice instantly. An example where the hybrid approach benefited Konica Minolta was when a field service technician on-site was tasked with investigating a boot-up issue with one of their printers. After several attempts at fixing the device, the field service technician was stuck and out of ideas to try.
In this situation, before remote support tools, the standard approach would have been to send out another technician on-site who specializes in these issues. With the use of AIRe Link, the specialist technician was able to connect remotely with audio and visual capabilities in real time without the need to leave his desk at the office. The specialist was able to detect the MFP board was faulty and then, using his experience guided the on-site technicians through resolving that issue. Once again, the use of AIRe Link was responsible for the customer’s printer being fixed faster, reducing Konica Minolta’s costs and CO2 emissions.
Try AIRe Link for free
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