BCM Didgisol, the Ricoh SA Platinum Partner in Limpopo Province, has won a Gold PMR Africa Golden Arrow award.
This award is granted for companies that most stimulate economic growth and development in Limpopo during a 12-month period and are an indicator of a company’s competencies, customer service and customer satisfaction.
“The fact that BCM Didgisol won this award proves that our partner is among the best in the industry,” says Jacques van Wyk, COO at Ricoh SA.
“The way that the recipients are chosen, from a random sample of 150 CEOs, MDs, business owners, company directors, managers and senior executives from the region, is further indication that they deserve of this recognition. It is also proof positive that they are deserving of their Platinum Partner status in the Ricoh Business Partner Programme and we couldn’t be more pleased for them as they set an exemplary standard.”
Gold awards are given to companies that are first or second overall in their respective fields and are rated at least 3,75 or higher, which is an excellent rating.
Glenn Groenewald, GM and member of BCM Didgisol, says that the business takes a number of steps to ensure customer service expectations are always met and the business continually strives to improve service levels.
“We compete with all the top global vendors in our region so we cannot rely on product or solution differentiators to set us apart from the competition,” he says. “Service is one area where we can truly shine so we ensure that we deliver all the basics, like the four-hour SLAs, but our area is geographically large. That makes it harder to meet those SLAs so we conduct a lot of preventative maintenance and take other preventative steps.
“We are obviously very happy that our efforts have been recognised through this award, which was a Gold award instead of Bronze, followed by Silver, which would be the normal progression for companies winning PMR Africa Golden Arrows.”
Groenewald says that BCM Didgisol technicians, of whom there are 14 at an average ratio of 70 devices per technician, conduct unscheduled visits to customers for unscheduled maintenance. They also ensure that they perform scheduled maintenance at requisite service intervals.
In addition to those two key activities, Groenewald says that BCM Didgisol’s technical department also relies on @Remote to ensure that problems and potential problems are resolved often before customers are even aware they exist.
“@Remote is a great automated tool that sends our technical team e-mails to tell them when problems are about to occur or have occurred on the equipment in the field,” says Groenewald. “With @Remote we can despatch technicians before customers log calls, which is a fundamental activity in keeping customers happy with your service.”
BCM Didgisol’s devices under support and maintenance in the field include a large proportion of production printers and the business was recently recognised by Ricoh SA as the top business partner for achieving 395% of its production printing sales volumes for the previous year.
Groenewald adds that his organisation invests continuously in training, sending its technicians to complete all of the Ricoh training as well as hosting specialists from the Ricoh head office to perform onsite training. He says that technicians and Ricoh specialists then visit customer sites together where on-the-job training, specific to BCM Didgisol’s customers and their environments, has the greatest impact.
The company also cross trains among its own senior, mid and junior technicians.
“We also run an internship programme that proved very successful for us,” he says. “We accept interns for three months, without salaries, who then work alongside our current technicians. Based on their progress within the three-month window we then permanently appoint them and introduce them to the remainder of our training and instruction programme.
“We have already appointed five such interns and three other successful graduates of our internship programme have since sought employment with organisations in Gauteng.”
