By Dan Janka, President of Mazak Corp.
POSTED ON 5/25/2021 – The goal of any online personal service and support portal is to enhance the customer experience and add value. Unfortunately, as many manufacturing equipment suppliers rush to jump on the me-too portal bandwagon, the results are often ill-equipped personal portals that, in the long run, fail to be truly useful.
When considering exactly what features, functions and capabilities a customer will find when they access a Mazak personal service and support portal, we took a page from Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and “began with the end in mind.” In doing so, we determined the answer was a complete machine maintenance database as well as functions that make for fast and accurate replacement parts ordering. It should also provide direct, real-time access to the OEM for a multitude of support benefits such as remote assistance and on-demand training options.
A machine maintenance database should include a complete list of all a shop’s machines with their individual serial numbers and complete service histories. This would include all service call information, such as the services that were performed, date of service and any parts that were replaced. Every request from a customer gets logged and contributes to building an ongoing historical database of all machines in the field.
When replacement parts are needed, shops should have the capability, through their personal portals, to display an image of the part along with its price, then easily place an order and have the part delivered the next day. This is especially true when a shop orders a replacement and they order the wrong one – and typically are unaware they’ve done so.