Ficep Corporation Maintains the Highest Ratio of Customer Service Staff to Installations in the Industry!

When Ficep Corporation was founded at the end of 2002, it consisted of a staff of two salesmen, one service tech and almost no existing customer base as the full Ficep product line had not been offered in North America prior to the founding of Ficep Corporation. The rapid acceptance of Ficep's industry-leading technology enabled us to quickly gain a substantial market share in North America by offering to the industry technological solutions that were not previously available to fabricators in North America. The thirst of the market for better CNC solutions that achieved the type of accuracy, productivity and technology that was previously not available in North America enabled us to achieve over 350 CNC system installations in North America in this short period of time.

Growing the sales is impressive but not as important as developing the type of customer service capability that the market deserves. We appreciate that to most of our customers our CNC line represents the heart of their production facility, and if this goes down, their entire manufacturing operation can suffer almost immediately.

When you start a business, sales need to be the initial ingredient in a successful business plan, but continued growth can only transpire as the result of successful customer service. During the past few years, our investment in this part of the business has been paramount and continues as our customer service staff has now grown so that our ratio of customer service staff to installations is the best in our industry!

The size of a customer service organization compared to the number of installations is extremely important, but this is only part of a successful support plan as the organization within the team and their ability to embrace state of the art technological solutions is what is behind a successful customer service team!

Presently 98% of Incoming Service Calls are Resolved Remotely!

The progressive changes that have been implemented to-date permit us to now resolve 98% of customer challenges on the same day. This is a testament to the power of the Ficep "TeleService" which through the internet unleashes the diagnostic power of our PC based control system so we can essentially place a tech on-site in minutes! The same diagnostic routines, parameter changes, software installations, etc. that a tech traditionally performs on-site can now be implemented remotely through the internet.

Let's explore some of the investments and progressive changes that we have implemented during the past few years to grow our customer support.

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Services and Operations

Spare Parts Support
We currently maintain several million dollars in spare parts inventory which is now secured and tracked with the implementation of an automated spare parts retrieval system. This system tracks traditional usage so we can concentrate our spare part inventory on the proper stock for overnight delivery.

Some customers who can't wait for next day delivery have even elected to use our airport facility that serves our industrial park location.

Customer Service Administration
We have now installed a separate customer service phone number, (443) 640-0206, so our customers can avoid the delay of going through the central switchboard. If a tech is not immediately available, Nicole Shackelford logs the service request into our customer service support software so when the tech returns the call, he has the complete machine history at his disposal and much of the current pertinent information to speed the diagnostic process.

Experienced Tech Support
With the addition of multiple experienced techs like Chip Coale, our phone support techs now average over 20 years of CNC/computer experience which gives them the type of expertise to diagnose challenges without delay by using an internet connection to your Ficep CNC line. This is like placing a tech on-site in minutes to perform diagnostic checks, yet we may be several thousand miles away from your installation.

We now are able to provide customer service phone support for 15 hours per day with the goal to expand this level of support.

Customer Training
We have constructed a training facility at our Forest Hill, Maryland location where customers can send operators, maintenance staff and programmers for training in a classroom setting without the typical interruptions that generally occur if training is done on site. This is done before their line is installed to enhance the effectiveness of the training and installation experience.

Typically, a support tech like Shiref Mekhaeil, who has hands-on experience, conducts these classes. This service is presently being used by new and existing users who have new staff that require training. We currently schedule these three-day courses twice a month so we can address different customer requirements.

Challenge Analysis
Based upon your specific machine and serial number, which is tracked in our customer service software, one of our techs, like Scott Winn, can view the relative engineering documentation online to identify the problem and to facilitate the resolution.

Online Training
We now frequently use the conferencing tool "Go to Meeting" where Marco Camardella, our Director of Customer Service, can have multiple parties view the same CNC screens during a conference call. By using this tool, we are able to conduct additional training, diagnostics or demonstrate proper operational procedures by sharing both video and audio where all parties can view the screen of the CNC control simultaneously.

Part Identification
Proper part identification frequently requires the user to interface with someone in our spare parts department, such as Jeff Weber.

Viewing the relative spare parts documents electronically assists in the spare part identification and ordering function.

Regionalized Field Service Support
We have also grown our field service support staff substantially in numbers and capability. Our field team has extensive CNC experience and has also participated in extensive training at the factory. When we first started the company, all the field service techs were dispatched from our Forest Hill, Maryland location. To achieve more effective field service support, we have now regionalized our field service support team where we have multiple techs at each of the three regional locations on the East Coast, Mid West and West Coast.

Service Contracts
To be able to maintain your CNC lines at maximum efficiency, we also offer service contracts to our users where we can provide the required staff to achieve this goal. This program can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your organization.

As you can see from the above-stated examples of recent changes at Ficep Corporation, a lot has occurred during the last 2-3 years with our customer service. We are committed to continue to invest and improve in this area to make sure we deliver the best customer service that you can experience!