Two-Day Event Prepares Canon Service Techs and Service Managers to Excel
(Pictured above: Lee Farrell outlines Canon’s year over year performance in the dealer channel during the June 18 Canon Engineering & Solutions Summit General Session.)
On June 18 and 19, Canon U.S.A. held its Engineering & Solutions Summit in Princeton, NJ. This was the second time I attended one of these summits. Throughout the event, which runs two consecutive half days, Canon personnel do an excellent job of educating service managers and service techs on an array of issues and Canon initiatives.
More than 70 representatives from dealerships in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions attended the Princeton event. A survey, conducted in real-time during the General Session, identified the topics attendees were most interested in. The choices given were training, data security, new products, and the latest service programs. Attendees could only select one item from the list. Most attendees said they were interested in training, which makes sense since these were service managers and service techs and their day-to-day tasks are focused primarily on break-fix issues. Only two attendees identified security as the primary area of interest. The survey was not scientific by any stretch and had attendees been given the opportunity to make more than one selection, it’s likely security would likely have done much better, especially since there was plenty of discussions around security in the general session and in the breakout sessions.
Indeed, the General Session and the breakout sessions addressed all topics on that list. Twelve different breakout sessions””some offered more than once””provided a deeper dive into new aftermarket programs, calculating and optimizing service costs, imageCLASS service opportunities, Canon Smart Service Systems, Canon’s advanced data security, Canon continuous improvement, and competitive product insight, and more. For an innocent bystander like myself, most sessions were much more relevant to a tech than an analyst attending the event. But what it does educate me on is how much thought goes into developing and constructing these sessions so that the material presented helps a Canon service tech or service manager do their jobs better.
During the General Session, Canon presented the Northeast Independent Dealer ATSP (Association of Technical Service Professionals) awards to three dealerships, including Reliable Office Systems & Supply, Staten Island, N.Y. (above). Other winners included Ameritel Corporation, Frederick, Md. and United Copier & Business Systems, Buffalo & Rochester, N.Y.
For the second consecutive year, there was a heavy emphasis on Canon’s Customer Solution Center, which opened last year at Canon’s Melville, New York headquarters as well as Canon Smart Services, which Lee Farrell, vice president and general manager, BISG Engineering Services & Solutions, Canon U.S.A., described as one of the most popular breakout sessions. Another popular breakout session focused on Canon’s Flat Rate program. There also were a few imageRUNNER Advance products on display at the event as well as some imageCLASS devices, providing attendees with an opportunity to kick the tires, and perhaps more apropos for this group, look under the hood.
These yearly summits are an excellent forum for Canon to update, educate, and interact with the men and women in the field who keep the Canon technology operating. Based on our first-hand observations, the summits attract an engaged audience who are dedicated to their jobs and deeply interested in enhancing their knowledge about Canon’s products and service initiatives.
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