Customer satisfaction is Sikora’s primary objective. Not only is the technology designed for that goal, but also the customer support. We have asked the Service Manager of Sikora Bremen, Jörg Hischer (J.H.), as well as the Service Manager of the Sikora offices, Maximilian Bövingloh (M.B.), to guide us around the role of Service.
How is the SIKORA Service set up?
M.B.: In total, there are 35 employees working in the service department with SIKORA in Bremen and our offices. Globally, there are 16 engineers in 9 countries (Brazil, China, France, India, Korea, Middle East, Russia, Turkey, USA) taking care for service. The regions, where there is no own office established, are supported from Bremen or from the nearest subsidiary. The engineers are responsible for commissioning, maintenance and repairs. Employees in the internal service department care about support requests, delivery of spare parts, manpower planning, internal repairs and administration. In addition to the classic service we offer device trainings. Customers are professionally supported by a Sikora service specialist in Bremen or by the worldwide offices.
What happens in detail if a customer reports a technical fault?
J.H.: The customer contacts our service by phone or mail, provides the serial number of the device and describes the fault. Often our engineers can help the customer immediately. If a solution cannot be found this way, a field engineer will be sent. In case of a spare part delivery it will be coordinated from Bremen. If there are customer requests in regions that are covered by our offices, our local engineers provide immediate and competent support on site in the native language.
How do you check customers satisfaction with the SIKORA service?
M.B.: Every visit at a customer is documented by a travel report respectively repair report. The reports are evaluated by our Quality Management (QM) and provide details on actions, itemized by the type of the device. The information of the QM are directly considered by the development, production and service departments to eliminate potential sources of failures and to improve quality continuously. Interesting is the so-called Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), a ratio which is used to evaluate quality performance and improve the perfection of our systems.
J.H.: The MTBF is calculated by the sum of the operating years of a device series from the delivery date to the calculation key date, divided by the number of all failures in this period. It is thus a statistical number of years that you can expect a device to perform without failure.
Furthermore, we undertake a customer survey by phone after each completed job to analyze customer satisfaction with our service. That is how we assess the effectiveness of our measures and initiate improvements.
What makes the Sikora service unique?
M.B.: Service from Sikora is characterized by high quality, reliability, speed and customer focus. Important is the local service that we realize by our international subsidiaries. Independent from time differences or lingual or cultural diversity we are available for our customers all over the world at any time. We are only satisfied when our customers are satisfied.