Beyond the Illusion: How to Protect Your Facility from Disappearing Support
Your chiller contract includes service. But are you really getting any?
Many say that service is a dying offering.
We say that’s an optimistic take.
Okay, maybe service isn’t dead, but too often it's an illusion. (Waves hand like Obi Wan Kenobi – “These machines don’t need service. We’re not the vendor you’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.”)
Why are we so pessimistic? Because most companies' promises about service aren’t worth the paper they’re not printed on.
Say you call your chiller manufacturer with a problem. But instead of sending you to a service technician to discuss what you're seeing, they send you to an account rep, who can't answer a technical question.
And if they do send someone out, it's often a mechanic who knows how to install the unit but not how to troubleshoot it. That weird rattle you're hearing? It’s as much a mystery to them as it is to you. And if they're back in two weeks with a workable solution, you can count yourself lucky.
So, yes, “service” might be name-checked in your contract. That doesn’t mean anything will get fixed – not without huge effort and expense on your part.
Equally frustrating is how difficult it is to just start the service process. From service reps who don’t answer their phone or email to those who trade you back and forth between departments like a ping-pong ball – the new service model isn't about helping you. It's about waiting for you to give up and go away.
You might think this method would be bad for business, but it’s a well-known strategy, especially for large vendors who know they have you locked in with their proprietary offering. They don’t need to work for your loyalty, and the less they put into service, the more they profit.
4 Strategies to Overcome Lip-Only Service
1. Stay away from proprietary systems. Plenty of good vendors don’t lock you into their parts or service teams; choose one of them. (If you’re not sure what vendors to go to, give us a call. We’re happy to advise.)
2. Negotiate hard over service contracts. Troubleshooting is a problem that goes on forever and only gets more expensive over time. Lock those terms down. (If you’d like help with that, give us a call. Negotiating better terms is our company president’s favorite pastime.)
3. Invest in your people. Offer trainings as much as you can. For example, one client alerts his building teams any time a big service job comes up somewhere in his organization so that less-experienced staff can level up their skills when it’s not their crisis to deal with.
We also offer trainings to our plant monitoring clients. Give us a call and we’ll come over with info specific to your systems.
Speaking of our services...
4. Learn more about plant monitoring. What can you achieve by having a third-party service watching and analyzing the data that comes from your plant operations? We could go on for pages about results at specific sites, but the gist is this: Our Operations Center saves clients 10%–12% (or more) annually through our engineering and metering services because we alert you to potential issues, we run the numbers so you can see the impact of your options, and we make specific technical recommendations from an experienced perspective.
That’s 10%–12% less energy consumption, lower costs, and less wear and tear on both your equipment and your team. Or more.
At the end of the day, good service is key to keeping your property competitive. Too many companies in our industry are about money rather than value, which shows in their contract terms and their lack of interest in you once you sign. utiliVisor is a service company. That's what we're about. We don't sell any products and we don't write proprietary terms into our contracts. Nothing ties our clients to us long-term except the results we get them. As it should be.
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About utiliVisor
Your tenant submetering and energy plant optimization services are an essential part of your operation. You deserve personalized energy insights from a team that knows buildings from the inside out, applies IoT technology and is energized by providing you with accurate data and energy optimization insights. When you need experience, expertise, and service, you need utiliVisor on your side, delivering consistent energy and cost-saving strategies to you. What more can our 45+ years of experience and historical data do for you? Call utiliVisor at 212-260-4800 or visit utilivisor.com
