TCO
eseller
.co.uk
Print.IT Reseller 29
For many years, CharisCo has been
providing the industry and the market
with advice about the true cost of
printing. As part of its service offering,
it has developed tools that enable
resellers and end users to determine
a) how much their printing costs
and b) what the most cost-effective
printer is for their particular needs.
It is now making these available to the
channel in the form of a software service that
has been built to be as flexible as possible
in its Total Cost of Printing calculations. For
instance, it can handle flexible ownership
periods; customisable page coverage;
balance of black vs colour pages; and also
define which consumables will be used. All
calculations are based on real time prices
pulled directly from the host e-commerce
website or channel sales platform.
Peter Maude, Director at CharisCo
Printer Labs, said: “Realistic lifetime costs
associated with printers have always been
difficult to calculate. With tcprojector
API, channel and e-commerce resellers
are easily able to provide customers with
independent lifetime cost comparisons of
printers based on their own live prices,
having made as detailed an assessment
of what is printed as they or the customer
choose to define. Channel resellers can also
use the tool to refine their own proposals.”
Printer TCO calculator
launched for the
channel
CharisCo Printer Labs, a consultancy specialising in the total
cost of ownership of printers, is making its sophisticated
lifetime costs TCO service available to resellers and their
customers via a software service (SaaS) that can be integrated
into any e-commerce site or a reseller's own sales platform.
CharisCo says the tcprojector API is
ready to go and can be integrated into
any e-commerce website within a couple
of weeks or be built into a dealer’s own
customisable software solution.
A bespoke development service can help
smaller channel players create a solution
to run calculations across fleets of printers,
giving its sales people access to TCO
information that they can use as part of the
sales process to provide an independent
proof-point on cost comparisons.
To show how the tcprojector API might
work on a host e-commerce website,
CharisCo has created a working demo at
/.
This has a simplified interface that
might be appropriate for home user
customers and includes a fully functional
version of the ‘Customise printing’ feature,
which delivers a much greater level of
detail and accuracy than is provided by
other e-commerce sites.
The roll-down allows site visitors to
personalise TCO calculations by entering
their own usage details including print
volume, document type and energy tariff.
Users can also specify whether the TCO
should include the purchase price of a
device and the number of years over which
it should be calculated. The demo includes
real printers and real prices, anonymised
to avoid the demo being time/model-
sensitive.
Resellers and e-commerce companies
can find further information at
/
.
NAPPS UPDATE
Service support – Can you really
delight your customers?
By Aaron Warham,
Director,
NAPPS
A recent article by Salesforce
proposed the idea that one
part of successfully retaining
customers is to delight them
with ‘Hero’ moments throughout
the customer/supplier relationship. With everything
that the NAPPS community is driving for in terms of
providing the highest possible levels of service and
support, I thought it best to delve a little deeper.
The theory behind the idea is that customers believe they
have received satisfactory service when their expectations
have been met and experience delight when those same
expectations have been exceeded. However, if the customer’s
expectations are already set at a low level, what does a feeling
of delight signify? Does it really mean that they have received
an outstanding level of service?
The real hurdle for the UK channel is what Salesforce calls
‘confirmation bias’ – a quirk of human perception that leads
people to selectively filter information based on a previous
experience. This mean that if a customer has a positive
experience with a particular supplier, they will sub-consciously
be biased towards that supplier regardless of future experiences
– good or bad. The problem for the UK channel is that this
also works in the opposite direction, with initially negative
experiences clouding positive developments in the future.
Negative feelings towards the imaging industry are
apparent if you spend more than two minutes speaking to
any UK buyer who has had any experience of dealing with the
channel. They all seem to have had at least one bad experience,
which clouds every decision they now make. So how can you
provide ‘delight’ if the deck is already stacked against you?
The key is, from the start, to set expectations at a level that
can actually be achieved but are also above the norm – and
I’m not talking about standard service SLAs. If there is one
thing the UK buyer now expects it is a 4-hour call-out and well
over 90% first time fix rate. A truly service-driven company will
look at every level of customer interaction and ‘promise’ to
ensure that realistic and achievable expectations are always set.
Exceeding those expectations and making that ‘hero’ moment
then becomes a simple matter of dealing with whatever issue
arises first – and there is always an issue – and creating that
first ‘delightful’ experience for the customer.
Creating an endless stream of delight is obviously
unsustainable, but maintaining a tight focus on the customer’s
overall experience, from start to finish, is key. By setting and
then meeting expectations, the stage is set to create a ‘hero’
moment for every customer.
What the last two years within NAPPS has shown is
that there are companies in the UK that are already setting
standards above the norm and actively looking for ‘hero’
moments to arise. They don’t need to be major melt-downs
that require herculean responses: often it is the little things
which get filed away in customers’ memories that build the
bias and strengthen the long-term relationship.
Peter Maude: the true cost of print
