Brother Pinters/MFC/Fax Service and Support

BrookieD

Hi Guys
Some of you guys know me from Boards and some don't. My name is Darren Brooks and I am the Head of Customer Support for Brother International Ireland.
It is my job to make sure that all customers receive the backup service they expect when they purchase one of our products. To this end i have decided to open a thread here to get some valuable feedback from Boards.ie users.
As a company we have made a huge effort in the last 3 years in turning our support environment into one of the best in Ireland. To this end we have introduced the following:-

1) Online customer registration - Through www.brother.ie (If you have purchased a product within the last 4 months please make sure you register your details, this will speed up the whole support process should your product fail).

2) Online Service Ticket creation - When you have registered your product you then have an online account. This can be used to raise a support request through our SAP E-Service system. It is very easy and can be used anytime day or night. It is also very simple and will result in an email reply, a reply through the E-Service system back to your Account or a phone call from one of my team to follow up on the problem.

3) Repair times - We have been driving down our average In House repairs from a high 3 years ago of weeks! to a new low of 2 days on average. This has been one of the biggest changes to bring about. This means that from the time to unit arrives into Brother we have it repaired on average in 2 days and it is back out again.

4) Driver downloads and updates - http://solutions.brother.com/ Is our download centre for all products, you can search for your product and find the following information : Downloads, Manuals, FAQs, Consumable options and more.

5) Contact Centres – Yes it may come as a surprise but you can also call us and speak to a proper real human on the phone. We have 2 Help lines that can be used by either customers or dealers. All we ask if that you call the correct number,
Customers, please call 01-2411911
Dealers Only call 01-2411944 – If as a customer you call this number you will be transferred to the correct queue.
Within this environment we have a three tier support desk with specialists in Software support and Hardware support. We also have on site Engineer teams that can call out to certain machine ranges if needed.
You can also email directly into the support desk with Support@Brother.ie

I am looking for feedback from customers who have purchased our products or who have had recent support from either the Customer helpline or Dealer Helpline. I am also looking for feedback on the following:-

How easy was it to install your product?
Did you purchase a wireless or wired network connection product?
How did you choose a Brother product?
Do you use the Brother.ie site for research?
If you have used Brother.ie what if anything would you change about the site?
Do you use Original or Third party Inks? ( Please be advised that if your product develops an error using Third Party Ink you may be liable for the cost of repair even though the unit is in warranty.) Like all printer manufactures we can only guarantee our own ink for usage. Other can be used but may result in lesser quality print results or errors on the print head.
If you could make a change/improvement to the product what would it be?


I know it’s a bit of a long post but feel that we need to explore every avenue to our customer base in order to get all feedback we can to further improve our systems, standards and communication methods.

I am also very passionate that all our customers receive the best support we can possibly offer. If you do have a valid complaint on failed support call please email me directly from here with the serial number of your machine and Service Ticket number and i will look into these ASAP.


Thank you for your time, mods please feel free to contact me should i have breached any rules or make a sticky
Darren

BrookieD

bump

the_syco

Eh... don't know why you are bumping this? Maybe posting in the computers section may be better? There's no printers section there, but the tech section may be more relevent?

ejmaztec

No more Brother printers for me - not after being subjected to the time-wasting costly trauma of "Machine Error 41".:mad: Twice!

Welease

BrookieD wrote: »

Hi Guys
As a company we have made a huge effort in the last 3 years in turning our support environment into one of the best in Ireland.

A rather extravagant claim.. do you have any sources of data to back this up?

BrookieD

Yes as it happens, on any Audit peformed my data is always subjected to investigation. I have data to back up every claim made for just such a question. My data also shows that within the Brother Group we are one of the best support desk in Europe.

We have made a massive effort to provide dedicated support desks and online support in every environment that we can.
I have personaly also worked in a number of suprrot envirments from Eircom.net, Accenture, Irish Broadband to others and can say that the invesment and effort that Brother has put into rebuilding what was a very poor set up has surprised me in every way.

We have an above 92% call answer ratio every day, ( as of 13:00 06-03-2009 we have 100% of calls answered)
100% of emails are responded to every day(working day) within 4 hours.
I deal with on Avg one major complaint every 6-7 weeks
We try every single avenue to make sure we get a customers machine fixed or replaced within the shortest time possible.
We are known to on quite a number of occasions replace machines where by the Warranty has run out as we don't rely just solely on the purchase date but take usage, condition and environment into the equation of support the customer


I don't make that statement lightly

BrookieD

the_syco wrote: »

Eh... don't know why you are bumping this? Maybe posting in the computers section may be better? There's no printers section there, but the tech section may be more relevent?

Its here as i am looking at this from the consumer point of view But it can be moved if the mods deem it in correct placement

BrookieD

ejmaztec wrote: »

No more Brother printers for me - not after being subjected to the time-wasting costly trauma of "Machine Error 41".:mad: Twice!

Completely understand that statement, however that is now 4 generations ago and long gone from current machine line ups.

Our new machines do not have any such failure

Welease

BrookieD wrote: »

Yes as it happens, on any Audit peformed my data is always subjected to investigation. I have data to back up every claim made for just such a question. My data also shows that within the Brother Group we are one of the best support desk in Europe.

That was kinda my point, your initial statement suggests you are one of the best customer support groups in Ireland irrespective of company/sector etc, a fact I don't believe you can actually factually support.

Being one of the best support organisations within a single company/entity is a vastly different thing

Anyway, thank you for the quick response and clarification, but I can I suggest you edit your potentially misleading statement.
"As a company we have made a huge effort in the last 3 years in turning our support environment into one of the best in Ireland."

BrookieD

Welease wrote: »

That was kinda my point, your initial statement suggests you are one of the best customer support groups in Ireland irrespective of company/sector etc, a fact I don't believe you can actually factually support.

Being one of the best support organisations within a single company/entity is a vastly different thing

Anyway, thank you for the quick response and clarification, but I can I suggest you edit your potentially misleading statement.
"As a company we have made a huge effort in the last 3 years in turning our support environment into one of the best in Ireland."

Thanks for the suggestion but the statement remains as i do think we are in fact one of the best by my own working experience in the industry in Ireland for the last ten years. I do not believe from my contacts and knowledge there are many Support environments that go as far we in Brother in order to keep the customer happy with their product.

Stats tell one side of the story where by action tells the rest.

Many Thanks for the comments and posting If you would like to discuss further by all means PM or email me or feel free to call me.