Technician Repair, Maintenance, and Sales Economics 101
/By Jake Chiavario
Every technician will encounter a point in the career when repairing a piece of equipment just isn’t worth the time or effort. But how do you come to this conclusion? Several factors need to be considered:
What is the item’s real value?
How much money in parts will it take to repair it?
How much labor will it take to repair it?
As a technician, you need to help your customer make the best possible decision. Ultimately, the decision is theirs to make, but you can educate them and let them know the risks or pitfalls of repairing an old clunker versus buying something new.
One recent example recently I experienced was on an old Fetco CBS-2031ee. The owner would have to power cycle it several times to get it to kick on. It progressively started to get worse and worse and the power relay integrated into the board on it was failing. Of course, it could be fixed, but should it be?
The board was $363. Add on top $150-200 in labor. All said and done, you’re approaching a repair cost of $600 if everything goes according to plan. If it all works out, well they're still in a brewer that’s 12 years old and has all its other components inside that are probably on the brink of failing as well. I told the customer I could just charge them a diagnosis fee and walk away from it and that would be the best economical decision for them, and they should just buy a Fetco 2131V+ brewer to replace it for $749 online shipped to their door. Of course, this option would make me less money, but you have to put your customers’ best interests first.
Ultimately, the customer ended up paying to get their brewer fixed.
Was it the right choice? That's not for me to decide, but I made the customer aware and educated about their broken piece of equipment so they could make an informed decision.
Was it the direction I would have taken? No, I definitely thought that buying a new brewer would have been the better value.
The good thing is most grinders and espresso machines can economically be repaired or refurbished. I say most because some espresso machines or grinders have very little value (most of us technicians have this near-worthless equipment piling up in our workshops). For machines that cannot economically be repaired, usually the case is that either the technology has become outdated, the manufacturer no longer supports the equipment, the machine had a poor design from the get-go, or parts are so scarce that the technician will have to spend hours of time searching for them. Typically, this time goes unaccounted for or never gets billed to the customer.
Machines that have little-to-no value should not be revived, unless it’s for a hobby or someone is sentimentally attached to it. Avoiding these jobs are is part of running a successful technician business. Walk away or say no to the jobs that can end up hosing you or your customer.
I love old equipment, don’t get me wrong. The last thing you want to do is come off as a guy talking down on someone's equipment just so you can sell them new stuff. I also am also a huge believer in reusing and recycling whenever possible. But at the end of the day, when you put yourself in the cafe owner’s shoes, ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing adding value to their business?”
Whether it be, getting the machine back up and running so they can serve more cups of coffee and be an economic positive, adding value to an old asset of theirs, or treating their water appropriately to add longevity and reliability to their machines (hopefully making tastier coffee as well), there will always be those service calls that are a negative economic value.
As technicians, we have to charge for our time. With the occasional service calls, where you show up and it was just an operator error, false alarm, etc., that I don’t find fulfilling, I try to make of it and ask the owner, “While I’m here, do you mind if I check out X, Y, and Z?” – I always ask first because unsolicited work is typically not appreciated.
This doesn’t only just apply to repair work. In a world that's dominated by e-commerce. As technicians, we need to ask ourselves, “Are we adding value to this piece of equipment we’re selling the customer? Are we building the infrastructure to support the products?”
Contrary to popular belief, an espresso machine requires some care and feeding. We should make sure the customer understands that as well as all the costs involved with purchase and installation. This not only creates return customers, but also prevents customers from buying online and then getting a response like, “It wasn’t installed by a factory trained technician, so no warranty is applied,” when something goes wrong.
It all comes down to education and information. We are the experts at what we do and we can share that with our customers. What they do with that information is up to them, but our job is to provide as much transparency as possible.