How to Train Your Tech to Be a Troubleshooter
/By Mark Robey
So, you have found a person who thinks being a coffee tech would be an excellent job! They have some mechanical skills as well as customer service sensibility, hopefully, perfect Coffee Tech Trainee! Now all you have is to teach them how to troubleshoot!
More than likely, the trainee will be unfamiliar with the specific industry equipment. Their initial troubleshooting technique may lead to every worst-case scenario, even in the most straightforward jobs. They will tend to make things more complicated in the beginning if allowed to try to troubleshoot on their own without some proper training and guidance.
First and foremost, troubleshooting should start with a KISS – Keep It, Super Simple!
Troubleshooting is, by nature, the same process used for any problem solving regardless of the circumstances. To teach a tech good troubleshooting skills, the first thing is to make sure there is a clear understanding of what is wrong. If they do not clearly understand this, troubleshooting will be misguided and lead to wasted time & energy. So, the first skill is to get them to understand they need to be a detective, and to ask questions about the problem a customer is experiencing. Has this happened before? Did something happen before this issue? Did it just happen out of the blue, or has it been problematic until failure? Questions are one of the most valuable things that will make your trainee a good troubleshooter.
Once you get them to complete their detective work, they should have a clear understanding of what the problem is and a lot of information relating to the problem. Now the training of troubleshooting can begin. What may be obvious to you will not be evident to them. A trainee may quickly evaluate no water dispensing out of a group head like a bad solenoid valve. Correct? Maybe or maybe not. It is important to teach new techs not to jump to conclusions or waste time disassembling parts that are not relevant to the problem—again, wasting time & effort and costing your customer unnecessary expense and dissatisfaction with the service performed.
One good troubleshooting technique to teach new hires is to give them something to visualize. One method I have used is dominos. New hires think of problems like a series of dominos, all set up on a path that goes up ramps, around in circles, and leads to the last domino. When the first domino falls, a chain reaction occurs where every subsequent domino falls in succession until all have fallen and the cycle is complete. If one of the dominos somewhere between the first and the last domino is missing, the final domino will not fail. If the final domino is the result of the problem, proper troubleshooting is finding that missing domino and putting back in play so the last domino can again fall.
Once you have trained a new tech on the following:
Get a solid understanding of what is happening,
Determine what the general malfunction appears to be,
Confirm the beginning and end of what makes the process work, or in our case, does not work,
Final troubleshooting can now begin and will be much easier.
To begin training on final troubleshooting, again remember KISS – Keep It, Super Simple. Always start at the very beginning of the process. Usually, it will be Water or Power, and it sounds obvious. Still, many wasted hours have been spent only to be discovered we are not feeding power or water to the system process, thus rendering it inoperable from the outset. No power, no water, no work!
Once a new hire is trained to make sure the entire process should work (we do have power or water), you want to make sure they do not waste too much time going from point A, point B, Point C, and so forth, essentially just following the process path directionally. Ideally, you want to have them measure from the beginning point to a midway point. If that proves to be uninterrupted, then you have eliminated many testing points that, although lead you to the same place but will take a far more significant amount of time to get there. Each time you split the difference, you quickly narrow down the focus of the problem until you can find the small section where the problem lies. Hopefully, this will make the suspect part apparent, and in many cases, it will, but it will always reduce troubleshooting time. Remember, we are looking for that missing domino. If that missing domino is located near the end, visually, we can see that immediately. But if we cannot see it, but we can determine what dominos have fallen and which ones are standing, we can narrow quite quickly where the problem lies.
I know you get it, you know how to troubleshoot, and you know how to tell someone your process. But how do you TRAIN them?
First, you need to provide new technicians with proper tools, whether Multimeter, water testing kits, specialty trade tools, or Parts Diagrams & Schematics.
Have them shadow a seasoned tech on calls and observe the tech's interaction with the machine and problem.
Allow the seasoned tech on subsequent calls to guide the new tech quickly through the troubleshooting process to make quick work of the call. Then an explanation can be discussed in more detail outside of the call to explain why the specific troubleshooting process was done.
Finally, the seasoned tech should allow the new tech to take care of a problem from start to finish and only interject if the troubleshooting is heading down a rabbit hole or imminent danger to the tech or machine.
Note-taking should not only be encouraged and potentially required. It is proven science that many people retain information better after writing it down.
Finally, have lots and lots of patience with new hires. Again, what is evident to you is not always apparent to them.
Remember, at one point, you too were a new tech with no skill set in this specific industry. Someone took the time to help you. That person could have been your employer, colleague, manufacturer support, or even a customer. They took the time to be kind to you and show you the ropes. Do the same in return with your new technician, and you will be rewarded with a solid employee whose customers feel confident having them work their equipment, and they will become a valuable asset to your team.