In the Pro AV business, service is what will stand out. What do I mean? Well, eight years ago, the first year I chaired the Projection Shoot-Out, when you entered the venue, it was easy to immediately pick out the differences in quality between each brand and model. Now, they all look extremely similar and in some cases, they are the same. So, what's the difference and ultimately the differentiator? Humans. Humans still define the quality of customer support and service in the industry. Sure, there are fancy technologically superior computer databases, phone systems, web sites and automated fax-back systems, but ultimately, the human on the other end of the telephone line is the determinate.

So, what's the state of service in the Pro AV business? Well, I am proud to say we are doing fairly well. Sure there is room for improvement and in some manufacturers and dealerships, there isn't even a service department, but overall we fair very well. Most manufacturers are beginning to find ways to go out of their way to come up with creative service offerings that make them stand out in the crowd. Last year, few projector manufacturers offered 24-hour guaranteed service replacements for customers, but now, over 50% of the major manufacturers have adopted a policy like that. Even smaller manufacturers like Crestron, AMX/Panja, Extron, Altinex and AutoPatch offer 24-hour support.

However, we need to continue to evolve into a better and better service market. Our "bar" that we strive for shouldn't be the PC market. I believe that eventually there's going to be some kind of consumer revolt/backlash that could potentially hurt the PC manufacturers since they think what we have now is good enough. Companies like Sun (Jini) and Red Hat Software (Linux) are building universal operating systems that don't fail (yep, don't crash) and even perform at a higher level of the Mac's OS. Where's Microsoft? Well, busy modifying over 2,000,000 lines of code in Windows 2000 to fix WindowsME. We'll see if the revolution ever occurs but one thing's for sure, there's a lot of potential gain for someone who fixes the current state of performance in that market.

To stay ahead of the game we need to continuously evolve into a more "proactive" role in service and support. The best example of that is the revolution in the dealer/contractor world right now.

The future of dealer service is "proactive" service that includes regular maintenance visits from someone who just pops in to make sure everything is OK. Sure, anyone can offer that kind of service where a customer calls you when they have a problem and you go out there an fix it. But what about "just for the heck of it" visits? Why? Well, if you don't know, stay tuned as we cover this issue in more depth and we reveal the keys to proactive support. However, let me leave you with one last comment. Although the margins in hardware sales are eroding, the dealers offering proactive service are becoming more profitable every month and are solidifying client relationships that sales managers dream of.

Read on…Coming soon.


Part 2 next week

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Gary Kayye is Principal of Kayye Consulting a firm that specializes in providing marketing consulting, telephony integration and training development to the professional audiovisual industry. He spent 12 years at Extron and AMX as VP of Sales and Marketing before founding his own firm. He can be reached at www.kayye.com or via e-mail at gkayye@kayye.com. He is also the volunteer chairman of the PETC. The views expressed in this article are solely the author's and do not represent the positions of any organization to which he belongs.