"We are an Authorized Dealer"
Ron Robey Interview
As the Director of Service at Offix, Ron Robey manages a team of nine service technicians. “I’m responsible for their daily activities and making sure that Offix supplies its customers with 100% customer satisfaction,” he comments. Although simply put, being the Director of Service involves a lot. In addition to his tasks, it’s his duty to also keep up with the latest training for the industry’s new hardware and software products. He is alsoin charge of the warehouse, where he makes sure there are enough parts and supplies for their customers and for their technicians to stock in their cars. Finally, he manages the recruiting, hiring, and training for the Service Department. Ron remarks, “One other thing that I am responsible for is assisting any one of my technicians who might need help getting to the core of a problem, who just can’t figure out what’s going on with the machine and system. When this happens, I usually go get in front of the machine myself just to see what’s going on with it.” In this way, he ensures that they resolve the problem together on time for the customer.
Ron is enthusiastic about the training that his team has, saying “We are all officially Canon trained, some of us on different product lines. We work on everything from the fax line all the way up through the 105 page-per-minute copy machines, plus a full line of color equipment.
It is important to Ron that he maintains a leadership role. He is also a firm believer in leading by example. He tells us, “There’s not a single thing on a daily basis that I ask my guys to do that I won’t do myself. One of the things that I’ve always assured myself about was that the guys would see me doing anything I asked them to do. I’ve worked for some very good service managers, and I’ve worked for some that I’ve felt could use improvement. This experience is allowing me to mold my role into how I feel it should be fulfilled.”
Starting out with Xerox in 1988, Ron has over 20 years of experience in the copier and fax service field. After working at Xerox for quite some time, Xerox discontinued the agent program of which he was a part. By doing so, Xerox laid off over 10,000 employees, nationwide. Having interviewed with other companies, he met with Steve Valenta at Offix. Ron says, “The one thing that really stuck out to me was how service-oriented Offix is, and how service-oriented Steve is, as its owner. A lot of the other companies that I interviewed with weren’t providing their technicians with laptops and the tools they needed to do the job. Steve provides us all with company cars, laptops, and GPSs, which is awesome, it makes it so much faster and convenient for us to get to where we need to go! He also supplies us with all of our tools and parts. It just really struck home to me that this guy was very serious about service and taking care of his customers. I was actually offered more money to go to work for another company, but after meeting with Steve, talking to him, and seeing how serious the company is about service, there really wasn’t much choice for me—I decided to work at Offix.”
Taking specific pride in providing customers with top of the line customer service is one of the values that he and his team bring to Offix. “I just left a client a little while ago,” he comments, “and he has a small title agency, and has a small 22-copy-per-minute machine. He probably needs service maybe twice a year, and he doesn’t run a whole lot of copies on it. We really bent over backwards to help take care of him. He works out of his home. He’s in and out. So along with dealing with our bigger clients with special needs, we have smaller clients with special needs. We make sure that from the smallest to the largest; they are all treated with the same importance as the next.”
The best part of working at Offix is that it is a small, but growing company, and everyone there works together very well. From Ron’s point of view, “It’s nice for me to be able to walk to the President’s office and say, ‘Steve, I’ve got an issue—I could use a hand with it.’ It’s the same with any one of my technicians—I’ve got an open door policy.” And it is exactly Offix’s close-knit and family-oriented values which make it possible for their team members to provide unparalleled customer service.