Customer Care: the benefits of a preventative maintenance plan

Any instance of downtime – planned or unplanned – is costly for a business. Knowing you have the best, most reliable equipment is one thing but without ongoing care and service of that equipment, your business is constantly at risk of expensive reactive maintenance or repair shutdowns.

Preventative maintenance planning ensures even the highest quality products, designed and purpose built for their application and environment are given the utmost care and attention, throughout their life cycle. It also adds an extra layer of protection beyond just having a fully warranted plant and regular scheduled shutdowns. A preventative maintenance plan pays specific consideration to individual pieces of equipment, in the context of shutdowns, but also with regard to their constant ongoing care – 24 hours a day, all year round.

What is preventative maintenance?

True planning means care of your equipment is available whenever you need, on the phone or on site, wherever you are. There are some misconceptions around this kind of planning, with tailored plans often thought to be lock-in contracts, with legally binding implications. Suppliers that excel in service delivery understand that preventative maintenance is a critical component of their customer service – ‘reliability’ should refer to more than just the products – it must be inherent in the after-sale service and support that is offered and delivered.

Preventative maintenance planning for Sullair comes in the form of their Customer Care Plans, customised for the individual business and covering all makes and models, around the clock and nationwide. Powerfully, preventative maintenance planning enables a business to build their annual budget around the operations of the equipment – factoring in cumulative hours of running time, and the ongoing costs to maintain the unit, in advance.

One of the key benefits of this kind of forward-planning is cost reduction, with plans set at fixed pricing enabling a customer to accurately forecast servicing within OPEX budgets. Customer Care plans also come with built in savings around priority part selection, and opportunities for reduced cost on listed spare parts, providing benefits to the customer against retail pricing. Another significant advantage is the reduced administration of service needs, with set prices for 24 months allowing instant purchase order generation prior to works. This means no time consuming back and forth administration around quotes and adjustments.

Shael Esler is National Service Business Manager for Sullair Australia, and she is passionate about how transformative preventative maintenance planning can be for a business. “When we look at the hours they’re running, the equipment they have on site, the hours the equipment runs, and then forward plan what we anticipate is going to be due in that year, it really has a positive impact on customers building their budgets”, explains Esler. Ideally the maintenance can be slotted into the customer’s pre-existing shutdown blocks. “By looking at estimated run hours and forward-planning maintenance they have a better chance of scheduling within planned shutdowns rather than at greater cost outside of that”.

Sullair’s Customer Care Plans

Sullair has a three-tier preventative maintenance program in place, available to all of their customers and typically applied to Sullair or Champion products. The care also extends to competitor equipment, and to whatever branded equipment or parts are incorporated into the Sullair customers’ compressor solutions (depending on the plan).

The entry level plan is Customer Care, which is a standard service agreement. The next level plan is Customer Care Plan Plus, including component service kits and some other additional features. The top level of care is Customer Care by Design and as the name suggests, it’s designed for your needs, catering to specific requirements away from the norm. The plans are inclusive of all parts, labour, travel and consumable service parts (conditionally), can be combined with extended warranties for ultimate cover, and ensure the compressor system is serviced on time to its required schedule.

The three levels of care provide economical fixed price servicing for all compressors, with slight differences between each plan. For a general breakdown of each, please contact your service representative.

Most importantly though, the level of care plan a customer has in place, is a clear indicator to Sullair’s service and support team of the true scope of work that’s going to be required. They can then be responsive, providing whatever is needed to the customer, within the parameters of their care plan.

Interested in finding out more?

For more information please contact the Sullair Customer Care Plan representative nearest to you or contact us here.