To Outsource or Not?
When one of your better customers brought in his regulator three weeks ago for its annual service, he apologized profusely for having “waited until the last minute to get this taken care of.” However, with a Caribbean dive vacation just three weeks away, it was something he couldn’t put off any longer.
“No problem,” you told him. Three weeks was plenty of time for you to take care of something as simple as an overhaul.
Then your manager quit without notice. You had to cover for an instructor who was sick. And the store was just plain busier than usual. With all that going on, it’s no wonder you couldn’t find time to squeeze in a regulator overhaul.
Now you have a customer who is getting on a plane tomorrow and, understandably, wants his regulator. Your only choice is to stay late tonight and hope your customer doesn’t mind picking up his regulator on the way to the airport tomorrow. But what alternative did you have?
As an authorized dealer for the major equipment lines you carry, your dealer agreements require you to have the training, tools and parts needed to provide regular maintenance for items such as regulators and BCs. The problem is, the telephone, customers coming in the door, classes and rentals always seem to take precedence over equipment service.
How many times have you started a day hoping to get “just a few” regulator overhauls done? Yet, somehow, by day’s end, you haven’t so much as touched the first one.
Is there an alternative to this situation? There very well may be. That alternative is to outsource some or all of your equipment service. Outsourcing can take place in a variety of ways.
- You can contract with another dive store to do some or all of your service work for you.
- You can set up a reciprocal arrangement with another retailer: He sends you the brands he’s not authorized to fix; you do the same for him. Each of you avoids having to send customers elsewhere for service.
- You can outsource some or all of your equipment repair work to a company such as Air Tech, whose business focuses solely on dive equipment service and repair.
- Some manufacturers maintain in-house service departments of their own, and will do repair work for authorized dealers, when requested.
Whether you are better off outsourcing or keeping your repair business in house will depend on a variety of factors. In the balance of this article, we’ll compare what it takes to have a successful in-house equipment service department to the possible benefits of outsourcing at least some of your service and repair business.
“The” Dive Shop: In-house done right »
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