‘How long will it be down for?’. It’s the first question any ophthalmic service engineer will be familiar with during an equipment fault, and one that may be answered with more accuracy and confidence for ZEISS customers thanks to several recent improvements to its service offering.
When an OCT, ophthalmic surgical microscope or refractive laser system breaks down, the financial impact is often the first consideration for an eye clinic. This is because it is the most measurable metric, but cancelled appointments can also be counted in less concrete terms like reputational damage to the business and patient impact.
Following the installation of ophthalmic equipment, the supplier or manufacturer will ultimately be judged on the device’s performance. This is closely followed by their responsiveness when things go awry, the clarity of their communication and the time it takes for their equipment to become operational again.
“And if suppliers like us can nail these key aspects, then customers are going to be happy and see the value of their investment, but that’s the challenge,” says Mr Dane Moloney, head of Medical Technology for ZEISS in Australia and New Zealand.
Moloney’s remit is wide, overseeing all functions within ZEISS’ medical division in the region: sales, marketing, clinical applications and service. It encompasses around 90 people, but what’s interesting is that more than half of these employees are in the technical service team.
This speaks to the emphasis manufacturers are placing in the aftersales service space – an area where ZEISS is reinforcing its commitment with a recent restructure of its service team, and the rollout of two new platforms, ZEISS Smart Service and MyZEISS, that promise to enhance the service experience for practices and operating theatres. More sophisticated remote diagnostic and repair capability are what’s being promised, alongside less equipment downtime and greater oversight for practices of their inventory and repair history.
“Our technical service team is a huge investment from a staff perspective, and that comes down to the fact that we’ve got a large installation base with surgical microscopes, diagnostics and refractive lasers. The ability to be able to maintain that equipment and get the clinics up and running quickly is key,” Moloney says.
“We recognise that if an optometrist doesn’t have their OCT working, that’s real service and real revenue impact. Equally, if a cataract surgeon has to cancel a case because the microscope is down, you can imagine the effect on the patient. And then there’s a more commercial space like refractive lasers where people are paying a premium for laser vision correction, which is largely elective and completely out-of-pocket. The technology is a huge part of what that surgeon is offering, and if it’s not maintained and performing as expected, the reputation impact, not to mention the patient impact, for the surgeon is significant.”
Traditionally, Moloney says ZEISS has had a small customer service team based in Sydney that would take calls, and triage and troubleshoot before scheduling engineers to visit the practice or theatre. Sometimes these engineers would drive hours with multiple part options before arriving to diagnose and attempt to fix the issue. But when the problem can’t be rectified on the first visit, this is where delays creep in.
This was the ZEISS service model for many years but four years ago the company assessed how it conducted this part of its business and whether it was delivering what customers demanded. This led to an overhaul of the service department, starting with the customer service team by creating roles solely devoted to either scheduling engineers for maintenance and repairs, to schedule preventative maintenance, or to manage 12-month service agreements.
“On the engineering side, we’ve now expanded to 30 engineers, with three of those roles – and I anticipate more in the future – being purely remote. Two are in Sydney and one is in Melbourne, and they don’t ever go on site. Instead, they’re surrounded by an IT setup and can dial into diagnostic equipment mostly, but sometimes microscopes and lasers, and expedite the diagnostic process and sometimes conduct the repair,” Moloney says.
“The great example of that is with our large installation base of Forum software; practices can’t wait for us to drive two hours across town because that can disable the whole clinic if it goes down. So, our ability to remotely fix any software related issues is crucial.
“On top of that, we’ve now started to place engineers not just in the capital cities. For example, most recently we hired an engineer in Christchurch, New Zealand. We’ve also expanded how many spare parts we keep here in Australia, with the value of these components now totalling in excess of $3 million – when you service equipment like refractive lasers and neurosurgical microscopes, the parts are high value and we recognise that if customers are investing large amounts, then they shouldn’t have to wait weeks for it to arrive from Germany to get it fixed.”
While ZEISS’ service team is ultimately judged on how long it takes to rectify the issue, Moloney says customers are also sensitive to how the process it handled. They want responsiveness and communication. It’s something the company takes seriously, with 100% of cases sent a Net Promotor Score (NPS) survey – a gold standard customer service metric.
“We analyse that closely. We get feedback and occasionally we get detractors. We review them as a management team and try to figure out what we should be changing to try and reduce that experience from happening,” he adds.
Industry ‘crying out’ for new service platforms
Mr Aaron Semler, digital projects coordinator and part of the ZEISS team for more than 10 years, can envisage a future where big data can predict breakdowns before they even happen.
It’s the direction the industry is heading, and it has seen ZEISS focus on the rollout of two digital platforms that will elevate the service experience for its customers.
The first of these is the ZEISS Smart Services secure remote access platform. The big innovation for customers on board with this service is that ZEISS service engineers can obtain remote access to the clinic’s instrumentation – through the ZEISS central server – with a touch of a button at the practice end.
Semler says ZEISS’ Refractive Service Team has seen particular success with this platform. It all comes down to accessing logfiles that provide important clues as to why the equipment isn’t functioning. By accurately diagnosing remotely, it sets the scene for quicker repairs – hopefully on the first visit.
“With implementing ZEISS Smart Services on all our new VISUMAX 800 installations and some existing MEL90 lasers as upgraded, it allows the Refractive Service Team to remotely retrieve the logfiles and diagnose faults. This saves precious time by arriving prepared for a repair with the required parts or to check for potential faults prior to arriving for a scheduled maintenance service. This is a remote functionality that previously hasn’t existed for the refractive team,” he says.
“The next phase is to focus on making this available to microsurgery customers, including cataract surgery, another segment where we aim to see the same benefits to customers.”
The second digital tool ZEISS is introducing is a Service Portal special feature within its existing MyZEISS platform. Becoming widely available in 2024, this allows customers to log and track service calls for their ZEISS equipment, as well as upload images and videos of faults to provide extra clarity around issues to better inform the service team prior to attending or connecting instruments. Customers can then review service history for all jobs logged via the MyZEISS Service Portal.
MyZEISS also gives customers a detailed overview of their inventory, the location of their devices, and the status of service contracts and warranties.
It’s all designed to take the hassle out of tedious phone calls to report the details of a fault, as well as locating documentation before a service engineer is dispatched.
“And, based on the information provided through the Service Portal, maybe ZEISS Smart Services can be used to pull the logfile and check before we call the customer back,” Semler adds.
Moloney says ZEISS is prioritising the migration of more practices, clinics and hospitals across to ZEISS Smart Service, which comes at no charge. Most can see the value conceptually and private clinics have been quick with uptake, but more work is needed to motivate other customers.
“We have to help them achieve that. We see real value to the customer and real value to us – and in that sense, we need engagement from customers to come on that journey because invariably they need to tap into some of their resources, such as IT, to set it up. But once it’s operational, it’s very effective,” Moloney says.
Regarding the MyZEISS Service Portal feature, he believes having the capability to report an issue via an online portal without a phone call – as well as a place for practice’s to view repair history of their equipment – is overdue for the ophthalmic market. It’ll also remove the need for customers to manually enquire about the model, age and location of their equipment.
“It’s no different to if you own a fleet of cars, you want to know the history of your devices, the age, the performance, and the issues, so that customers, particularly hospitals, can make decisions around when they should budget the capital expenditure to then upgrade,” he says.
The ultimate juggling act
As the medical service manager for ZEISS ANZ, Mr Simon Kacimaiwai oversees the 30-strong service engineer team, as well as the customer service team. He has been with ZEISS for almost 18 months, but worked in a similar role for Device Technologies for 12 years.
During his ZEISS tenure, he’s already seen exceptional examples of service, including an engineer who serviced multiple customers on a multi-day, 1,800km road trip covering Kununurra, Broome, Fitzroy Crossing and other outback towns across WA. He also recalls craning a refractive laser into the eighth floor of a Laser Vision Centre in Sydney, requiring the closure of a busy street.
“The team started around 5pm and finished around 5am. That was an exceptional piece of work, and the machine was ready to go for the customer who didn’t experience any disruption to their business,” he says.
Running the service department is an unenviable balancing act. Engineers can only be dispatched to jobs if they have the appropriate training, and it’s made all the more difficult by Australia’s vast geography. Sometimes engineers can have up to three days out of their schedule in remote cases.
“And for some of our high-end machines like the refractive lasers, an engineer will have to go to Germany for four weeks training on no less than three occasions. That’s a big commitment on personal time and expense,” he adds.
Kacimaiwai says there is a major focus on the “first time fix rate”; when engineers repair the device on the initial visit. With triage being key to this, he expects programs like ZEISS Smart Service and the Service Portal on MyZEISS to offer easier access to logfile information without much input on the user end.
But where he thinks the ZEISS service shines most is the access to “a global knowledge compendium”. That means if local service engineers can’t resolve an issue, it can be escalated to a technical product specialist. Following this, it’s raised to a second level of support to experts in Europe and India with immediate response.
“Everything is done very quickly, and you essentially have the manufacturers and creators of the equipment almost talking directly to our engineers to resolve an issue – the global support is fantastic,” he says.
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