Canon believes in a future where the failure rates of machines will be reduced to a large extent

The USP of Canon when it comes to its service is simple – it first understands the requirement of its customers and basis that design the complete Service plan for them. And this is how it tries to differentiate itself from the other brands. 

Rahul Goel, Director, Market Engineering Group - Canon India while explaining the company’s service strategy also highlights the fact of how the future of Service is changing and Canon is trying to bring out smarter machines with technological advancements.

How extensive is the service network of Canon in India?
We have a robust service infrastructure consisting of both Direct & Indirect channels, catering to our entire range of B2B & B2C products across the length & breadth of our nation. We call this outreach as - “Market Engineering”. Our relationship with customers begins way before a product is purchased and it continues for years.

In the B2B space, we have one of the largest onsite service delivery in the industry consisting of more than 280 direct staff operating out of more than 40 locations, through which we provide service support to our corporate & professional customers. In addition to this, we have a vast network of 185 partners extending support to 1000+ locations. These partners are trained and equipped to provide similar service delivery as that of Direct Organisation. Whenever a client signs a contract with us, we get an SLA incorporated. Our engineers are hybrid in handling hardware as well as software. 

In the B2C space, we have a wide service reach in India covering 300+ cities which is one of the largest in the industry. Currently, we have 6 Master Service Centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Cochin and Kolkata which are owned and operated by Canon. These are equipped with state-of-the-art facility and equipments that can carry out complex repairs and adjustments. This is complimented by a network of more than 300+ camera collection points across the country so that we can reach as many customers as possible.

For printers, we operate through our vast network of more than 235 dedicated service partners who collectively cover more than 18, 150 pin codes across the country accounting for roughly 91% of the Indian geography. In printers, we have standard SLAs while we also offer special SLAs in which the service plan is designed as per the requirement of the customer.

Our customer base is a mix of SMEs, large corporates, MNCs, banks, Women entrepreneurs and start–ups. We also cater to various industries like automobile, pharmaceutical, banking and aviation. The government sector is catered through our partners.

We are expanding our service reach to tier 3 and tier 4 cities to penetrate deeper into geographies.   

How do you differentiate between all your services - e-Maintenance, Care packs and Canon Club Elite?
We have moved from Corrective Maintenance to Predictive Maintenance for our Multi-Function Devices. We use e-Maintenance facility which functions on Remote Diagnostics and can monitor the status, work load and usage pattern for each device. It sends an alert whenever a critical technical fault occurs, or when the device is not performing up to standard. Statistics are compiled automatically and sent to the administrator so that timely support can be swiftly arranged. Each engineer can keep a track of up to 350 machines.

We have an Extended Warranty, also known as Canon Care Pack for Cameras, Printers and Scanners in order to give our customers additional peace of mind. Customers can purchase our care pack by visiting our website in.canon under extended warranty section. 

The other one is Elite services for Camera repairs, where we offer 3 days priority walk-in repair service facility and up to 30% discount on labour and spare parts. If the repairs take more time we also provide a standby camera to the customers so that their work remains uninterrupted.

Another value added service which we provide to our professional Camera users is Canon Professional Services (CPS). It is an exclusive membership service for professional photographers where we offer priority repairs and discounted services.

How big is the annual maintenance contract business for Canon? 
When we talk about B2C, all products come with a standard warranty, which depends on the type of product and the nature of the contract. Moreover we have an extended warranty facility which is also known as Canon Care Packs for our Cameras and Printers. Our care pack business is growing by 10 to 12% every year.

AMC business is gaining momentum for Canon because people are purchasing high-end products and they do not want to scrap their product even after their warranty gets exhausted.

With B2B products, we have a very good service revenue model as we sign the contract from day one. This helps in getting repeat business for us. Our repeat business is of around 80% and we have achieved a growth of 20% last year.

What kind of trainings programs have you designed for your technical support staff?
We provide various trainings – web based as well as class room and have a full-fledged tech facility at Noida C-TEC. Here we have all old/current models for all the products. We have a training facility that designs and imparts trainings as per need. C-TEC conducts 5000-6000 man-hours of training every year covering more than 1500 engineers nationally. We proactively provide trainings to our engineers before the launch of a product with follow up trainings, if needed.