It was 2 a.m. when Bill Gordon, manager of the Ceitronics service department, got an emergency page at home from a harried facility manager at San Jose International Airport. The airport, a long-time client, had just experienced a potentially devastating electrical problem. There was a power surge in the main feeder line to the airport’s security devices. A lot of equipment was down, and a lot of it was burned out. Could Ceitronics send a service tech out immediately?

Within seconds, Gordon had dispatched technician Bill Collier to the site. “Bill had worked a full day just a few hours before,” said Gordon, “but he spent the next eight to ten hours out there working to solve that problem. He did a good job. We pride ourselves on being able to do that. And we pride ourselves on doing more than a good job. We want our customers to be happy, so customer satisfaction is also of top importance.”

San Jose International Airport is just one of the many Bay Area companies and institutions that work with Ceitronics to solve their low voltage service problems. Others include Hewlett Packard, Bechtel, Genentech, Ernst & Young, East Bay Municipal Utility District, the San Jose Museum of Art, Lockheed Martin, and the City of San Jose.

Service calls at Ceitronics are handled within the geographical area of Northern California, and can range from testing fire alarm and card access control systems to performing sophisticated repairs on fiber optic systems and network servers. Ceitronics is fully staffed by professionals cross-trained within the company’s areas of expertise. A pool of on-call field technicians is also available.

Specialties include the disciplines of audio and video systems, voice/data and fiber optics, fire life safety systems, security and access control systems, and educational communications systems. Collectively, staff technicians have over 100 years of combined experience, and are certified in most major product lines. Several of them teach various subjects at the IBEW Training Center for journeyman apprentices.

“I often ask my guys to do a very difficult job without a lot of preparation,” said Gordon. “The technicians are very intuitive, and have a good understanding of what service is, and how to get from point A to point B. But most importantly, they have to be concerned with the customer and what the customer needs.”

In addition to taking care of the company’s in-house warranty and preventative maintenance agreements, the department also handles ad hoc emergency service and routine on- call repair. For other kinds of non-emergency related service calls, Ceitronics usually schedules an initial site review at no charge to evaluate the condition of current systems and perform other diagnoses. At that time, the technician inventories the system and its elements and initiates a system record.

Rules for Customer Service

Like everything else these days, the Service Department is becoming more and more high tech. “All our service technicians have laptop computers,” says Gordon. “As technology gets more embedded into equipment, we face more and more software-related issues, so a computer is a necessity. Almost all of the equipment we work on has some sort of computer interface. It’s very important that our guys have laptops so they can speed up our ability to service the customer. We can often make changes to the customer’s program off-line and then go back out to the customer’s site and finish the repair. It’s quicker and less expensive for the client.”

Gordon says his department, like every other department at Ceitronics, strives to dispense Fabled Service (see President Aaron Colton’s column on page 2). Here are a few of Gordon’s rules for making customers happy:

• We are genuinely concerned about our customers. We are concerned about their needs, and we realize that any problem, no matter how small, is NOT small to them.

• We will take care of our customers. We have a commitment to quality. We don’t forget about you, and we pride ourselves on doing a good job.

• We want satisfied customers. We solve our customers’ problems as quickly, efficiently, and economically as possible.

• If it’s a job we can’t do, we recommend other vendors to our customers. We have no problem sending someone to a competitor if we feel that person can do the job better for the customer. If we can’t do the job for our customer, we want a qualified, reputable vendor to be able to take care of them.

Gordon says a recent accolade from a satisfied customer is the kind of feedback he strives for on each job. “Recently we’ve been doing site reviews on server equipment in the Bay Area for ADC APEX, a company headquartered in Maryland,” said Gordon. “Last week a manager from ADC asked us to go to Modesto and Sacramento. They told us, ‘It doesn’t matter about the travel time or the extra expense. Ceitronics has proved itself to be a competent and responsible company, and your workers are proficient and have an excellent attitude toward the customer. We want you to do it, and cost is not our major factor.’”

"Those,” Gordon concluded, “are the words I love to hear, and the kind of response that we want back."

Illustrations
1. Fiber Optic and Copper Cable Backbone, IBM Fire Life Safety System

Other Features
1. Newly awarded Ceitronics Projects
2. NOTI-FIRE-NET System Components