George Robertson, Scobie McIntosh
George Robertson, Scobie McIntosh
We asked our team of internal Service Call Handlers who they felt deserved the title of Best Service Engineer. The response was clearly George and below we summarise why, this is based on his colleagues alone. Not his peers, we will come to that later.
George’s Vending Career
George joined the industry 33 years ago with KRAFT when he joined as a Service Engineer, he quickly demonstrated his natural engineering ability and became a very valuable employee.
He then transferred to Scobie McIntosh alongside other engineers in 2008 as a Field Service Engineer. He is now regarded as a Senior Engineer and is an extremely valued member of the team with a wealth of knowledge of the vending industry.
Work ethic, communication and supportive and encouraging approach
Asked what George’s worth ethic was, the overwhelming response was that it was relentless. At any given time, throughout his employment with Scobie he has always treated work situations as never too troublesome, and no site was ever too far to go.
George is an excellent communicator, both with his internal Scobie Controller, his Line Manager, and his Colleagues. He is always available to offer technical advice to other engineers, and he does so with a warmth and encouraging approach. He emits a natural, nurturing vibe that leaves the engineers feeling motivated and inspired to learn and experience more.
Other Scobie Engineer’s often call George when they are on site and cannot diagnose or fix a machine.
George takes a logical approach to helping them. Starting with the model, the issue and then talking them through the process that he would follow if he was at the site with them, he guides them right through until, over the phone they find the fault and can now go ahead and fix it. On very rare occasions, George cannot help over the phone, he will research the issue for the Engineer and call them back with a proposed action plan. This is a very credible characteristic, to support your colleagues in the best interest of the customer, ensuring that the customers machine is fixed in a timely fashion and hence, customer satisfaction is achieved with a positive outcome for everyone, including a training curve for the engineer who has learnt another solution amicably and positively.
George’s communication is very effective. When he has a site visit, he always communicates the outcome with clarity and in a timely manner with his Service Controller. He ensures that the Scobie team and the Customer are fully appraised of any particular issues or actions so everyone is clearly in the picture and on board with the planned solution.
Customer relationships
George has very steadily built up his reputation with his customers as being reliable, punctual and an extremely capable engineer. When Scobie’s internal support team carry out courtesy calls to customers following a site visit by our engineers, George will often be singled out for praise in regards to his competence, clarity of communication and professionalism.
Going the extra mile
Here is just one example of George going the extra mile for a customer. The internal support team had a call out to a site on a weekend. George was selected to attend the site. The machine working efficiently was vital to the customers’ business. George had previously only seen this machine in a training setting, never at a customer setting. Despite this, George was asked to attend, which he willingly did.
Once on-site, he identified that some of the parts were faulty and new parts were necessary. The customer got very anxious hearing this. Expecting that new parts meant at least a couple of days of the machine not being operational and therefore having a negative impact on their profit line was serious.
George is very perceptive and cares. He could simply have called the internal team and asked them to order the parts. However, knowing that being without this machine would be disastrous for the customer, he instinctively took the time to research where he could find the parts closer to the customers site. He sourced and collected the parts needed locally and got the machine back to fully functioning quickly. This not only saved the customer money by resolving their issue in one call out and quickly. It also kept their business functioning and increased the customers respect and appreciation for the high level of service that George gave on behalf of Scobie.
Summary
George is a highly respected and valuable asset to the Scobie team. The management regard him as the matriarch of the engineers and rely on him to motivate trainees, and help guide and stretch other engineers to enhance their knowledge and capability within the Vending industry. George does not cut corners. If a job needs doing, do it well is George’s approach. With this mind set, George almost always fixes his machines at the first site visit.
George contributes a wealth of knowledge across many disciplines within the industry as a service engineer, and by his day to day interactions with customers and other vending professionals.
We asked his internal service controller to summarise George in one sentence. This is what he said “George is an absolute pleasure to work with. He emits a positive attitude to every job I task him with, he motivates engineers and his character and humour are always a welcome distraction. He is quite simply a pleasure to work with, a model engineer”.
We asked his Line Manager for a simple quote, here is what he had to say. “George has an infectious and positive attitude, he knocks down obstructions to ensure he comes out with a positive, yet professional solution to any problem. He embraces and encourages positive, forward thinking changes and gives unrivalled support to his colleagues, whilst also giving invaluable input and advice to manufacturers on new product lines under development”.