I assume that most of you reading this are active rechargers – many of you started in your garages years ago as I did. This leads me to reveal my dirty little secret: I was one of the worst rechargers to ever fill a toner hopper. I don’t want to get into the details or attempt any diagnostic post-mortems. I just wasn’t very good at it. But I was broke and had to stay with it long enough to learn what it was like to be a recharger.
A remanufacturer entering the printer service business is like a gas station owner opening a service bay. Both are trying to appeal to an individual customer whose needs must be approached with dramatically differing philosophies. To avoid cultural biases, let’s look at the service station example first.
To sell a lot of gas, a number of things are important – location, accessibility, number of pumps and many other minor attributes. But the central focus of the average consumer is cost. What does the gas cost per gallon? The bigger the difference in price between one station and another, the more new customers the low-priced vendor wins. As long as the gas doesn’t cause the cars to knock uncontrollably, the cheapest guy is going to keep those customers.
The same attitude may not be very useful when the gas station owner puts in a full-charge service bay or two. Price is still important, but it’s no longer the primary determining factor of what the customer wants. Think about it. When you have car trouble, how do you decide whom to rely upon? What is your primary concern?
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