When Hench Control was acquired in 2007, the new management team sat down and looked at how our customers were being supported and communicated with and quickly realized immediate attention to the marketplace was paramount. It became clear and obvious that the level of support and communication was extremely low and in some cases non-existent. Before the monitoring program was implemented, it was not uncommon for customers to call notifying us that their system was in disarray and it was an emergency to get things resolved immediately. This usually was a result of limited communication for a long period of time with that customer along with the Energy Management System being manipulated through trial and error by individuals who were not qualified or trained to do so. These events led to a poor customer experience with the company and product.
What we have observed is that once a new installation (or an upgrade) is completed, over time performance slowly deteriorates due to various factors. This is no different than if you were to buy a brand new car and never take it in for an oil change, replace the brakes, etc. Often times what we’ve found is that a facility’s original operator may have been trained on how to use the system, however after generations of turnover, that tribal knowledge of the system gets lost until the expertise of the system is completely gone. At this point, the current operator would attempt to overdrive the system with what they thought it was suppose to do instead of letting it balance and optimize the facility based on the Hench thermodynamic criteria. Another scenario we have seen is when the individual who is knowledgeable of the system holds this information hostage as if it were a “black box” which prevents the facility’s management team from having any other options.
After identifying and evaluating these scenarios as well as the chain of events that took place under the old guard, the new management team came up with a program that is much more intimate and proactive with our customer base – the monitoring program. We have developed and built out an in-house technical center to be accountable for our customers, so an active relationship takes place between us and them. This way, our technicians are dedicated to their own customers and get to know their operations and personnel very closely. The key thing on the performance side is to ensure that everything is performing at its peak level and the energy savings are being maximized – the monitoring program takes care of this.