Customer Training is in Short Supply

How sourcing new, complex equipment becomes a long-term support problem.

One week of factory training on PCBA capital equipment isn’t enough. Equipment suppliers tailor their training to the lowest common denominator. There, I said it.

I repeat: one week doesn’t cut it.

To think otherwise is delusional.

Are you listening, equipment suppliers?

Equipment manufacturers need to up their game in their training programs or risk opprobrium and abandonment when the next capex purchasing cycle rolls around. Like it or not, training is viewed by many customers as an appendage of ongoing service, and when service lags, or a dismissive attitude to customer machine operator skill is perceived – negative vibes resonate and are easily discerned; equally negative and unpleasant opposite effects ripple. To one’s reputation. They reverberate. Like not buying your equipment – not even considering it – the next time around. Memories are long and die hard. It’s a cruel world.

And stop whining, equipment purveyors, about the caliber of the candidates for training. You were expecting Richard Feynman? After years of rolling out incoherent GUIs suitable only for German data scientists, rather than providing a true diagnosis of and a lucid understanding of how the machines work and substituting abbreviated “express” workarounds as a surefire, fast turnaround excuse for programming, why are you surprised at the lack of understanding staring back at you? Why are you alarmed at the frantic phone calls you get, on Friday afternoon, three weeks after “training,” when nothing works, and help is needed immediately?

One learns technical tasks by repetition, by doing them more than once. Why does the ensuing confusion surprise you? Customers align personnel with equipment, often under false pretenses and poor knowledge, all because of you. They either didn’t listen or weren’t well-informed. Either way, it’s your fault. Deal with it. They want to start shipping, preferably on the afternoon of the day the new system was received. That’s how management thinks. Shortcuts to immediate revenue generation are appreciated, welcomed and encouraged. Admit it: that’s what helped you close the sale in the first place. Economists approvingly call this acting rationally or maximizing utility.

These are the realities. The other reality is that customers’ utility isn’t being maximized. As proof, we get the next call.

I’m asking equipment manufacturers to be, in a sense, irrational. Tell the truth and explain the harsh realities. Help your customers help themselves. Learning complex systems takes time. Definitely more than one week. Abundant painful personal experience confirms this. Your training programs need to change. You need to account for this more clearly in your sales approach and in your quoting. Whistling past the graveyard only makes the situation worse; it won’t go away, and it is metastasizing. Our call volume is expanding.

You know the type: you hear from them sporadically. Maybe twice a year. Always at an inopportune time. Always with a 4 p.m. Friday request that has little or nothing to do with the services your company actually offers. A careful reading of our website would have told them that, but careful is not their operating principle – panic supersedes it – so they plead with us anyway. They infer that because we have the same equipment, we train. Though an engineering service, we become joined at the hip with our capex manufacturers and are expected to become trainers by proxy. We get praised if we help; we get blamed if we don’t, as some derivative of corporate neglect. The bullseye becomes as much ours as yours.

Also inferred by many customers: we are always available to bail them out of their (self-inflicted) problems.

Because they’re the customer, and customers are irrefutably human. Especially when expensive systems won’t start, yet, uncannily, continue burning a line-item-sized hole in their cash flow.

But here’s the thing: we’re human too. Living in a time of instantaneous expectations and thoroughly tapped-out resources. Everybody wants everything. NOW!

In the same way, hypocritically but logically, customers deem you undeserving of their time when the epiphany dawns on the client’s CFO about the Brink’s truckload of money they’ve spent with you on outsourced testing in the past 24 months. By God, we could have had our own machine for that price. And we want out of the service that’s draining us dry. No thank you for your service.

So, they buy a system. By God.

And there it sits. A $500k, four-ton paperweight.

Because nobody in corporate management gave a thought to personnel requirements. And God has the day off (it’s Friday, not Sunday). Something about helping those who help themselves. Richard Feynman isn’t answering emails either. Adequate technical staffing is not the CFO’s job.

You mean we have to train somebody to program and run this thing?

Wishful management thinking notwithstanding, AI isn’t so advanced: spontaneous, remotely-controlled testing techniques are still in the R&D phase, much more R than D. So is research into the cryogenic bath prototypes tasked to enable Peter Thiel to live and plague us forever. Priorities.

Here’s the problem, and the challenge: customer ineptitude confers leverage on suppliers. Use it: suppliers can be heroes. Inactivity, indifference and a corporate shrug of the shoulders negate heroism. An opportunity is passing by and heading downstream, never to return.

Which is why we get the call. Or calls.

(Before proceeding, a digression. You might reasonably ask, why are you complaining, dear engineering service writer? Capitalism works, you say. Sure, it does. Supplier failings should draw business to us. What’s the problem, you say? You’re bitching all the way to the bank. Fair point. Two answers: 1. We are not set up to train equipment operators or programmers; 2. The tepid and woefully insufficient response of equipment manufacturers tarnishes us, despite our having done nothing to deserve it. Any monetary gains are decidedly short-term and often fleeting. Backside damage control lasts a long time, rivaling tattoos in longevity. Another short-term decision with long-term ramifications. People remember things. Often for decades.)

Anxious users also demand Teams meetings, forcing us to explain ourselves and expiate the sins of others.

“We can’t run the program you developed for us.”

“All the boards you passed on your machine are failing on our machine.”

“The test heads won’t move.”

“Our two machines clearly don’t match.”

“The machine won’t start.”

“The probes aren’t contacting the test points.”

“Do you guys do system training? The manufacturer isn’t returning our calls.”

“The thing I wanted to discuss is that there is a perception that your company has a different flying probe software than what we have, and it is not compatible, such that we cannot use your company for programming. Just wanted to get your perspective.”

Translation: we’ve been convicted, by association. Never mind that we’ve been creating programs for this customer for years. Tested their boards for years. Never mind their own management’s inept and ill-considered handling of a significant equipment acquisition. Never mind their complete ignorance of the niceties and nuances of flying probe operating systems. Never mind that their person appointed to learn programming is expected to maintain his full-time job. Programming will be a part-time job. This person now has a one-and-a-half-time job.

The bill of particulars is long, but it doesn’t matter. Only one thing matters: we’ve failed. And now we’re blacklisted. By ignorance. As a reminder: we didn’t build the machine. We only operate it, as we’ve done for almost 23 years. No matter. Guilt paints a broad brush. Scapegoating gravitates to target-rich environments.

How’s that for perspective?

Time to dig ourselves out of a hole we didn’t create.

You think I’m exaggerating, equipment manufacturers?

Then why did the OEM, whose boards are built and ostensibly tested by the CM alluded to above, call us recently expressing zero confidence in that CM’s programming and testing skills? They wanted us to assume responsibility for testing. Knowledgeable people discern incompetence. It’s a skill. That dim reputation travels far and fast.

Another call. This time from a customer who likes our programming style better than theirs. They were trained using the typical one-week wonder method: use the shortcut, self-learning algorithms – the ones that help sell high six-figure machines, emphasizing speed over thoroughness – rather than advanced techniques. They’re getting lots of test escapes from programs developed in-house, before we got involved. Programs we’ve developed for them have comparatively fewer test escapes and more accurate, descriptive yield and failure data. They want to learn more about what we do and how we do it.

We like these calls. We use advanced techniques. They work. They’re worth it.

(Another digression. I know what you’re thinking, capex folks: you said you don’t do training. So, what’s up with your willingness to share your knowledge with these guys? Spot on and very perceptive; clearly nothing gets by you. This is not training as systematized training is conducted. We were asked to explain to a valued customer the differentiators, generally, in our methods, because side-by-side comparisons of our programs versus theirs have vindicated the superiority of ours. Reasonably, the customer wants to work in ways more closely approximating our methods than those their operators were originally trained to do. And they’re sending their programs to us, to modify using our methods, to be followed by remote installation back on their machine. So, everybody wins, and the advice given is case-specific, not in a generalized, classroom-type setting. Our secrets remain ours, mostly. The customer is happy with the results.)

What is to be done? Give more training options in your quoting. If necessary, bury more of the training costs in your quotes. One week is not enough. One week now, with vague promises of more advanced training at some undisclosed future time, is also not enough. Lay out the steps. State the curriculum unambiguously. Make it a minimum of two weeks. Enforce it. Follow up. And again, don’t do this for free: build it into your cost structure and your quotes. Emphasize the difference between “paying me now” versus “paying me later.” Show your work, with data. Deliver the message clearly, clearly, directly, unambiguously, repeatedly, as good teaching should do.

AXI people, if you think I’m aiming my remarks exclusively at flying probe types, think again. I’m talking to you just as vehemently. Pay attention!

And decide: do you want to sell a machine alone, or do you want a customer for life?

Think about it. You know how to reach me. You’re welcome.

Robert Boguski is president of Datest Corp. (datest.com); rboguski@datest.com. His column runs bimonthly.