Issue 0806/3 - According to a recent survey, only 30% of businesses are ‘satisfied’ with their current in-house printer and only a similar proportion are ‘very satisfied’ with the quality of hard copy they achieve from the printer!
Well-known for the levels of stress they place on users of all types (~40% of corporate technical support calls are printer related!), printers can be dire time-wasters. In fact, as simple an operation as changing a software firewall or antivirus software can render a printer totally inoperative unless it is uninstalled and reinstalled – believe me, I know!!
This survey was conducted by Oki in the UK and represented a relatively small sample of businesses in the London area. But, nonetheless, it shows that the industry needs to take note of the feelings and needs of its customers and work hard to make printers easier to install (and to maintain that installation), more intuitive to use and more informative when it comes to troubleshooting.
Messages received by the user during an installation process can be less than helpful and if the connection with the printer is lost for any reason (such as antivirus software change), the only knowledge the user has is that their jobs do not print. Tracking the failure down to the software change is highly problematic.
Frustration with a printer causes stressand has a cost implication
In some instances, network installations require detailed adjustments to be made to such system elements as IP addresses and firewall exceptions. These requirements are rarely documented adequately and the processes should be automated – as some printers are indeed able to achieve!
All issues of this nature affect productivity, which means they have a cost implication and affect the bottom line of the organisation.
Also highlighted by the survey is that a very high proportion of businesses (83%) do now consider colour to be a vital part of their printing capability. Accuracy of images printed (presumably colour accuracy) was noted by a surprisingly high 63% of organisations as being critical. On the other hand - bearing in mind the appallingly wide variation in colour accuracy produced by the inkjet printers on the market (business graphics in particular), perhaps this result is not so surprising!
Thankfully, there are indications that appreciation of environmental issues (as well as Cost of Printing issues) is on the increase – 35% identified duplex printing as a key feature of their office printer.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of this survey is that further work needs to be undertaken to determine in more detail where the pain points really lie and what users really feel about the printers they use in real life.
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