This week on the Westcan blog, we’re breaking down how our Service Department functions and works together to provide the best technical support in Western Canada.

Our Technicians

At Westcan, we have 21 technicians across our 7 branches, all with various backgrounds. Their key responsibilities include building, servicing, integrating, and maintaining communications systems. Whether you need technical service in PTT over cellular, land mobile radio, SCADA, or satellite, our team of qualified technicians can help.

Service Calls

Our technicians are responsible for responding to a wide array of service calls. Although they are often scheduled in advance and occur 2-5 times per week, they will also respond to emergency calls without notice. Summertime is the busiest time of year for our technicians, who can often be found visiting clients and doing routine system maintenance.

Here’s the standard procedure when a client calls in for service:

 

Initial Call

When a client calls, they are entered into our ticketing system through our TAC (Technical Assistance Center).

Information

Our team will gather all required information from the client, and attempt to resolve their concerns over the phone. If the issue is complex and requires further follow up, it is assigned to one of our field technicians.

Deployment

If needed, a technical will be deployed to help determine the root cause of the issue.

Close Ticket

The issue is resolved, and the ticket is closed. During this process, clients receive every update to the ticket, which allows them to track their issue from initial call all the way to resolution.

Types of Service Calls

  • Equipment Repairs

  • Preventative Maintenance

  • System Installation

  • In-Vehicle Installation
  • Troubleshooting
  • In-Vehicle Installation
  • Inspections
  • System Commissioning
  • And More

Service Department Logistics

As most service calls are prescheduled, our techs are typically given a few days to plan and prepare for their scheduled tasks. However, our techs are often required to “triage” certain events, and tackle higher priority calls (like an emergency outage) if they come in.

Part of the corporate culture at Westcan is to keep HSSE (Health, safety, security, and environment) at the forefront of everything we do. To ensure we’re sending the most qualified technician to each job site, we utilize our “Training Matrix”, which shows what certifications each tech has, and what sites they’re qualified to visit.

Some of our technicians are assigned certain customers and will primarily handle each issue for that particular customer. On occasion, a service call will require our techs to take additional safety, PPE, or site orientations.

Equipment

All of our technicians have their own Westcan ACS company vehicle, diagnostic equipment, and tools required for the job. This allows them to prepack their vehicle with all the tools they need to best serve our customers.


Training/Courses

Our technicians’ basic credentials can vary across the team, from Electronics Engineering Diplomas, to Communications Technicians Journeymen, to Wireless Systems Engineering Technologist Diplomas.

Here at Westcan ACS, we also provide out technicians with internal hands-on training and help prepare techs to complete their industry certifications/designations through standards bodies such as CompTIA, ETA, ASET, etc. We also provide all our techs with vendor specific training and include manufacturer certifications as a large part of our training program. Our technicians have very in-depth and diverse training backgrounds with many areas of expertise including (but not limited to):

  • Dispatch Consoles
  • Cellular Technologies
  • In-Building Amplifier Systems
  • Distributed Antenna Systems
  • Commercial and Industrial Technologies such as SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)
  • Microwave Systems
  • Telephony
  • VSAT
  • MSAT

We hope you enjoyed our quick summary on what keeps our service department running! If you have any other questions about our service department credentials or experience, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 1-800-794-3926 for more information!