Do I need a service plan for my office coffee machine?
Alex | June 28, 2023 | 3 minute read
Have you decided you want to get a coffee machine for the office? Perhaps you want to reward your team with a quality coffee experience, or you’re upgrading your old machine. Whatever the reason, you’ll probably be thinking about a service plan and if you need one.
What’s a service plan?
You’ll likely be familiar with the term ‘service plan’ but let’s take a look at what it means exactly. Put simply, service plans are contracts. They are offered by companies so the consumer gets a number of services for a set cost over a certain period of time. Depending on what service plan you choose, you’ll pay a subscription-type fee. This will mean that if anything goes wrong with your machine, you’re covered by your plan. You can think of it a bit like insurance. There are different levels of service and cover that we’ll outline below.
Warranty
Your first and most basic option is a simple product warranty. This is something that will keep your office coffee machine covered for manufacturing faults. This will be for an agreed period of time – usually a year or two. You’ll get a warranty on most high-ticket products like white goods you can pick up in shops. So when you buy a dishwasher or fridge, for example, it’ll come with a warranty as standard.
In some cases, a warranty may be satisfactory for your coffee machine but there are unfortunately disadvantages. The main issue is that once your warranty expires, you’re pretty much on your own. If anything goes wrong, the onus is on you to get an engineer out. Also, note that if you buy a machine that’s meant for domestic use but you’re using it in a commercial setting, the warranty will likely be invalid.
Essential service plan
You’ll find that most office coffee machine providers offer a range of cover. In our case, we offer an Essentials package and a Total Care plan. At FreshGround, we consider having basic cover as essential, so we don’t offer a warranty-only option. This level offers customers extended cover and it’s the equivalent of our Essentials package.
This cover means that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve had your coffee machine, it’ll get fixed if something breaks down. As long as it’s the fault of the machine, we’ll fix it. This will exclude accidental damage and lack of care – so this means no hitting the machine to try and make it work, please!
Total Care plan
Again, most providers will offer a more advanced level of cover, and our premium service plan is called Total Care. If we take the car analogy again, we can consider this cover like a full annual care package. With our Total Care package, you’re covered for pretty much everything. We’ll also take regular steps to maintain your machine meaning less downtime. On top of this, we’ll also train and support your team on how to maintain your machine. This helps to save you time and trouble, and any potentially chargeable callouts. This level of care takes a proactive approach to keeping your machine up and running. You don’t have to wait until something goes wrong as many issues are preventative with regular maintenance.
As a facilities or office manager, you’ll understand the need to keep your team happy and the many benefits this brings. It’s widely known that a happy workforce is a more productive, more creative workplace. It can positively contribute to a positive workplace culture. By adding quality coffee as an office perk, employees will feel valued. It can even go so far as to attract and retain talent. In conclusion, we recommend this option if you want a happy and hydrated team in the workplace.
Do I need a service plan then?
We’d always recommend a service plan when getting an office coffee machine. It just means that if something goes wrong, you’ll have a coffee machine that’s up and running in no time at all.
You can check out our machines and levels of cover and if you need a hand with selecting the right coffee machine for you and your team, simply contact us.