Ask The Expert

Tapping into Technical Support Resources for Toshiba/Canon CT

Do you have hard-to-solve troubleshooting cases? The experts from Richardson Healthcare/IMES are up for the challenge.

Fri Jan 04 2019By Richardson Healthcare

We recently spoke with Dean Clark II, Director of Inside Sales at Richardson Healthcare/IMES. Dean has been on the front lines of Toshiba/Canon CT tech support and parts needs for more than eight years, helping IDS and independent service providers around the globe save money and uptime. Here, he'll give insights about common issues he hears from the field. 


What are the first things you ask for when an engineer calls for tech support or troubleshooting help?

Not only the type of CT the engineer is working on, but the software version, as well. We also need to know if they are on site yet or not—many engineers want to get the biggest jump as possible on the troubleshooting and repair process as possible. 

Then the type of error message the customer or technician is seeing on screen. This tells us a lot, but we really need to see the error logs to start diagnosing the issue. 

If they’ve been through our Training, they already know how to get the logs that will help our tech support team diagnose or verify the problem.  If not, we can walk them through how to get the logs.


Walk through a typical support call.

Typically, that is the call that we get from an engineer: he or she is not yet onsite, but received a call from a technician saying that there’s a problem and they “got this error message.”  We discuss with them what the error could possibly mean, and try to get an idea of how often it’s happening, plus what studies are being performed when it happens.  When the engineer is onsite, we’ll work while he or she tries to replicate the problem, or else look at the error logs to see what may be the cause.   

The most successful engineers search for the root cause, rather than simply the first fault they find. It’s too often that the issue stems from a simple fix—there’s even a loose cable connection that can show up as a ring artifact! No one wins when first impulse is to ship and replace a part that is ultimately not needed. That wastes time for the site, the engineer, the purchasing departments, and so on.  

Let’s take a few extra minutes to comb the error logs. It pays off.


What makes your team unique in helping engineers and offering tech support

We have developed proprietary programs which help us decode error logs immediately. Our sales and customer support teams have these tools, as do the students that have graduated from our training programs.  Using these decoders in the field to troubleshoot problems can act like a shortcut, and narrow down what replacement part or parts are needed without any additional assistance. It creates an independence for field engineers that contributes to better uptime. 


Something your technical team has created you’re especially proud of?

Beyond the error log decoding tools, our team has developed flow charts and reference guides, and other software tools. All designed for use by engineers in the field. These are proprietary resources that come from our long history of focus in the Toshiba/Canon CT platform. 

New tools are launched all the time, too. We are proud of our hands-on training program, but the resources we provide to field engineers are uniquely helpful for Canon CT service providers.

To learn more about Richardson Healthcare, visit their website, here.




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