Play Meter

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"You save by letting your routemen take the vehicles home with them"
our staff is in fine shape. I don't know of any dead
wood that we've got. But to accomplish that, you've
got to make it a practice to be on top of the problem
when a fellow's productivity drops. We try to talk
to him before he gets in trouble, before it gets
ingrained in him not to do a good job.
PLAY METER: Do your servicemen take the
company vehicle home with them?
ESTRIDGE: Yes, you save by letting your
routemen take the vehicles home with them. But
we have a firm company policy that no one other
than employees can ride in a company vehicle and
that the company vehicle is not to be used for
personal use. So when they drive the vehicle home,
it stays parked until the next morning. Where the
savings on this comes in is that my servicemen
usually will check into the office about fifteen
minutes before quitting time and draw any parts
that they might need for the next day, and they can
pick up any messages they might have, and they'll
get their planned schedule for the next day. So the
next morning their first stop, instead of being at the
shop, is at a location. They don't even make the
shop. You'll lose twenty to thirty minutes per guy if
you bring him through the shop. And we have
radios in the cars. When the serviceman arrives at
his first location, he checks with the dispatcher. In
fact, usually on his way to his first location, he
checks with the dispatcher to see if anything came
in during the night that he should be made aware
of. When he arrives at his first location, he
identifies himself and the number of the location he
is at, and we know he's in motion. We build in a few
checks to make sure they're not playing games with
us. Occasionally, for instance, we'll call the location
to talk to him but, quite candidly, we've found they
abide by it.
PLAY METER: Do you have problems with
employee theft?
ESTRIDGE: Maybe I'm nieve, but I don't think we
have employee theft. We had a minor incident
several years ago when we bought another route,
but that was identified very quickly, and within a
week the fellow was off the payroll. We use coin
meters. In fact, we run three meters on all our
games-one for coins, one for total plays, and one
for replays. Now, let's say that the coin meter is off
ten dollars. By checking the total play and total
replay meters, we can verify if we have a faulty
meter or not. It's like putting locks on the building;
it takes care of the honest folks. It's the same
situation with totalizers and coin meters on your
music and games. Your honest folks really like it
because they don't want their integrity questioned.
And if you have adequate controls, then everybody
knows everything is all right. And the cost for these
controls really isn't that much. We just got a
thousand in last week, and they only cost us about
$3.20 apiece. Of course, if you buy only about four
78
or five at a time, they'll cost you seven or eight
dollars apiece.
PLAY METER: You mentioned earlier that having
your routemen fill in a service pad is the best
method you've found for upgrading their service
abilities. What is another educational tool you use
for your servicemen?
ESTRIDGE: All my shop people who are involved
in maintenance and all my repair people in the field
come into the shop once a week for a one-hour class.
This class is taught by the various technicians, and
they're usually planned two or three weeks ahead of
time . So a guy knows what his class is going to be.
And it's a pretty refined thing. We take a specific
area of a specific machine that we either feel
uncomfortable with or that we've been having
problems with, and we go into detail about it. Each
class begins with a ten-minute quiz of about six to
eight questions from the previous week's quiz, and
those quizzes are graded on a percentage basis and
the grades posted. We've found that the fellows
who are assigned to give these classes want to look
good before their own peer group. Then the
students take notes during the class because they
know next week they're going to be quizzed on it.
And the grades are going to be posted where
everybody can see how they did and where the boss
can see how they did.
PLAY METER: Do you work with location
contracts?
ESTRIDGE: Yes, we started with them in 1970.
We got very serious about them in 1974, and since
1975 we have not set a location without them. Our
contracts run for five years and have an automatic
renewal clause in them for an additional five years
unless it's specifically cancelled by either us or the
location. Initially, locations were reluctant to sign
contracts because they had never done it before,
but what we're finding is that you're getting a
pretty high quality of people who are running your
taverns today, and they understand business. After
all, they sign long-term leases on their buildings,
and they understand that they need to make a
commitment. The biggest objection we have come
up against is that some feel that if they sign that
contract then we can give them lousy service. Our
comeback on that is that, with the contract, we can
then give the best service possible and also make
long-term commitments that enable us to keep the
equipment in their locations changed and modern.
If they're still reluctant, we'll take them around to
talk to two, three, maybe four of our existing
accounts, and they can ask these people if we've
given them lousy service after they signed a
contract with us. The reason we can do this is
because we sincerely believe that a contract is an
opportunity for us to give good service. Another
thing, we don't get into loans because that's not
part of our business.
PLAY METER, May, 1979