L@B Brief - Mar 2026
COMMENT
Service staff still hard to find
ONE OF the interesting areas of agreement which emerged at the last meeting of GAMBICA’s Lab Board, was that while good sales staff have become easier to find (particularly after yet another round of redundancies at one of the largest lab distributors), excellent service staff are still hard to come by.
There seem to be a mix of reasons: growing disinclination of staff to be constantly on the road, a looming cliff edge of retirements, and most importantly, the fact that lab service engineers are not usually in a back room somewhere, they are out, representing their firms with customers, existing and future.
This need for great interpersonal skills means that there is some reticence to use many of the skilled engineers who learned their trade overseas. Employers fear that language difficulties will reduce one of their key duties, that of befriending customers, understanding their pain points, likes and dislikes about their current equipment or consumables, and most importantly; their future purchasing intentions.
GAMBICA’s salary survey will be issued next month, so if you want to be sent information on the actual salaries and bonuses paid to service (and sales) staff across the lab sector last year, do make sure you complete the survey. If you haven’t participated before, you can contact [email protected] for more information.
GAMBICA is planning to revamp its After Sales Group shortly, so if you would like to be involved, or if you want your service manager to take part, do drop us a line at [email protected].
We will also be running our Service engineers as company ambassadors training again shortly so keep an eye out for that. Better to develop your existing staff than to be looking for new ones!
Toodle Pip!
Jacqueline
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