For business owners and facilities managers looking for a national sign service company to maintain your storefront signage is an integral part of the job. Your signage is a significant part of your brand identity, and it’s how both customers and prospects identify your location. Maintaining this signage can become a challenge with all the other tasks associated with running a business. For instance, we’ve all seen the stores that have one letter burnt-out of the sign. Besides looking unprofessional, it really detracts from the customer’s perception of the space and your business in general. Today, I would like to look at two different solutions offered by national sign service companies, signage on-demand vs. scheduled maintenance.

Types of Maintenance Offered by a National Sign Service Company

A conventional signage maintenance regimen for many businesses is the on-demand maintenance model. When we say on-demand maintenance routine, think “break-fix.” So, in this model, when there is an issue with your signage, you would call your national sign service company and schedule a repair to be done. As with any approach, the on-demand maintenance routine has its advantages and disadvantages. Many times, the on-demand approach can be perceived as cheaper being that you’re only paying the national sign service company when you have an outage in your lights. However, there are many disadvantages as well, to name a few:

• Signs may have outages without store management knowing about it
• On-demand doesn’t allow for inspections and annual cleanings to the signs
• Timers for lighting will remain on daylight savings time. This could lead to paying additional electric fees that you wouldn’t have otherwise paid.

The other model is a scheduled maintenance routine, whereby your signage is being serviced on a quarterly or bi-yearly schedule by your national sign service company. The regimen has significant advantages to on-demand, a few illustrations are noted below:

• Reducing Outages: Being that your lights are being serviced quarterly, there is less time when you may have outages. This helps to maintain a strong brand image for your organization.
• Cleaning: Scheduled maintenance also includes “face-cleaning”. Depending on your environment, signage can really accumulate dirt and grime (which deteriorates the professionalism of your organization).
• Preventative Maintenance: The quarterly visits and inspections also allow technicians to find problems before they create outages and other technical issues for your organization.
• Lower Utility Bills: By scheduling a visit on your signage, technicians will adjust your timers based on daylight savings time. Over time this will save you money on your monthly utility bill.
• Ensures Professionalism for Peak Times: Installing a scheduled maintenance routine will ensure that your signage looks great during peak season – like around the holiday season.

As you contemplate installing a scheduled lighting program for your facility you may wonder what are the disadvantages to this program? The main disadvantage is that you may be servicing your lighting when there are no “visible” problems. However, as with any maintenance program, you will be catching issues before they cause larger problems for your business. If you have an interest in finding out more about Signage On-Demand vs Scheduled Maintenance or installing a sign maintenance program for your organization. Reach out to us here at Action Services Group. We would be happy to speak with you about your goals and put together a customized program to help you maintain the professionalism of your signage. Contact Action Services Group your national sign service company. By calling 610-558-9773, email info@actionservicesgroup.com, or schedule a call. We look forward to hearing from you.