field service technician

account executive

senior account executive

customer service representative

senior field technician

Canon

The company lost almost 90% of its employees when moving to Uxbridge from Reigate, which explains why the operation has gone even worse as it is in the hands of people who play with it and hope for the best, while the minimum ambition senior employees who are in the same/similar position for 15+ years are only willing to partially share the only basic "work knowledge" that they deemed to be their asset/value to the company. 
What’s more, coupling with promoting existing employees unfamiliar with the operation to a new role with null management skill (if micromanagement with endless new reports to update counts.) That’s the recipe of a hodgepodge!  So if new hires can't survive handling the unreasonable workload without "substantial" support (unless being part of the team clique,) they often leave the business later and nonstop training for the new hires ensues just to ensure a smooth operation.  
A high turnover rate is considered the trait of great operation stability not only that, trading outdated systems for more complicated processes also makes complete sense to its chaotic management style.  There’s even a monthly list of resigned & transferring employees updated in the monthly sector meeting. 
Double standard -special treatment: As your pay banding is solely decided by your line manager, if you are not on the favourite list, unfair salary gaps on the same team is common. Making certain people like you is more important than anything else.
Serious Nepotism – A company that has a significant rate of blood relation and relatives, which means inevitably unfair treatment, is quite normal for those with that advantage tend to get better chances quickly for promotion or a pay raise than their peers.  
Passive HR attitude- With a high turnover rate also happening in the HR sector, getting a reply from your HR in a reasonable timeframe is rare. You need to constantly chase your HR until you have your questions answered. Besides, it is common that the work of any resigned employee is always possibly left unsorted until the next person/new hire is onboard, unless it’s utterly urgent, and that person will certainly have a ton of fun to start with by sorting piles of things out. 
Weak salary offer: The major difficulty that HR claims for being unable to receive enough applications to fill the positions is - the less competitive salary offer. It has a higher frequency of recruitment for a company at that scale says it all, but here’s the tip, only apply for positions from Canon EMEA, not the other. In general, there’s only one thing guaranteed that is better than the other, which is the pay and some benefits.  After all, both of them are in the same building, so why not choose a better one? Also, don’t take my word for it, come work here and see it for yourself.


Canon was a misstep from the start. I was hired due to experience in office services and copy print production by a guy promising managerial training programs after the 90 trial period. I thought moving into a law firm environment with Canon for office services would be straightforward, cut and dry with copy and print work. Law firm services are mostly b/w copies with some strict rules on reproduction and scanning of documents.
What you got from Canon, especially where I was in downtown Chicago was a lot of hospitality set-ups, breakdowns, some mail 
processing, and the occasional court run to the Daley Center (Chicago courts building). Some days there was no copy jobs but a full day of hospitality set ups and breakdowns. What really was going on was like some bizarre sitcom, minus the canned laughter. Shortly after I'd gotten there they hired a girl who would disappear at long stretches during the day who was eventually discovered hiding in a coffee and condiments storage closet texting friends on an electronic device. A slick-talking courts clerk was hired soon after who knew the courts system well enough but was awful by way of copy print instructions if he helped out. The job was to not remove staples from an original document that was being duplicated. Slick removed the staples, I ended up getting blamed even though I warned him not to. Canon frowns upon any sort of overtime as well, even if it's 2 minutes. Occasionally some copy print jobs secretaries would send down fell beyond the realm of regular working hours. I got caught up in doing a duplication job that ran about an hour overtime. Canon's regional manager out of Detroit, MI gave me a tongue lashing over the phone the second time it happened and I wasn't paid for it. Then there was a secretary that had some strange ways of stapling and paper clipping documents together for scanning back to her in a certain batched way who seemed to change the rules on how it should be done each time she sent a job. She complained so loud to my manager once I heard her through the earpiece of my managers phone as she was talking to her while I was standing some feet away. The last few minutes I was there before being terminated I was escorted into a conference room with video setup staring Orwell's Big Brother style at the Detroit, MI Canon's regional managers grim face who told me I was being terminated due to "complaints". When I asked what were the "complains" specifically she never answered and threw me a sharp look while reading off her script and raised her voice to drown out my question. I was then escorted to the elevators by my smirking, red-pompadoured manager never to be seen again.

A typical day at Canon revolves around providing customer satisfaction in every situation and on every call. The inbound calls are back-to-back. Daily schedules and attendance must be diligently adhered to in order to succeed. Daily performance statistics are maintained and techs are scored, in various areas, based on their performance. There is a lot of coaching and I use this as an opportunity to improve. No matter how good or bad the coaching is, I can ALWAYS get something good out of it. In the ITCG department where I work, I receive calls from customers who have purchased a Canon multifunction printer, fax, or scanner and need help installing or fixing a problem with a unit. This ranges from using menus to enable or disable a feature, knowing what settings in the various units might cause the problem  or fix the problem that the customer is having. But more importantly, it involves working on and troubleshooting the customer's PCs and wired/wireless home networks over the phone -no remote control software-by verbally guiding the customers through all of the troubleshooting steps. Customers all have different skill levels and need to be communicated with on that level or the call will not succeed and the customer will be frustrated. The main goal is to make the customer happy. You need to build a positive relationship with the customer. You can never lose your cool no matter how difficult the customer. Of course, you need to resolve the customer's problem in a timely manner(and your call handle time is measured for every call). So, a caller may not be able to print across a wireless network. This involves determining the cause of a communication problem on their network. Understanding networking tools will help to achieve the information you need to figure out where the problem is coming from-sometimes it's the customer router. Recommendations usually need to be made and follow up steps communicated to the customer. This is a common type of call. Sometimes it's an older person, who's son or daughter bought them a printer for Christmas, and they have no idea how to use it or what it does. So everyday, I definitely communicate effectively with many types of people and personalities.

If you're looking for a quick review:
Pros: good benefits 
Decent pay
Time off is good once you acquire it

Cons: business dress everyday no causal Fridays
Misaligned management 
No flexiblity in schedule 
You do not get any time off for 90 days
Training is on the fly and typically haphazard

For the more detailed description:

Many people whom I work with have said the same thing: "for a company with such a big name, I never would have thought prior to coming in management was so poorly chosen". It's unfortunately true. I thought before starting, that surely a company that had grown to its size would be at least organized well, structured, and trained. I was very disappointed when I came to learn this wasn't true. Now to be fair, it can depend on your boss. And of course that applies everywhere, but here I've come to find that management doesn't speak with management. The communication is lost. I have never seen the separation here anywhere else. I'll be honest, if you're looking for a job in billing, collections, customer service, or order management, take this into consideration: if you really need a job and are okay with a little bit of chaos and misaligned management then you can deal with it. But you will come to see in a lot of circumstances, the people who are in management positions don't belong there. The software is not up to date and training on the industry and the systems is haphazard. If you like structure, communication and flexibility this place is not for you. They are not very opened to new ideas and process improvements even though in an interview they will claim that's what they're looking for. I don't like bashing companies. I'm not a bitter employee out for retribution. But I wish I had known this before I started because I honestly would have stayed where I was and waited for something else. I've worked for a lot of different industries and different areas of finance. But this company needs to take a long serious look at its finance practices, managers, systems, training procedures and communication practices. I can't speak for how it is to work out in the field. But again, if you're looking to get into any form of finance or administrative services, take caution. Good luck on your search.

I thought it was a really decent company to work for when I first started. They trained me really well and there were other great employers there as well. A regular day at work was finding a service call in the morning to place into our service box before starting work. It was hard to do that if there were no calls to start off with but we had to improvise by calling our service rep to find one for us.

I learned to better analyse problems and quickly solve them in better timing. That's one great benefit to advancement. I was also able to also learn to work better with others even though we worked by ourselves at some point but through getting new knowledge on fixes enabled us to become better at troubleshooting major problems.

Management was ok, they did what they had to do but I think it would be great if there was more focus on how to better ease the pressure on technicians because there was really a lot of traveling back and forth that was done and for that point couldn't sometimes make the numbers like I could have.

Some of the co-workers were okay. There were some that were off the wall to say but that comes with the corruption of the world. It was decent getting to share ideas with those I found easily comfortable to work with but as far as others. There were some that weren't fond of who I was because of the way I was.

Hardest part of the job was definitely the traveling as it wasn't easy getting around very often. I had to sometimes go from bus to train to bus again. Especially most times when I had to travel outside my main territory. Those far distances made it at points but I had to fight the challenge and do what is best.

Enjoyable part of the job was definitely troubleshooting the mid level IR4570 copiers. They nearly became second nature to me as I adapted to working on them very consistently. It was one of my favorite machines to work on next to the IR7105 Large volume machines.

What is the best part of working at the company?
There are no words to describe Canon’s appreciation for experienced workers, in order not to adhere to the company’s age discrimination policies. (Especially when a manager the same age, gets demoted to eventually leave, (not to be fired), making the slow 2-year death, (knowing I was next), not too enjoyable. It was so not enjoyable that the next job I took, was as bad if not worse. Maybe it was that the  industry had changed, (being awarded presidents club with distinction and rookie of the year at other companies prior). Aiding in my early retirement). I’m sorry, but although a few good people were employed at Canon, there were not enough of them to make me ever comfortable recommending Canon or the industry in general to work for. (Maybe it was the Manager they hired, to replace the (great), one they let go, who made life working there, as uncomfortable as possible. Either way I’d choose a completely different industry if I were to give someone interested in working at Canon any advice. The process overall to get an order approved , was next to impossible as well. In summary: The best day at Canon was my last… 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Driving to Rhode Island in traffic, the order & delivery process. Their software systems were cumbersome and required many people to implement a sale.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Sometimes it was fun, but I was made to move my office material and photos 3 times to accommodate new reps. There was high turn over and only reps that had accounts for years were loyal.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Not enjoyable and stressful… 7:30-7 most days to avoid traffic back to Massachusetts

I worked for them less than a year and found the work environment toxic at best. The technicians are disgruntled, the management atrocious, and the only thing going for it is pay and benefits. To let you know Canon was sued successfully for not paying overtime. They also keep track of everything. The time you start work, how long it takes to fix the machine, your travel time, if you stopped to take a break, how long for lunch and when you quit. They also track when and how often you call in for help from their help line. So the techs generally carry a second cellphone to call one another so they don't get dinged for calling the helpline. Don't expect any help from management since they know nothing and all they do is sit at their desks watching where you went and how long you take. They also track how many recalls you get and your first fix completions. So if you are not mechanically or electronically inclined forget it. And you better know something about computers. The pay is ok and the best things are the benefits. They also do performance review about every 3 months and they do car inventory every 3 months. They load your car (no company car) with an unreal amount of parts. So if you have a small car it will be hard to see out the back window. And if it is your only car, you will soon get tired of unloading your car to get groceries, etc. The mileage is ok. But they also expect you to get your parts pretty much on your time. That means going to a FedEx office and picking up your parts on your time and sending drums and fixing assemblies back because you will be held accountable for these parts.

I arrive early to work on a daily basis. I clock in and immediately sign out and inspect my forklift. I continue through the day doing my work in a timely and organized fashion while cleaning up after myself and others. I notice that my co workers are either on the phone talking while hiding in a corner , or taking a nap in their forklift in plain sight of cameras and management. 
   They get away with this because management is on the computer on Facebook, ESPN ,or on their phone also. Any attempts at correcting the bad employee habits are met with laughter and than back and forth joke telling, sending a clear message no one above me or around me is taking this seriously.
   Undeterred by this I maintain a solid work ethic and punctuality for the remainder of my time at Canon USA. I will not have the quality of my work degrade because of outside forces I am a hard worker regardless of the situation.
   While at Canon USA I received certification in forklift operation, I completed all Canon Academy learning tutorials asked of me. I have been asked to train multiple Temporary hires and continue to be first in line for voluntary work including on weekends.
   I find warehouse work very straight forward. The hardest part of the day is being told by lower management and employees that have been there over 20 years , to "get out while im young".
The most enjoyable part of my day would be seeing my friends on breaks.

Canon is an inspirational brand across the world, and you definitely feel like you are contributing to the development of the company within the UK NSO when you are at work. While the usual day-to-day data entry tasks may be frustrating or mundane at times, the benefits far outweigh any potential boredom that may set in - the high level of training, learning and development platforms, opportunities to network across the company both in the office and via hybrid-working, as well as the pension, HR-support and job opportunities within the organisation, make Canon a fantastic company to work for.

Be aware, though, that this is not necessarily a fast-paced working environment, no matter which business unit or function you apply for - it is high-demand, yes, and certainly high-expectation, but there is no urgency, especially related to IT support and projects. New challenges arise every day, and your team support you every step on the business journey. Professional development, while detailed and inspiring, can often seem overly-complex and longwinded, but there are mentoring programmes and webinars every week across the company, both internally and via third-party business partners. The company ideally want staff to stay for the long-haul, and embrace the joyful company philosophy, and so the scope of opportunity within Canon make one of the best companies to work for in the UK.

I worked for the company for close to 9 years, and during that time two separate departments.  Customer Services for Canon Financial Services and then Originations-Sales Support.  At the time I was hired, the existing President looked for well-educated talent that could make for strong leaders in the company long-term.  A short while after accepting the first role, that President left the company, therefore the vision of the Captive Finance subsidiary (Canon Financial Services) of Canon USA changed.  The company's main executive management team consists of a revolving influence of Japanese Executives that change leadership usually around every 18-36 months give or take.  The culture of the company is consistent with Eastern business philosophies and practices.  The company will generally give you some stability, however due to some restructuring every few years, some departments and positions have been removed without real explanation.  However the market trends of the business show that the products offered are currently on the decline so it was expected.    I personally was lucky enough to have a reasonable, easy-going, personable and interesting immediate manager and enjoyed working for him more then the company itself. The experience did give my career quite a boost, and I am grateful I had the opportunities that the company did offer while it lasted.

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