Gilson Connect
For an experiment to be valuable, it is vital that you trust your sample so you can be confident in the results obtained. Sample integrity refers to the quality and reliability of a given sample, but it stretches beyond what is in the sample itself. It encompasses the trustworthiness of the whole experiment.
The integrity of your sample can be affected at any stage of the workflow, from sample tracking to purification. Therefore, many factors must be carefully considered and understood throughout the process. One such factor is liquid handling and the equipment used to perform the necessary steps. Frequentlymanual pipetting, for example, can introduce high volumes of variation into your samples. This variation can render your results meaningless, incurring additional time and monetary investment into identifying and rectifying the problem.
Making sure you have proper pipetting technique can improve sample integrity, but workers are only as good as their tools. Pipettes must be properly serviced and repaired by experts to maintain confidence in your results. Working with a manufacturer that offers quality customer service —from pipette servicing to training on proper pipette selection and maintenance—enables confidence in accurate and precise liquid handling steps. This article covers exactly what quality customer service involves and how it supports your sample integrity.
Liquid handling is a crucial task performed in most experiments and is one of the most important aspects to get right for sample integrity. The most effective way to maintain the best results is using high-quality liquid handling tools that you know are accurate and precise.
Quality preventative maintenance service and calibration are fundamental to ensuring sample integrity. Most importantly, pipettes should be serviced frequently to maintain your experiments' high quality. Regularly comparing the performance with the manufacturer's specifications, such as by gravimetric analysis, can confirm that your pipette is performing at the same high levels as it was on day one. Working with a company that performs these checks as part of their standard offerings is essential to improve confidence in your results.
Despite preventative maintenance, internal pipette parts can wear out through problematic liquid handling and contamination. A damaged instrument can significantly affect the accuracy and precision of your liquid handling, reducing sample integrity. Manufacturers offering quality service will be able to help you identify your issue and alsoprovide pipette replacement parts rapidly to get your sample integrity back on track. When it isn’t possible to replace the parts yourself, you will need an authorized service technician. Look out for accreditations such as ISO 17025 guidelines (calibrated to either ISO 8655 methodology or manufacturer standards) to ensure your pipette repair is of the highest quality.
Beyond pipette checking and repairing, you may need to contact a support team for application-specific support on any other specific sample integrity concerns that arise from liquid handling. Quality customer service means you can quickly and easily get advice from a support team. For example, Gilson's service and support team is made up of experts that truly understand the science, solving your queries rapidly.
It makes a massive difference to the customer’s confidence in their sample integrity to be able to talk to someone and be helped in real-time through the process.
- Kelly White, Applications Specialist, at Gilson
To get to the bottom of any sample integrity issues you face may require discussion with your supplier. With other companies, the first port-of-call for customers is typically an automated customer service system. With Gilson, you can talk directly to our global team of experts —without any automated services or chatbots —to run through your process and get the advice you need. “Our team gets to the core of the problem as we understand the science, so we’ll try and troubleshoot the issue remotely. We keep an open line of communication and check in with the customer frequently to ensure they’re comfortable with their sample integrity,” says Dave Osmalov, Applications Specialist.
Sample integrity can be affected beyond the experiment at all stages of your liquid handling, from pre-purchase to post-installation. Quality customer service is vital throughout the process to maximize confidence in sample integrity and truly allow you to understand your workflow and liquid handling needs.
Integral to ensuring confidence in your liquid handling tasks, you must make sure that you use the right tools for the job. Consulting with a quality manufacturer’s customer service team before you purchase the equipment can ensure that you are choosing the most appropriate instrument for both scale and throughput, which can improve sample integrity by drastically reducing errors introduced later on.
Once you’ve purchased the correct instrument for your needs, a quality customer service provider sets your system up appropriately. Working with trained professionals for set-up reduces the risk of error and gives you the assurance that your liquid handling steps have integrity. For example, Gilson can ensure your liquid handling tools or systems are set up and ready to go for your workflow. “With our automated solutions such as PIPETMAX®, we’ll look specifically at what parts of the protocol you’re trying to automate to determine whether the system will work with what you want to do. Once we’ve done this, we can work with you to get the system ready with a working protocol that’s right for you,” says White.
Figure 1. PIPETMAX Automated Liquid Handler
Furthermore, understanding how to use any software, such as those included with automated and semi-automated solutions, can significantly impact your confidence in your samples. A quality customer support team will be able to help with training personnel on the software. Being well-trained on how to use the equipment enables you to design future workflows yourself while trusting integrity of your future samples.
Once the instrument has been installed, a quality customer support team should be on hand to diagnose any issues that arise in your workflow. If you have any uncertainty around using an instrument or aren’t getting the results you want or expect, an expert team will help troubleshoot and get you back on track.
Whether looking at your manual or automated lab tools, you need to understand all aspects of your liquid handling steps and how they can become affected if sample integrity is compromised. For example, if your workflow involves a chromatography step, you may find that carry-over contamination from one sample leads to traces detected in subsequent samples. A quality customer service team will support the entire workflow to identify any issues and maximize confidence. Gilson’s support covers all aspects of the workflow that use our liquid handling solutions: whether you’re purifying an active pharmaceutical ingredient or making sure that dilutions on the liquid handling systems are accurate and precise.
“We’re able to investigate a range of problems to find where the problem is coming from. Is there a problem with the method? Are you performing adequate rinsing steps? We know what aspects to check to improve your sample integrity,” says Osmalov.
The customer support team may sometimes recommend a service technician to make improvements. Working with service technicians that are highly trained in both theoretical and practical elements will get to the bottom of your issue faster. Look for qualifications that prove quality and expertise, such as Gilson’s ISO 17025-certified pipette service technicians who carry out certified pipette calibrations and repairs.
As well as being knowledgeable in equipment, maintenance, and repairs, quality customer service should provide service technicians that work in local languages. Ensuring customers are comfortable in discussions enables them to truly understand the integrity solutions provided and have confidence in their samples.
New ways to compromise sample integrity can arise as science progresses and research grows in complexity. Gilson keeps quality at the forefront through continuous improvement, including staff training, upgrading accreditations, and investing in new software and tools. These improvements enable us to solve unexpected integrity issues.
Our employees are trained to understand the science, not just the product. This gives us a deeper understanding of your workflow to help us pinpoint any issues and provide solutions faster. In addition, our new starters undergo training in Capabilities Studies, and our experienced staff members take refresher courses periodically to give them the knowledge needed to protect your sample integrity.
To help us improve our capability to support sample integrity, we proactively seek feedback using our close ties to the scientific community. For example, we launch regular customer satisfaction surveys to get feedback on our support and services. This enables us to make essential improvements for our customers and ensure we continue to offer you the highest quality service for true sample confidence.
Lean more about how Gilson’s team of experts can support you and give you complete confidence in your sample integrity.
At Gilson, we are committed to the highest caliber of quality and complete customer satisfaction with our suite of products and services. This commitment doesn’t end with your purchase —it only just begins. Our dedicated global service, support, and training teams are there to help you maintain the maximum performance of your instruments, make your lab life easier, and ensure the reliability of your data.
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