Customers often do not seem to understand, or do not want to understand that repairers run a business, not a charity. And often don’t understand how the applaince industry works and why that the service that people experience is not perhaps what they might have been expecting.
In blunt terms, we’ll try to explain why some things are the way that they are.
Applaince repairers go to work, just as everyone that works does, to earn a wage and they earn that wage by being paid for their services by the manufacturer, insurance company, work provider or by the end user themselves.
All too often though this seemingly forgotten or ignored by customers and they are not aware of the conditions that we and, the industry at large, work to and therefore the customer expectations exceed the realities of the service provision by a huge margin.
One repairer explained that, “I was recently shocked when I explained to a customer, on her asking about getting an extra visit to repair a minor problem whilst we were awaiting spares from Germany, that we could not do an extra call as we only got paid on completion of the one call. The poor woman was aghast at the fact that we were not paid per visit and was going to complain to the manufacturer in question that she could not get the level of service she expected or required because of this.”
But that is how this industry works, engineers are not paid on a per-visit basis, they are paid on completion of the call.
In general the independent service agent will be paid less that £45-50 whcih hasn’t risen in over a decade in many instances and in a number of cases a lot less as many manufacturers pay less than £40 a call, to repair an appliance irrespective of the number of visits needed, the time it takes in actual engineering and/or administration and for any potential recalls be it to fit spares or otherwise.
Bear in mind that is to get an engineer to your door, spend the time repairing the appliance and call back with spares if required. Some contracts even expect for that the entire appliance to be guaranteed for 28 days after we call, so irrespective of the fault, if the appliance fails again the repairer may well be footing the bill for the repair.
Out of this repairers have to pay wages, fund offices, IT, vehicles, insurance, training and all the other aspects of the business from the very low margins available in appliance servicing.
This just highlights the fact and poses some questions we often wish we could ask customers like, given what we get paid just what level of service do you expect?
For a £200 appliance, just what level of in-home service do you think you will get provided with?
The harsh reality of the appliance industry in regards to service is that, for the money on offer to provide servcie the level of service that many customers require or expect cannot be achieved.
For this meagre reward the service company has to come to you and repair the product in your home for a reasonable cost and you can perhaps see that they can hardly afford to finance shift patterns, weekend and bank holiday working.
Why can’t we all offer out-of-hours service, bank holidays etc., simple no-one wants to pay for service, not the manufacturers, insurance companies or even the end user, that’s why!
Customers, be it commercial or private can have any level of service that they desire, no problem at all but at the end of the day, like everyone that works, they expect to be rewarded accordingly for the service they provide. Which isn’t at all unreasonable.