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Before I suggest what I’m about to suggest I’d suggest that to absorb the first paragraph first…
Stropharia and UKW have had a bit of a falling out, seems it was silly season on UKW at the end of 2006 as everyone thought we were loaded and that let them extract the urine. That and the fact that the banker was as bent as a ten bob note I suppose didn’t help matters.
Anyway…
Several times now I’ve been asked about repairs@ being used on other sites and we’ve had people on wanting to change things etc. when really, if it were done correctly, much of the simple changes could be made by the repairers themselves. However for any of these things to happen we’d have to rewrite the module, which, given the givens with Stropharia probably isn’t such a bad idea.
We also always wanted to “weight” the calls to the subs, for obvious reasons as, as John puts it succinctly, we support those that support us first and foremost. It’s only fair really.
So, I mooted the idea of using subs funds to help with the cost to rewrite the module and make it better and I didn’t get anyone being negative about the idea. It only remains to have a discussion about it and see what we want to do about it.
I’d also like, if we choose to do this of course, know what features that you want to see. If I go with a “wish list” I’ll only be able to do it once, after that it may well be too late to change tact.
Thoughts please?
K.
Re: repairs@
As I have said before, customers like the local option, ensure the area of the repairers HQ/Office/home whatever is displayed on the list alongside their name.
Repairs @ is a great service and I have no problem with using subs funds on it.Re: repairs@
Yep and I was paying attention. 😉
One of the things I’d like to do is display a lot more info on the repairer. I’ll tell you about the rating system later. 🙂
K.
Re: repairs@
I would like to see subscribers getting more from it, we did not join just to get free info etc we joined because we believed in it,and that it was a need to our trade.
Myself on repairs@ have had one enquiry due to the fact on most of my post codes I am not even mentioned and on the ones I am, I am at the bottom of the list,only one other subscribes, and this probably applies to all of us.
I know that a lot of non subscribers do help others, and perhaps thats another way to list the repairs@.
Kirk
Re: repairs@
First I’ve heard about Stropharia, was it mentioned elswhere. 😕
Do they provide the framework that runs repairs@ ?
Jim.Re: repairs@
iadom wrote:Do they provide the framework that runs repairs@ ?
Yes, they wrote the code which is jointly owned by them and UKW as, well, I came up with the idea in the first place they only implemented the ideas.
If it’s re-written one of the criteria is that the module wholly belongs to UKW. I don’t want someone else blagging the ideas… again!
K.
Re: repairs@
kwatt wrote:If it’s re-written one of the criteria is that the module wholly belongs to UKW. I don’t want someone else blagging the ideas… again!
Blag it, bag it and UKW funds sort it, is my vote :tup:
Re: repairs@
Now I realise that this is going to get Ken up in arms but whilst I support the idea of a rewrite to allow exclusivity for UKW I still am of the opinion that many of the people on this forum do very nicely out of the free info that is available. We have already stumped up to improve the server for the masses and like Kirk I also don’t get work through repairs@. I don’t have a problem with this but feel that its about time that those that benefit the most from it should be expected to pay alittle for it. Even if you put the subs first on the listing, those that aren’t subin surely wouldn’t mind putting in, say a quid a job. When you think NESN has a management fee of £9 and GBDAR probably £15 its a bargain.
Re: repairs@
I’m not at all upset Ian, I asked the question and if I get shot down then so be it. I’m ugly enough to take it. 😉
That’s why we have these debates.
I don’t know, you see thing is that where there are people getting any kind of substantive work there’s few subs in the area most often and, IMO, that’s not fair to an extent.
Charging per call was always ruled out for repairs@ and I made a promise that we wouldn’t do that. Apart from which it’d be an admin nightmare with many invoices not worth sending as we don’t have the luxury of “taxing at source”. 😉
There’s no easy answers I’m afraid. 😕
K.
Re: repairs@
Charging at source is no good at all. There will be failed calls and we would be expected to pay the bill nevertheless.
Forget that one! However as Ian says, I believe that those of us who put our hand in pocket should be 1st in the queue when it comes to repairs@
Personally I won’t benefit a lot as we are pretty selective. For example some woman got very nasty indeed to my lass on the phone when we called her back after received a repairs@ regards a fault on some obscure product. She ranted on that we didn’t deserve to be part of such a network, and she was going to report us to UKW. (I keep looking in the A.C. module), she would have a greater moan had we been there, charged and then told her we didn’t want to know.
I digress.
Basically as far as I’m concerned do what you like with it, but if there is an option of selective issue on calls, then I see the logic, and if a non-paying member gets the fall-out, or crumbs from the table, then so be it.
Alex
Re: repairs@
I agree, I don’t think it would be to difficult to have the subs come out at the top of the list, or if you are going down a ‘ratings’ path to weight the ratings in the subs favour. 🙂
Jim.
Re: repairs@
Okay, I have gotten my head together on this one and I was waiting on another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
However I’ve given a rough spec to Li to have a look over and try to cost it out for us. The body of the request without all the nitty gritty is as follows:
The basic premise is the same as it is currently and I can detail it all out for you but what I’m looking to do is to be able to remove the management to a large extent from us, to being with the repairer once we authorise an account. From this they can control their postcodes, what products that they cover, the sales blurb that they use and so on.
So we’d need to create a login for them and then let them set up their own parameters. How we manage that I’m not quite sure yet as I wanted to talk to you about it first.
Something we need to manage is whether or not the person is a subscriber and prioritise the subscribers over the rest. So basically, any repairer can be on there for free but the subs get placed at the top of the list. A popup or java hover popup with more information about the repairer, like agencies held etc. would also be extremely useful. What I’d wanted to do there was create a little row of symbols to indicate what they did, whether they were trade association members etc.
One of the other really important things I’d like to set up is a feedback system similar to Ebay or Amazon, obviously not as complex as those but along the same lines so that customers can rate the repairer. I think this would inspire a lot more confidence for consumers..
What I’d also be massively interested in as an exercise is seeing if we can “clone” that for retailers to use for people looking for products locally.
The other thing that we have to be able to do is to push the calls onto a call handling system, but again I doubt that that’s a major issue. At a later date we *MAY* be able to do online booking but we’re a ways off that yet.
I think that’s it for a basic start.
Hope that kinda explains where I’m going here for starters. However there’s some really cool things that we can do with this, like John’s ICS scoring thing and then, if we get it right, we can get PR from that as well I’m hoping.
K.
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