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Re: A Vision of the Future?
Penguin45 wrote: my Mother. Had a Hotpoint twintub in the Sixties; complete disaster, never had a Hotpoint appliance in the house since. That’s 40+ YEARS! People DO hold grudges and WILL boycott what they perceive to be poor quality brands, and ESPECIALLY, poor service.
When we did work for GBDAR it never ceased to amaze me how many people had bought Servis because they had had a Servis Twin Tub many years ago ,Consumers are amazing creatures with very strong brand loyalities ,Mind you once their Servis had been written off after 2 yrs they were’t going to buy Servis again! .
Maybe Brian could enlighten us as to what the expected /accepted life expectancy of a washing machine is at the moment ,Also are they “lifed ” (built with a lifecycle in mind ) or is that just an urban myth ?
And on the subject of service I think mention has to be made of CDA here Just recently I have had a couple of CDA cash calls ,If the machine is within 5 years old customer pays my labour parts supplied direct FOC By CDA Quickly ! result no claim back on parts for me just one invoice to customer for my labour
Lawrence
Lawrence
Re: A Vision of the Future?
Lawrence wrote:and on the subject of service I think mention has to be made of CDA here Just recently I have had a couple of CDA cash calls ,If the machine is within 5 years old customer pays my labour parts supplied direct FOC By CDA Quickly ! result no claim back on parts for me just one invoice to customer for my labour
Unfortunately there is a downside to this. The first case we have had of this was a switch assy in a cooker hood. THe customer thought our service fee of £45.00 +Vat was extortionate so he arranged to fit it himself.
Do not rely on a great deal of cash work from this source; we will be doing a review of the contract; bearing in mind most of the work is LPG
cookers in caravans, on large holiday sites, with the additional hassle that is caused by absent ownersShane.
Re: A Vision of the Future?
You have a point Penguin, in that there are a few things being discussed here, or there are now at least. It is very interesting though.
You are correct, to GIVE the repairers the top 25 or even up to 100 lines in some cases would cost a manufacturer next to nothing and do them a power of good for their image with both repairers and customers. There are some really nifty ways to do it it’s just that no-one has ever really, seriously, looked at approaching the problem of “first-fix” from that perspective.
The problem you have Penguin is that you are looking at this with a common sense appraoch that offers a “best” solution for repairer, customer and manufacturer. IME, manufacturers tend to look at it from the angle of what they can profit by from the situation. Just to illustrate what I mean, if you do warranty service with 10 engineers on the road then you’re liable to be carrying upwards of £3K per van and about £30-40K at base for a decent sized contract. Following the train of thought on actual value from yesterday that means that the cost to the manufacturer for those spares was probably in the order of £2000 and yet you’ve just shelled out at least £60,000, £58,000 of which is now in Mr Manufacturers coffers. So we are, in effect, being used to subsidise the manufacturer, pure and simple.
Now I suspect that manufacturers are starting to notice that we’re not stocking spares the way we used to do, I noticed the downturn nearly ten years ago, and high value spares are just a non-starter these days. They don’t care as they’re not the ones having to make the double visit. However, what they do care about is not having our money tied up in thier stock as well as a higher BER rate as people quote high to cover the costs involved in double visits and special orders etc.
Lawrence touched on brand loyalty in his post and this is a very important aspect that is currently being overlooked by many manufacturers, they call it “retention”. For many it is low and probably getting worse as time goes by, with the ethos in place from many manufacturers in this day and age I don’t see that trend abating anytime soon for many. You see it’s a stagnant market with no new products or areas to get into so the only options for a manufacturer to increase market share (which the bean counters dictate has to happen) is to buy up rivals (as we’ve all seen) or retain and grow the customer base, which in many cases is failing.
According to the figures I have, there are approximately 1.4 million washers sold per anum in the UK, that figure remains pretty much a constant. So if manufaturer A wants a bigger slice of the pie he either buys up manufacturer B (until the EU or UK government step in and call foul) or they slash prices in attempt to shift boxes, or at least that seems to be the current thinking in the halls of power. IMO it’s wrong.
Of course such thinking and actions only opens the door for the suppliers from the likes of the Far East and/or the former Baltic states who can produce cheaper. But bear in mind that “Haier” for example, does not carry the same weight with a customer as a brand as say, Hotpoint, Hoover or Zanussi. A lot of this type of marketing comes down to customer perceptions of the product that they are buying and, the bit that affects us, the after sales care that they will recieve. But in order to compete with those manufacturers on price it looks as if many are sourcing spares and/or switching production to the low labour cost areas of the world.
Of course there are other options but they go beyond the standard issue five year corporate business plan and long-term thinking does not appear to factor in. Plus you have the internal politics in large companies where everyone has to attempt to justify their existence and, therefore, show results. Just look at the Hoover flights promotion, a classic example of thinking a bit differently but it was very badly handled both literally and from a PR point of view, but it got results in the short term.
The same revolution and rationalisation has already taken place in the car industry, although they do still have their issues of course and it is slightly different in many aspect there are many parallels that can be drawn. For example, Volvo have a customer retention in excess of 70{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} and have had for many years, as do Honda. Manufacturers in our industry probably wish they could achieve that, maybe they should open their eyes a bit more and take a closer look at the situation and the marketplace they find themselves in.
K.
Re: A Vision of the Future?
On the subject of free spares for Manufacturer work….
Its great to think that we could carry the top 25 or 50 but we can’t whilst the manufacturers keep changing the specs on the spares.Whilst we all know of a couple of interchangeable bits, none of us can carry one module fits all etc..
One manufacturer in order to improve 1st time fix rate is going down this road. Free van stock for the engineers, but every single bit of kit will be logged and listed against the engineer, to prevent fiddling. Its a trust thing.. whilst they trust you to do the work they don’t trust you to not fiddle. The thinking behind this is that the present van stocks are so out of date that 1st time fix on ig repairs is poor, irrespective of what the monthly figures show. Because the engineer can not afford to invest into modern stock, he ends up with two trips, no profit, no business. And another firm has gone to the wall. So free spares will only happen to specific engineers, those who do one brand, will be tightly controlled and the onus will be on the engineer to prove he used it to get a replacement, through his computorised job sheet. So it seems good, but where will it end if every appliance(even in 1 brand) has a different timer, bearings, seal…etc, etc.sooner or later you end up with a trailer behind your transit(where else can you keep 6 wma drum kits). The present engineers have to store at home(free of charge to their employer) so I’m told.
The answer is at the moment that we should not jump in with both feet with any manufacturer. We here are quite capable of reading a contract and filtering out the rubbish and restrictive parts to it. So lets just do that. Lets agree to share all info and debate whats offered to one or all.
After all you might just believe that a manufacturer that can improve the 1st time fix rate has good reason to pay less NOT more per completed call. And using the vehicle of free spares to complete jobs is a cynical way of doing it.
kevin
You’re thinking traditionally Kev, there are other ways to do it. 😉
You are quite correct though in that the diversity of spares is a problem. I was once told that it was done to try and thwart the efforts of the pattern suppliers, but we pay the price for that as well as the product diversity demanded by consumers. Or we’re told that the consumers demand it at least. 😕
K.
Re: A Vision of the Future?
Thinking traditionally is how the manufacturers think Ken. When it comes to letting another party do the work for them and take the responsibility for the social welfare of the employees, their cheque book takes over. We are both aware of the costs involved to do manufacturer service and the low rewards on offer…….. can’t see them altering the pay structure.
However, Mr P has the right idea and when we have the system in place and the network unified and the independents all singing from the same song sheet……well it will have to change.
RS is correct in the differential rates on offer across the country though.
kevin
Yes, agreed Kev, but the thinking is what has to change or else we will end up with no trade, it really is that simple. It’s obvious to a deaf blind man that the traditional approaches to service just aren’t working to a large extent and the problems are growing as time passes. The question is, at what point are manufacturers et all going to actually do something about it?
K.
Re: A Vision of the Future?
In many ways its not our question to answer at this point in time…..
May I……
There will always be sales of appliances, for the forseeable future washers ain’t going to change that much, a cooker will keep the basic format for many years to come…
So why are we debating what the Manufacturers are going to do….Why are we wasting ink on the subject?
What we need to do is organise ourselves, to educate and instruct, to advise and prosper the independents. The Trade Association we have can’t do this, it does not represent the trade. So UKW has to become the vehicle to move intergration to the next level and then the next and the next……
We don’t have to be an association to do it. We don’t need a chairman or to join a union, all we need to do is relax a little. UKW is evolving because of the input from its members, its going in the right direction, we have people tuning in to see whats going on rather than trying to tell them, we are open for business worldwide 24 hours a day.So what has to change is as independents we need a universal instant reporting system that we all use….one that updates our system and produces invoices for us, one that updates the wp and involves an engineers diary and sat-nav and links to spares databases…one that we evolve and commission, and all use.
So that said, will put us in the postion of what?????
Well, if Mr P’s vision is to come true then we have to be prepared to invest in our futures, we have to start thinking that from January 2006 we will all switch to the system under development within UKW. So dont buy that new technology just yet….hold off buying the latest computer….instead come to UKW meeting NO 5 and see if you are prepared to invest and become a member of “Network UKW”
Then if a manufacturer wants some work doing, we can help but on our terms and conditions. This is not blackmail….this is business….and we are getting serious about it.
Kevin
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