Important Changes To Engineer Search

[timdowning]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

Same as Martin. A few in my area haven’t existed for years & I have previously reported that.
Nice changes!!!

[kwatt]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

That can happen.

Mostly as nobody bothers to tell anyone and, given it’s a free service, we don’t dedicate staff or my time to keep on top of who still exists or not.

Just as people have changed areas, brands and products but not told anyone or done it themselves then complain to me or someone in the building that they got a job they don’t want for whatever reason.

What won’t happen is, we won’t change information unless we have it 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} confirmed that the change is valid and from a valid source as, in the past competitors *HAVE* tried to get others delisted etc.

So, a lot of that, is for the protection of people that are active on there.

To my mind, on balance, that’s a better way than arbitrarily making changes without being completely certain they are valid. And, that’s before we even get into the privacy and security side of things.

The point being that it’s not just as cut and dried to make changes or update data as you may assume it to be.

I hope that explains why.

K.

[Martin]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

I suppose the only way to possibly go some way to ensuring the listings are constantly up-dated is to charge a nominal ‘registration fee’ OR some form of automated email based annual renewal system? The former creating the problems akin to WTA renewal issues, the latter no doubt requiring sophisticated software to impliment.

Tough call whatever the solution to resolve and I wish Ken and his team the best of luck on that one. A free and voluntary facility such as this will always be open abuse and inconsistencies. Firms closing, agencies terminated, skillset changes all lead to massive coverage gaps, a nightmare truth be told.

[timdowning]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

I realise why changes cant be easily made & I do appreciate the search facility.
My concern is the site would lose credence if the general public try a couple of numbers and they don’t exist or are unobtainable. They may give up by the time an active repairer is found.

[kwatt]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

I get it Tim but, it’s not easy sadly.

Anyways, some more info on what it does etc is now up here…

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/appliance … eer-search

K.

[kwatt]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

Okay so, apparently I didn’t explain myself well with this which to be fair is a thing I have a tendency to do at times as I take it a given that people understand stuff I prattle on about without checking. So, my bad, sorry for those that didn’t get this bit, I’ll explain it more.

Online Booking Form

I said that any of you could have an online booking form that uses the same system to ping back details from your own website to either email or Rapport.

What I apparently was not clear about is that, you DO NOT need Rapport to use this.

It’s also free gratis.

All you need to do this is a website basically and be able to edit it. Pretty much, that’s all you need so long as you’re okay dropping in code to a page just as you might a YouTube video or suchlike.

My apologies for not making that clearer in that, anyone can use this, anyone at all.

How It Works

What happens is that you drop in the code and up pops a booking form on a page of your own website that allows customers to your own website to log a call and send it to you.

I’m going to use Lawrence’s site as an example.

What he has is a button on his site like this…

On the page, in this case the homepage that looks like this…

When pressed that leads to the call booking page that looks like this…

If you want to check it out a bit more you can visit Careys here: http://www.careysappliancerepairs.co.uk

So far as customers are concerned that’s it, fill in the boxes, press submit and they’re done. You’ve got the call, they’ve got a confirmation of the enquiry via email.

Notification

Here’s where I and Sudeep have gotten a bit funky.

Anyone that knows me and my primary hobby that involved automation technologies will know that, if there’s a way to do something that involves zero interaction by me or another human is possible, I’ll give it a go. 😉

There’s more we can do here but that’s for the future but for now with that captured data you can do the the following:

Traditional email notification

All the details just get pinged via email in a format that anyone that’s ever gotten a job from the old repairs@, the last incarnation of the engineer search or the new search will be familiar enough with.

If you have you email set up to what’s know as “push” to your phone then even if you’re out and about you’ll get a notification that there’s mail as usual.

In essence, there’s no difference from a regular email.

This is totally free, absolutely no cost to you.

SMS notification

This is new.

If you have a phone (or whatever) that can receive SMS, you can use this.

There is a cost as, bluntly there is a cost to buy SMS and that’ll be that but, it is cheap although as it is not free we cannot pass it on as free and we have to levy a small charge for it.

When enabled this function sends the details of any enquiry to your device/s via standard SMS and via email as well as above.

Rapport notification

Also new.

What happens here is that if you use Rapport and enable the function any enquiry will come straight to your dashboard and show as a call waiting to be booked. All the details are pre-populated using the information provided by the form (or from the search on UKW/WTA) so you don’t even need to type it in.

All you need do is call the customer, confirm whatever you need to and book it onto the diary.

Done.

You do not need to enable this and you do not need to be a Rapport user to use any of these functions bar the Rapport one. It’s completely your choice.

Clever!

Lawrence was yapping last night and showed me an advert that he’d put in a local rag and, I’d never even thought of this use for it but whoever did the ad was a smart cookie as they’d put in it, basically…

Find us online at http://www.careysappliancerepairs.co.uk and book a repair online

I didn’t think of that and using it an an advertisement that way, clever though, wish I’d thought of that… D’OH!

Then he proceeds to show me that it’s being used to book DAG calls, as you can see if you look at the form and, it’s another clever use that I hadn’t thought of.

Smarter though, the message on Carey’s answering service now tells people that they can leave a message of go to the website and book it online!

Saves Lawrence typing it all in and vets stuff before they even look at it.

Clever. Saves time, saves hassle and the customer perception is that the company is on the ball and up to speed. For Lawrence, who uses Rapport, that makes a whole heap of sense as the calls are right there, click, book, done.

I wish I could take credit for the use it has been put to but, I can’t, that’s all about what Lawrence did with it and not me.

Community

That’s the thing with open source stuff and I’ve had a fair share of dealing with such things, you just never can tell how things will get used till they’re out there in the wild and being used.

People come up with all manners of interesting ways to use things and, with the feedback we’ve had already we’ve changed and modified things to suit different scenarios.

Where it will go next or how it’ll be used I have no idea. For me, that’s great. I think it’s brilliant that I don’t know that, I don’t know what the community of users will do with it or how they’ll use it to their advantage.

Have fun with it I say, it’s not costing you anything to experiment with it.

Competition

All the big boys do this.

I suspect that a lot of you are losing work just as you do not have or rather, have not had the ability to offer something similar.

Now you do.

What will customers do, book with a big national company or choose a local repairer?

Get yourself on Facebook, Google Local (as per Ally) and so on and you could build yourself a nice little bit of business from your local area out of using all these tools that are all free.

There really is no reason not to do it.

However again, my apologies if I wasn’t clear on that pretty much anyone could use this or how and I know it’s a bit long winded but I do hope it’s clearer and that you might understand just how useable this is.

K.

[kevinlewis]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

I am struggling with Advanced search. you advise to put a + before a word that you want to include. so if you want three words eg +neff+oven+door i seems to only get neff and it ignores the other two words. could someone give an example of how to use this search please.

[iadom]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

This thread is not about the forum search facility, it is about the public’s ‘Find an engineer’ search. 😉

[kwatt]

Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search

Some of the update to this page is a bit of a rehash of what’s gone before but this thread coming to life again reminded me to do it…

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/abou … er-search/

I’ve updated that page dramatically with a lot more info on it and a lot more about what the search does, how it works and so on. In fairness it was not well explained at all previously, my bad.

There are more features coming to it I hope in the not too distant future one of which, if it comes off and I can’t say that it will just yet, should offer you the ability to accept calls from an insurer directly or, as directly as can be. I don’t want to say too much as it is a bit commercially sensitive for the time being and not guaranteed as if the terms for the repairer’s isn’t right then it won’t happen.

If you are a WTA member though and not on there, please get registered and include your WTA number as the listing on there now appears on the WTA site as well as UKW and, you get the top slots in almost every case.

If you’re not a WTA member… well… 😉

K.

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