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Heads up to the subs first before this goes on general release over the next week.
One of the things that has irked me more about this business than many others is the fact that I’ve seen so many people come to the end of their business and gotten zip for it. Often these people have worked all the hours God sent and more for no more than a decent wage or lifestyle. In small chunks I’ve been trying to tackle that problem, ISE was one, repairs@ is another… ever so slowly building on the platforms that you all have in your own business to engender longevity and value. In effect creating something worthwhile and worth money so you’re not working towards nothing.
One of these hair-brained, madcap ideas was to have our own insurance scheme running, well we got the new appliance one up fine, that was pretty easy. What wasn’t so simple was something that we could use to compete with the big boys.
Now we have it.
We’ve managed to get a deal for a monthly insurance plan that is fully underwritten and totally plays to OUR needs and returns us revenues on sales, renewals and replacements.
The details are still being hammered out but we have now had confirmation that much of this is in place now, so the minor details may change and it may be a month or so before we get this in the field but here’s the highlights…
Monthly cost for THREE appliances… £10.99, each additional appliance (up to a maximum of eight) £3 per machine.
You get £1 per month, per customer as a commission.
All repairs returned to the agent.
£55 labour rate and a 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} markup on spares.
Replacement at end-of-life you can supply if you wish.
All machines have to be under five years old, that’s the only rule thus far.
I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you, especially those that are a bit shrewd, that this will in effect build a business within the business and build a lot of value in if you get enough out there assigned to you. This was my primary goal with this.
My own personal goal here is to have 500-1000 customers on this at least as it massively offsets my monthly costs as well as gives me something to sell should I ever want to sell the business. IMO that would be bloody brilliant!
A nice side effect is that you capture the customer for repairs and replacement so you build yourself a captive audience of customers all tied to your own business.
Now isn’t it a shame that we beat British Gas on price and service levels? I’m sure that John and I will come up with some interesting PR around that as well. 😈
If you are interested and in all honesty I can’t see why on Earth you wouldn’t be, get a hold of Sean as he’s coordinating this area, I’ve done my bit but I’m still available to talk to if want as I should be fully up to speed on this.
K.
Re: Monthly Insurance
Think I’ll try to keep my customers as private chargeable work because an insured customer seems to have a totally different attitude (unreasonable,demanding,foul mouthed,bad tempered etc.) toward the engineer.
Bryan
Re: Monthly Insurance
Not at all Bryan. Things change when the customer doesn’t think that you are employed by the manufacturer, whilst they do you have an issue, when that concept is removed you generally do not, although there’s still some right nutjobs out there.
I’ll give you a classic example and, this happened a few times…
We get a customer on the phone blaming our engineer for flooding the kitchen, tearing lino or whatever. I speak to the customer and explain to them that we have to submit this to our insurer who is independent of Zanussi, Candy, MFI, Smeg or whoever and all of a sudden you get, “oh, you’re not XXXXXX”, to which the response is always, “no, we’re just contracted for service work”. Invariably the customer’s attitude changes dramatically when they realise that they’re not ripping off some big brand or corporation.
Same thing with British Gas et all. These companies are so big that they are impersonal, we all have a massive advantage there over them, we just haven’t exploited it.
Customers are strange, I gave up trying to work it out years ago.
What this scheme represents is the chance for us to compete on the same playing field as DAG or British Gas but with our own unique twist on it. We all know we can beat them hands down, any day of the week, on service levels and customer satisfaction/retention, why not use that advantage?
What you or anyone else does and thinks is best for their own business is up to them. I’d just rather have the chance at at least being at the races and building my business for the future which I think this offers. If it didn’t I’d have killed it at birth as I always look at things in a certain light, if there’s no advantage to the independents then I’m not interested pretty much.
K.
Re: Monthly Insurance
Hi Ken
I have to say this sounds one of the most interesting ideas yet and I for one am definitely interested! Customer satisfaction at a reasonable price, and with a customer base running into the thousands the potential over the long term is tremendous and that’s just the commission, but with the repair work passed our way and the chance to sell a new product too it gets even better!
Re: Monthly Insurance
Thanks guys, hopefully it allows us to grow our own businesses a bit and retain customers instead of losing them to the likes of BG etc., that was the plan.
Sean was supposed to post his number Barry but, as usual, he’s probably forgot, but then I have him chasing this down a little and sorting out all the details as well as making up all the training stuff for the new ISE products, so he’s now “Busy Sean”. 😉
You can get him on his mobile, 0797 159 0040 most any time during the day.
K.
Re: Monthly Insurance
Goolies indeed, 😯 Thing is lads I was once told by a learned Scott to have all your duck’s in a row before you kick off on a new project.
I wanted to have all the stuff printed out and ready for posting out to our subscribers first because when our appliance insurance deal kicks off I’m pretty sure we are going to get swamped with requests for information packs.
I have been looking around at other insurance deals available to joe public and ours will beat them by a country mile.
Ken has kindly given you guy’s my mobile number and I’m sure that after I have a little chat with him tomorrow he will even get my UKW e-mail address up and working :rolls:
We have just to-day got news, that we have the final wording sorted on the terms and conditions. I just need to meet up our insurers to get it clear in my own mind so that I’ll be ready for all your questions.
I have already got a list of interested agents from the national UKW Sibson meeting. For those of you that did not attend and are interested then just PM me with your names and contact details.
More news as soon as I get it, that’s if Ken don’t tell you first ! 😆
Sean
Re: Monthly Insurance
Many many moons ago back in the dawn of time Hotpoint introduced the ‘Owners Club’ which was an ‘in house’ insurance scheme customers could sign up to and would insure their machines against future breakdowns. Unfortunately that turned out to be a very expensive mistake by Hotpoint in allowing the major selling of that scheme directly to their engineers. Most of which were, at that time, working on a ‘bonus scheme’. The more policies they sold, the more bonus they would get in their pay packet at the end of the month….fair enough, maybe….? 😕
Except that their best sales were centred on those customers whose machines were either used almost in a commercial basis or (and more typically) were showing signs of early bearings or motor failure. “Sign here love, get it insured and give me a bell in 6 months and I’ll sort it!” 😉 Could be costly to offset long term maybe?
In Hotpoints example it was abused by many rogue engineers that flitted in and out of various other engineers areas or got the sack some months down the line. Now I’m not suggesting the UKW insurance scheme will be subjected to such abuse, but nevertheless some such miscreant dealings have to be borne into the equation. Very difficult to quantify? I wonder what your thoughts are on the possibilities here?
Re: Monthly Insurance
Point taken Martin.
One thing you’re missing though is that the people monitoring the scheme are us. I’m not saying that I know every trick in the book because I’ve forgotten a few since I wrote it, but I learn fast. 😉
As is the case with ISE it’s dead easy to see anyone that has, shall we say, odd figures that don’t stack up. Normally these stand out a mile when you sit an analyse the call stats. Little things like cost of spares, excessive call volumes against policies live etc. are so easy to pick up it’s unbelievable with very little effort. It’s also easy to pick up the people that take a pot-shot as well or that deliberately write-off machines.
The point is that it is in our own best interests not to take the Mickey with it and I for one don’t intend to allow any bad apples spoil it for the rest of us, sorry but it’s worth too much to too many people to allow that.
As for commercial premises, they’re totally barred from this, it’s domestic only and it will be clearly stated that if we find any on a commercial address, irrespective of the circumstances, the policy will be cancelled and there may be ramifications as that is, basically, fraud.
The short of it is, play fair and it’s a damn good deal for everyone that should prove highly lucrative for us all. All we have to do is our job and play the game.
K.
Re: Monthly Insurance
kwatt wrote:One thing you’re missing though is that the people monitoring the scheme are us. I’m not saying that I know every trick in the book because I’ve forgotten a few since I wrote it, but I learn fast. 😉
Indeed so Ken and I don’t argue the point but nevertheless it is difficult if not impossible to be sure all sign-ups are kosher? Therefore each and every one has to be accepted and honoured in the fervent hope no early claims will ensue?
My point here is that for the scheme to work everyone has to play fair right from the outset. And allowing the qualificating factor to be based merely on the appliance/s being under 5 years of age can open up a minefield of clapped out products being signed up and UKW liable for their maintenance?
Re: Monthly Insurance
Yeah, I know.
We just have to take it on faith a little that all you guys are going to play fair. Unlike many people, especially in light of what we’ve accomplished with ISE, repairs@ etc. I’m prepared to extend the trust quite gladly. I think (hope) that most everyone sees what I’ve been trying to do, those that get it won’t abuse it I don’ think.
In the end I’ve banged on and on that nobody’s going to come along with a magic wand to solve all our problems in this business, but by God I’ll do what I can. I can’t promise I’ll cure the problems, I can however promise I’ll do my best to do so. To do that however we have to work together and recognise that.
So far though, we’re not doing a bad job of it I think.
With this, yes we’ll get a few bad machines and that’s a given as we can’t win them all, but that’s just the territory that we’re entering into. Thankfully this is all underwritten by a major insurer that also has been persuaded to have a little faith, in us. That speaks volumes on where we are now IMO.
K.
Re: Monthly Insurance
Martin wrote:Many many moons ago back in the dawn of time Hotpoint introduced the ‘Owners Club’ which was an ‘in house’ insurance scheme customers could sign up to and would insure their machines against future breakdowns.
Ah, but why was it known as the 4-5-8 plan. 😉
Jim.
Re: Monthly Insurance
Hi
I have had a chance to meet up with Kevin Brown of CSS our insurers and he gave me details of the monthly multi appliance warranty package.
Basically, the agent collects the details of interested customers and forwards them on to CSS who are obliged to contact the customer directly to ensure that the customer is aware of the ‘key points’ of the scheme. This is a requirement of the FSA (Financial Services Authority).
To ensure that there is no misrepresentation of the product/service offered.The customer is offered the warranty along side a 14 day cooling off period. The policy is then encoded with the agent’s unique number who is then paid a £1 monthly commission on all policies for the entire period that the policies remain active.
In addition to this, all ensuing work is directed to the person who sold the policy at a premium rate of £55 plus vat per completed repair. The agent will also be entitled to claim spares at trade plus 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} plus vat.
On the face of it £1 per month per policy may not seem too exciting but even if you only managed to sell 2 policies a week for a year, you would have £100 plus per month coming in. The potential for years two and then three will no doubt then seem a lot more lucrative. Even more important is the fact that all the time you are building up your very own data base of unique customers.
There by building real value back into your business.The main advantage of doing our multi appliance warranty monthly is to keep the cost down to the customer whilst at the same time enabling us to compete very favourably with the big boy’s.
CSS are currently working on information packs for our members which will include
Key point sale scripts, application forms, price lists, agent+customer terms and conditions etc. As soon as these are available we will send them out to all those who have expressed interest.Sean
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