When we were designing rapport and, when we add new features and functions one of the key pieces of design philosophy is that each function must have a reason and be of benefit.

We like this immensely where there is a benefit brought to both clients and also to the repairer.

But generally speaking the benefits is that all parties save time and, that means that you save money as well as offer better service.

The Problems

Many people in the industry will freely acknowledge, actually getting information to and from each party is often not an easy task involving multiple keying of records and the use of multiple web portals or systems.

This makes the repairer's life difficult.

Because it is difficult, onerous and often slow these tasks are quite often laid to one side until there is enough to justify the effort of doing the administration work or, there is a financial imperative to do it. This means that, for the repairer, there is a reduction in cashflow, general business efficiency and running the danger that some invoices may not be paid at all as they have not been submitted in time.

For the manufacturer, it means information not updated fast enough to answer customer enquiries leading to administration time (and cost) chasing down reports and updates meanwhile the repairer has the cost of dealing with these enquiries.

More than this, if the client is reliant on a claimback period or volume of a particular failure inside a predetermined timeframe then not having that information isn't just a hidden cost, it's real and can be substantial. Although for the client this may be an extremely important element, for the repairer, it's just another low value service call.

In other words, it's a mess.

Solving Problems

The rapport system has been designed from the ground up by appliance repairers that have a hand in multiple contracts for multiple clients of all different types and also have experience from the world of call handling agencies and a manufacturer's perspective. This gives us a very unique perspective of the in home service industry and a huge pool of knowledge to draw on.

From the repairer's point of view, they want life to be easier, reduced administration and faster payments.

From the client's, they want reduced administration, better customer service and to get the information back fast.

Using rapport on both ends to channel that information solves both sets of problems, even where some are different as the reasons for the different issues, when you actually analyse them, are often either similar or have the same root cause.

The whole point of rapport is to give the opportunity for repairers to offer a better service, get payments faster and to automate many of the processes involved.

This in turn allows clients to receive information and updates faster, almost live in fact so that they in turn can offer their customers more information and a superior service level. This also allows a reduction in administration time and the associated costs of that administration.

If you need to know more about how rapport can help you please feel free to use the dedicated forum on the UK Whitegoods website (trade access is required) or feel free to contact us directly.