The notion of being able to book and report calls live across the internet is a new concept for the appliance repair industry as, until now, the industry has been fragmented with numerous competing standards from manufacturers, software companies and others. What this has meant is that we ended up with scores of different IT systems and web portals, almost none of which would or even could, communicate with one another.

We aim to change that.

In simple terms what is required is to get data on a service call from the repair service or company back to the client as quickly as possible. By using modern internet technologies this can be done in a near instantaneous manner, rather than the days or even sometimes weeks that it would previously take.

More than that however, due to the way in which that rapport stores and deals with the repair company's geographical area of operation and the diary system, calls can be booked onto an engineer's diary from a remote location. This could be from a client using a website, another rapport enabled desktop program or even from the repair company's own engineer.

When you couple this with the features in rapport stock control then ultimately a field engineer can see any spares that may be required from a supplier and rebook an additional service call if it is required. Right there, right then.

Service Call Handling Today

Dealing with service calls for a manufacturer using sub-contracted services is often fraught with difficulty with few options available.

One of the primary reasons that there are few options available is the lack of any form of standard in transmitting service call data and, beyond that, little thought has been given to how to deal with this data after the service call is completed.

For manufacturers, warranty companies and so on it is often a case of "handing off" the service to a third party to deal with the service requirement. The third party will then pass the service calls to their sub-contracted engineers.

This system has several fundamental problems.

One major flaw is that it is usually the case that the actual sub-contracted engineer has to make contact with the customer to arrange for a service visit and that can take time. Meanwhile the customer is left in the dark and has not got any information on when their appliance will be serviced or, even when they might get a call to arrange a service call.

For us, that is not good customer service.

Once a service visit is made we see the same problem the other way around. The information on the call completion or spares ordered is often not relayed back to the client at all or, it can take days.

Once more, both the customer and the client are invariably left in the dark with no idea what the current status of a repair is.

Again, this is not good service either for the client or the customer.

How Rapport Solves Problems

When a client wishes to use a network of appointed sub contracted repair companies they simply nominate the companies that they wish to employ forming their own private group of repair companies. This allows commercial clients complete control over which service companies are used or not, when and for how long or even, for particular product categories.

Once enabled you see the likes of above within rapport, a remotely booked service call.

We can extend this technology fiurther to allow rapport to enable a commercial client can then see open call slots that are available on the remote contractor's diary and, instead of faxing or emailing the call details and waiting and, your customer waiting, to get a phone call and then a call date, you can book the call there and then, live.

This offers commercial clients the ability to have a "virtual workforce" of sub contracted repair companies that can be used almost as if they were employed engineers but, without the costs involved.

For the repair companies it means work with minimum administration, adding value to that contract for them which often results in much better results.

Where rapport is used both the client and the contractor can access the information on either side which can be shared meaning that the client can get as up to date information as required on a service call.

Better customer service, lower costs for both client and repairer.

Everybody wins.

Mobile Application

Due to the proliferation of mobile device, primarily smart phones and tablets that are far more convent and less likely to get damaged when used in the field than a laptop we have launched a mobile app to allow field engineers to get calls back to base.

How it works is that the field technician simply enters the work carried out, any goods or spare parts used and this information is synchronised back to your office in real time.

Support

Companies that will support this functionality from the start include the following:

Amica will be using rapport live call to book service calls onto repairer diaries that accept service calls through the rapport system.

ISE, likewise, will also book and pass service calls in this manner wherever possible.

Service calls from the UK Whitegoods online engineer search facility will also be able to accept live call bookings.