In the past, there’s often been a swing from employed service engineers to subcontracted agents or contract changes and things swing from one place to another. Work moves about every few years, often in rough five-year cycles, and this seems to be drawing to a halt.
People should question why that is.
Content Warning
This stuff is complicated, and there are many, many details, facets and nuances that I’m skipping or glossing over because I’m not writing a novel here. Maybe a thin novella, but not War & Peace!
Analysing each bit of this is a topic to itself so please forgive me if some things don’t appear “whole” or fully expanded or explained. I’m just trying to cover the basics and make a few pertinent points.
We Told You So
A number of years ago, at a WTA conference in Coventry, Lawrence (Carey) and I gave a talk of how the independent appliance repair trade could and, if things didn’t change, probably would all but die out.
People scoffed. They ridiculed the notion, saying it’d never happen.
A decade or so later, there are hardly any large, truly independent repair companies in the UK. Very few have more than two or three employees. There are very few multidisciplinary repairers who cover refrigeration and/or gas products.
Outside of major conurbations, there can be just very few repairers to choose from and that is, if there are any at all.
We explained why way back then and I’m not going to rehash that or do the “told you so” dance but, we told you so.
I am also not (here) getting into the history of why all that happened.
Understanding The Reasons
Over the years I’ve found all too often that people from large companies, especially the multi-national behemoths that dominate the appliance industry these days, just don’t get the little guys. The mentality and how these small independent repairers operate just completely eludes them.
You normally get the impression that they think you’re their employee and that you will do as you are bidden, put up with it and not whine about it. And that, somehow, you owe them a favour for deeming to give you the work.
I’m not going to dissect that, I’m merely setting the scene because where it ends up is this weird multi-faceted dynamic between companies that want the work done and those that actually get their hands dirty.
Navigating it is, well, at times tricky for both parties.
A lot of so-called “service managers”, “service directors” or whatever other self-aggrandising title that’s been bestowed can’t be bothered with the hassle of dealing with that or, just don’t get it so over time, a lot didn’t and just employed an agency to do the work for them.
I want to be pretty clear here, I’m not pointing fingers or slagging anyone off for this, yet at the same time, I disagree with the practice, and I do not think that liaising with one company you pay to take all the problems away is worthy of a service manager (or whatever) position, status or pay. It’s often seemingly little more than glorified admin in my view, albeit on a larger scale.
Though they have someone to blame when things go sideways.
But it costs.
It costs in terms of the relationship with the repairers most often and it costs financially as well, because that man in the middle between the maker or brand owner and the repairers takes a cut of the pie.
Which means the repairer is one step removed from the source and gets paid less. So they’re not as invested and very likely don’t care as much.
Honestly, you can hardly blame them for that.
Cycles
So getting back to the cycles in the industry.
To us, the lowly dirt-poor repairers at the bottom of the food chain left to pick up the poo when things go wrong, it seems that five years for a change is about the norm. Some last longer, some don’t. Some want to change, but can’t. For some, there are political headwinds, some commercial ones.
Things are variable but it’s a standing joke with repairers that, new management comes in, shakes stuff up, changes it all… stays for about five years, moves up or on to pastures new… new management comes in and starts the cycle all over again. Often, making the same mistakes someone else made previously.
As if, somehow, what was tried and failed will be different when they do it.
Newsflash… it won’t be! As the old adage goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
A few that did actually change, notably Currys and British Gas, are good examples who now employ their own techs. Though rumours swirl every now and again about problems and possible changes to that, to be fair to them both, they’ve stuck with it for a long time.
The ones that are liable to change in the future are the old guard. Established European and possibly Turkish-owned brands.
You see, some have their own service techs and anyone that’s run service on any sort of scale will tell you, it aIn’t cheap and, it ain’t easy to do. And, it’s virtually impossible to make a profit from.
As those brands decline in sales volume, which are under assault from Chinese producers and Chinese-owned brands, it means that the number of service calls they also decreases.
At some point, that will reach a tipping point, most probably region by region, as aforementioned service managers etc try to cling onto their jobs, haven’t got the volume to support their own employed service force. That leaves them three basic options.
Subcontract to a local repairer (if there is one)
Try to get the employee/s that were covering it to go franchise, agency or whatever
Punt the work to a “national” agency
Think back to what I said before about service managers and, now you will see why that framing was important to set out. They’re now in a position where they’re trying to hang on to their own jobs, justify their own salary and they need a quick, simple and easy solution to the problem.
Punting it to an agency is the ideal way out. At least, it seems so.
Of course, these agencies will promise the sun, moon and stars to get the work, and they probably think that if they can snag this work, the rest will follow. In fact, there might even have been ideas like that mooted to negotiate a pricing structure; you never know. <winking face emoji>
Crash Landing
All this, in a multi-national company’s world, is probably little more than a blip. Explained away with a few internal reports, a couple of flowcharts and perhaps the odd presentation or two. Swept under the rug, some subordinate blamed and so on.
What it doesn’t address is the elephant in the room. Customer service.
Repairers, the good ones, are single-mindedly, 100% completely focused on customer service.
Why?
Simple, their entire world depends on them offering and giving good service because if they don’t, customers won’t return, and they live and operate in the area they work in, often for decades. They have no choice; they have to give their customers good service.
Quite literally, they live and die on the strength of their service, integrity and honesty.
In return, many get almost unchecked devotion and trust from their customer base. For good reason.
That trust also means that, when these techs tell a customer that a particular brand is good, bad or indifferent, it carries more than a little sway. And chit-chat about appliances, brands and such is something every service tech talks about with customers almost every service visit.
Do the math, six to twelve calls a day, a few thousand techs…. A maker’s reputation can take a beating, fast.
Vice versa, those brands the techs like get bummed up, although some I don’t hold with, like Hotpoint for many years, just because they were easy to fix and parts were cheap but, but it’s a brilliant example.
That word-of-mouth marketing, both positive and negative, is incredibly powerful.
My point is, the repairers can have an effect on sales because, as a wise man once imparted to me, service is seen as an extension of sales in most industries but oddly, not in the appliance industry… It’s more like manufacturers etc do it because they are forced to.
It’s that mentality that leads to, they do what’s easiest and cheapest, not what’s best and don’t view service as a sales opportunity but as a millstone (and cost) around their neck.
In my view, that’s the wrong way to look at service, and I’ve proved it doesn’t have to be.
The Future
Right now, it doesn’t look too great.
We’ve got Beko, who started their own service operation a number of years ago now inheriting the old Hotpoint/Indesit etc service operation so, that’s huge.
We’ve got the old Hoover/Candy one now under Haier’s wing which, whilst not as big as Beko’s operation, is still notable.
There’s Pacifica who seem to be doing a mish-mash of any number of things, including Vestel, a lot if not all of Electrolux Group and goodness knows what else.
Of course, there’s BSH, Miele and a smattering of others but in broad terms, you’ve got a few big ones then a number of smaller players.
In terms of independent stuff, work that’s not under one roof as it were, there are fewer of them, and they’re not as big, and that has also, in turn, served to make the independent sector smaller. That is a problem as, there’s not a lot of capacity and most certainly no way to ramp that capacity up with any haste.
It’s a problem because, with the influx of Chinese owned brands and their seemingly unstoppable progress, they may have the capacity to operate and sustain their own service operations and, get cover across the country but, the smaller market share holders… not so much.
The smaller ones and/or the ones that start to go into decline and find that they can no longer afford to operate in certain areas and, it’s likely to be the lower population regions and “difficult” areas that see this first, will be forced to find another route to provide service.
If they don’t, they run the risk of reputational harm or, they can’t sell their wares into large swathes of the country.
When they’re already in decline, that’s not good news.
It’s not inconceivable that some areas of the country become almost no-go zones for service.
Don’t believe me? Naturally, some people won’t.
We’re already at that point for a number of things.
Scottish Highlands and Islands, parts of Wales, West Country, Northern England and more all suffer from regions that you cannot get service for on certain products. Even bits of Norfolk and more can be “problematic” at times.
For the money on offer to repairers it’s not worth going into these regions and they’ve got to consider, what if it needs parts, what if they get a recall… who covers that cost? So, they’ve a huge disinterest in going from even reasonably adjacent areas into these sort of places and, I can’t say I blame them.
Even if you do manage to convince one of two of them to do that, it’s “as and when”, it’s not going to be a level of service that most people will expect.
The thing is, if people tasked with getting service organised, be it internal service management or external agencies think that they will somehow magic up cover in these areas, they might want to have a rethink.
For Every Problem…
… there is a solution. Or, so it’s written.
The question is, how much will it cost and how long will it take?
For a lot of gas work we’ve seen it getting passed to local plumbers, heating engineers and the likes at considerable cost. Because there is no other viable option.
Increased exchanges, just swap stuff out but that isn’t a good solution when machines are on cover or out of warranty. And, not really commercially viable either.
Use commercial repairers… who largely view domestics as not worth the trouble and the renumeration way too low to be bothering with. And, if they’re busy with commercial stuff that they earn much, much more on, why would they be remotely interested?
Send employed engineers into remote areas?
Yeah, that’s been done time and again and it’s not sustainable. The repairer quickly gets hacked off with it and largely due to unreasonable expectations by the company and also, this point has to be made, someone in an office in Luton or wherever having no understanding whatsoever about how a map works, traffic and terrain you need to travel through.
It’s only 20 miles on the map… yeah, but in the real world that’s a 45-60 minute drive on country sub-par B roads and single track roads.
(Mind you, they often have no clue what it’s like to get across or around conurbations either, taking into account rush hours, school times and such. Local knowledge trumps a map every time.)
In London, we famously have the congestion charge (among other cities now) where repairers where paid more because of that and “reasons”, people not operating in remote regions don’t get, that’s just as hard if not harder! And, just as expensive, if not more so!
Often, though, and where I was going with all this, is that people who don’t operate in these areas have little to no clue about them and don’t “get it”.
Because they don’t understand it and, all too often, service in general, it’s a mess.
Now, couple that lack of understanding with the above, where volumes decline, companies need to get service cover and then they offer stupid rates that are unfathomably low and you really do have a recipe for disaster.
Because repairers just politely decline. It’s not worth doing.
Then you get to a point where a repair business in these areas or, that cover these areas, are not commercially viable and, in some cases, you get to where we are now.
Meanwhile, the cost of the appliances (in real terms) continues to drop. Customers view them as little more than a commodity now. And the money isn’t in them to pay for the service that’s needed or, expected by consumers.
It’s a conundrum for sure and one that there are no easy answers or quick fixes for.
Not The End
And all this before we even get into the complications added by smart technologies, diverse products and much more.
For repairers, life ain't easy!