Details: Written by: Kenneth Watt; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 30 August 2024; Hits: 285

Lots of people outside of the industry think spare parts are easy, some in it do too but it is a far more complex thing than most imagine it to be

My experience with spare parts is extensive. I've handled parts for almost every brand in the market, as well as those that have disappeared. I've sourced parts for technicians and the public across hundreds of thousands of service calls and part orders.

As a field tech, I have spent years repairing machines and understanding the intricate relationship between parts and problems. This hands-on experience has given me a unique perspective on spare parts sourcing.

You might say that I am a bit of an expert in the area of parts.

Despite my extensive experience, I am not infallible. Like anyone else, I can make mistakes, with an error ratio of about 1 in 10000 lookups. However, I believe you will find this to be a very low rate of error.

Where the public is looking stuff up for themselves, I’d place the error ratio somewhere about 1/10! Repairers of course make far less errors than the public as they are familiar with how things work.

This is the difference between an experienced expert in a field as opposed to someone who has little knowledge of the area and, spare parts are complex, it is very easy to get things wrong even if you think you are doing it all correctly.

You can often get me to answer parts queries here: shop.ukwhitegoods.co.uk

A Little Unsure

If you are about a part or parts, even a tad unsure or you see the warnings that any can vary by serial number, product code etc, then ask somebody to help you with them.

No parts supplier wants you to order the wrong part, not be able to repair the machine and have the hassle and expense of returning items. It is not in their interests or yours for that to happen. That costs both parties time and money.

And, on modern machines where model numbers can often stay the same for years yet the parts inside various versions change considerably over the time that they are on sale, this is now very, very common to see.

Can’t Get Parts

There are a number of brands that either do not want to allow others to supply parts (you can guess why) and there are those that just don’t seem to be bothered about them once they get out of warranty. Looking at you no-name brands on Amazon etc!

Most people expect, quite reasonably, that they can or should be able to get parts for at least a decade for any kitchen appliance, and legislation is coming into force that makes that the case. To a degree.

However, what it doesn’t do is say that these ”available parts” have to be available immediately, at a sensible price or indeed individually, they could be part of a larger assembly or unit. This means that if they want, makers and brand owners still have ways to potentially get around the law. At least at the time of writing that was the case.

My Advice

Pick a decent spare parts supplier, ask about the part you are after and get it right the first time.

Oten you will find that they offer little pearls of wisdom as well, especially if you ask about something that’s a bit odd.

Details: Written by: Kenneth Watt; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 17 August 2024; Hits: 215

The story with the Rapport call handling system spans back a ways in time, to the late 1990’s when using PCs for call handling was an alien concept to most people but, NESN came up with something that, for its time, was very good.

What it did was log and track service calls, to a degree though back them all manually, but every night it called the mothership and relayed all the information that had been updated during the day.

Great idea, but unfortunately, it only worked with jobs placed for NESN and on their system, so it is very limited for general use.

That changed over time and the system could be used to log other stuff and a number of us used this old Windows based system for many years.

We did because it was fast.

You could enter and update calls in seconds, mostly in real time talking to a customer on the phone which was essential when things were busy on the phones. Any customers reading this should take it the right way, but when you’re busy, you need to complete, log and book a call and get the punter off the phone ASAP to move onto the next. You do not have time to muck about.

Once NWAR moved we used some other system, Fix something or another that was also Windows based and it was okay but, not as fast. Too much mouse moving and clicking which made it look great but slower to use. And, not as intuitive with multiple screens for one call and so on.

But it worked and at the time it was all we could get.

In the early 00’s I started to think about this more as I was getting asked about this at meetings and eventually in the forums, it’s one of those topics that pops up every now and then and I had ideas on how to build a system, what I wanted it to do, how and how I wanted it to talk to other systems as well.

Inside And Out

You see, I have a lot of experience in the field, several years' worth, and mountains of experience handling calls in the office, admin, and so on, and there are certain things that are truly painful in both areas when it comes to this stuff.

When you’re out in the field with your head stuck down the back of a machine that last thing you want is phonecalls asking about something or another you’ve just been to or, more commonly, when you’ll be at Mrs Whoever as she’s wanting to take her dog out or cherubs to school etc. It drives field techs bonkers, they’re not being grumpy about it for no reason.

Solving that, at least as much as possible was a primary goal.

From the office perspective, there are a bunch of things that really annoy the staff answering phones.

One is the “when is the engineer going to be here” calls, they are just such a waste of time, you often wanted to say to people, “hang on, I’ll consult the magic eight ball” as we’d have no clue where the guys were, how long they would take in each call, what traffic was like and more. Trying to estimate that is a nightmare. But these calls waste time and are not productive.

Solving that was a goal.

Administration, feeding back info to contract clients was also a problem and to a some extent it still is although using Rapport hugely improves that.

This one wastes time for all: the repairer, the client, and the customer, It’s just not good that all the info isn’t available to them all easily.

Solving this is what brought about the name of Rapport.

Solving Prickly Problems

To solve these problems you kinda have to think a bit differently but with the advent of the smartphone a whole bunch of things got a lot easier to solve however, it also brought other isues to the fore.

One was that no two service companies operated the same way, and neither did two commercial clients.

Because of this we had to design so as to allow for variation on each system and to do that we made it modular and customisable, so much as is possible of course. But it’s as bespoke as you can make it for each company using it without a ground-up redesign for each repairer.

All the while we had to retain the speed of entering calls, admining them and so on, which we largely did. But we also came up with a beter solution, allowing customers and clients to enter all then themselves online saving us the bother.

These sorts of developments save boatloads of time for office staff.

For the guys in the field we made it so that what they did, where they were and so on is fed back to the office in real time but we went further in a bid to reduce needless chase calls.

The system can automatically send SMS messages out to customers so that, with no intervention at all on the part of the field tech, the customer gets told how far away they are and when they are likely to arrive.

This is a game changer for cutting down on needless, pointless and wasteful time for everyone.

I’m only skirting around some of the highlights here, of course; there’s way more to this and many more enhancements have been made specifically for the appliance repair industry that cut down calls, speed up processes and more to lighten the load on techs and office-based staff.

OEM Service System

When we started work for Amica we took the bare bones of the Rapport system and altered it very heavily to be able to have a system that could take service calls from end users and distribute those to repair companies across the UK. All by multiple means.

We also did some of the things mentioned previously in order to save time on the phones for staff such as online booking, auto-updates for customers and so forth. It reduced calls and gave customers a better experience, faster as well

Rapport users (repair companies) info would flow back to Amica’s system in real time so, if a customer had a reason to call after a visit etc the info from the field tech was on the staff’s screen even before the customer had called in. Being that up to date was fantastic for the staff and saved a lot of time and calling back and forth.

We linked that to a stock system we also designed in house so that even when parts were dispatched to the customer or repeirer the customer was updated by email or SMS, saving more calls.

The whole thing about trying to save all these calls is multi-faceted but the main points are that it means your customer gets a better, faster more informed service and you need less staff to do a particular volume of work. So you look better and more professional, giving a superior service whilst saving money.

It is all about efficiency. Making these systems more efficient and effective doesn’t just help the business, it also helps the customer also saving both time and money.

Free Version & Prices

This was a big one, especially for small repair companies that are micro-businesses that do not have cash to lash out on expensive systems. We even had to make it affordable for single person businesses.

We also had to make it scalable so that a low monthly cost was achievable for micro business and yet make it so that it could handle hundreds of calls a week for larger ones. Like I said before, no two are the same.

We had more cost flexibility on the OEM systems.

Originally the idea was to make the system available for free to the small repairers especially and we did have a free version for a time but, it proved not to be a viable option. After a time it became clear that there were costs involved in setting such a system up, maintaining it and so on so the free version couldn’t be done as we didn’t have the income to support it.

Keep in mind, we did this to help the repairers, not gouge them.

We managed to make it affordable though. Rapport is, if not the cheapest system about, it’s certainly one of them and I haven’t gone looking at what the competition does as I largely don’t care. You see Rapport was designed specifically for repairers here in the UK carrying out repair work to large appliances. Unlike other that are all too often a version of a systrem made for something else and shoehorned into doing whatever for field service.

Your Cost

Think on this as, a lot of small repairers don’t as they’re great at fixing stuff and busy doing that but honeslty often no so great at business stuff…

How much is your time worth?

Consider this, if using Rapport saves you admin time, phone calls and so on then for most it is liable to be saving you about an houir or so a day. How much is that hour worth to you?

Given that Rapport, unless a large multi-technician version costs less than a coffee from Starbucks a day, we’d tell you it was a fantastic investment.

It will get you back that time, give your customers a better service and make your life easier.

Not bad at all for less than, in many cases, £1 a day.

Of course you are free to look at other systems as well, we just like ours and sdo do our users, most all of them swear by it and love it.

Industry Understood

The reason users love it is that the people that developed this system are in the industry, like myself have vast knowledge of it and we levderaged that to build a system that was tailored specifically to appliance field service.

It wasn’t designed for other uses. It can of course be modified and used for other field service applications, naturally but at its very core it is designed for appliance repairers.

And, it has been designed to save time and money in that arena at as low a cost as possible.

You can find out more on the Rapport Website here and get a demonstration if you want to; I’d say it’ll be a bit of time very well spent doing so.

Details: Written by: Kenneth Watt; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 10 August 2024; Hits: 263

Over the years, I have worked as a consultant for various organisations and assisted various press outlets with appliance-related stories.

I could rattle off names but that isn't really appropriate as some would prefer I didn't, let's just say that I have worked with large multi-nationals in the detergent industry and appliance industry both in the UK and outside of it. Some of which is evident if you know my history with UK Whitegoods.

Plus, I don't like to blow my own trumpet, as it were; it's not about that. I get asked to help with something I do my level best to do just that and if I can't help I will tell you so before you pay anything at all.

Any role that I look at I will evaluate before entering into any sort of an arrangement but some of the things I have done for others over the years include the following:

Assisted in software design, part lookup systems, service systems, and processes to make them more efficient and user-friendly.
Designing and implementing training for repairers and office-based staff in different areas.
Establishing processes and systems for field service operations, ensuring that they are efficient and low-cost.
Written and/or rewritten to enhance user manuals.
Evaluated service operations, seeking efficiency gains as well as mitigating losses.
Customer perception evaluation
Website content creation
Press consultancy
Product evaluation for end users and service
Service setup, regional and national

Each situation and problem is different. However, there are no "one-size-fits-all" solutions, and whilst I am happy to look at anything, that's not to say I would be able to help with anything. There are things where I'm not the guy you need, and I'm quite happy to tell you that.

Equally, there are a number of areas where, yes, I am the person that can help you.

The best part is that there is no harm or cost in asking me, and even if I'm not what you need, I may know who you do.

Not Just Me

You might have noticed that on the front page, it says "we." The reason for that is that I have a small network of trusted people who help with certain areas.

Where appropriate, this allows me to call upon unique expert help in particular disciplines to assist with specific tasks or areas if required or to call on additional help if needed for a task.

Or, of course, to direct you to someone more appropriate in dealing with your requirements.

Details: Written by: Kenneth Watt; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 10 August 2024; Hits: 244

We've been burning stuff for a while now as a species, oh, about four or five millennia most probably by all accounts.

Man discovered fire and never looked back.

And the wheel. Pointy things to kill. Stuff that goes bang. And a bunch of good stuff as well bu that often seems to get lost in the conversation at times, especially with the advocates of burning and blowing things up.

You'd think, that after a few thousand years, we'd have evolved more. Gotten better. Learned to be cleaner and stop killing one another.

For sure, we have gotten better, no doubt about it. We're way more efficient in burning things, all sorts of things as we're no longer restricted to a fire to gather around and we worked out how to kill on a massive scale as well as many other monumental technological achievements, often through confilct. But have we really come all that far from cavemen with fire and spear?

You'd think though that we'd have progressed since we discovered electricity and that very electricity doesn't need us to be endlessly burning things to produce, there are other ways.

All this, however, has little to do with domestic appliances, aside from the electricity that they run on. Perhaps.

Going Green

Ever since a hole was discovered in the ozone layer a few decades ago the move towards more responsible manufacturing and energy use has grown and grown to the point where legislators around the world have put in place laws and standards to try to force manufacturers to clean up their acts but also to make their products more environmentally friendly as well.

The public, too, has moved toward more energy-efficient products, but seemingly, this is more to do with saving money than saving the planet. And, that'd be fine if it were the case that the two went hand in hand.

Right from the jump, when the ozone thing kicked off and subsequently, R12 gas was going to get outlawed, the knee-jerk reaction was to move to R134a and then to R600a, iso-butane.

R134 had problems, R600 does too but it's now the defacto standard.

But R12 was easier and better for servicing. Now it was outlawed and after a few years you couldn't get it loads of older refrigeration units were scrapped.

Yes, you could change the systems to the newer gas but, it was too expensive and onerous to do.

What's better for the environment, a few grams of gas in the atmosphere or several score kilos of appliance being dumped?

These are the sort of conundrums that are or can be vexing and all the while the public couldn't give two hoots, all they want is a fridge that cools their food, they could care less what gas it runs on. The same is true when they buy a new one, they don't give a stuff about the gas it uses or much else it'd seem so long as it is the right size, shape, colour and most importantly, the right price.

Then you go to laundry and we get all sorts of, honestly spurious claims about being "green", "recyclability" and more but people don't care. They care about it being the biggest load, the fastest spin, the right badge on it and the right price.

Other products followed in the same vein and violla, we get a race to the bottom on price all the while sacrificing durability, performance, repairability and more simply as people do not care about that when buying, they only get that bad news later, too late.

Balancing Act

The reason I'm waffling on about this is that it is a balancing act, you need to try to weigh up the environmental impact of cheap, essentially throwaway products against those that are more durable and long lasting.

I would argue that repairable, durable and longevity trumps a minuscule (and they are) energy saving through forced or otherwise replacement of existing products in the field.

Thankfully this notion has started to take hold in recent times with the notion of a circular economy and moves to have a right to repair but, it's not enough and it's not fast enough. This stuff is easy and if made to, any producer can make it so, the reality is it's not in their commercial interest to do so individually but, if forced collectively then all are in the same boat and none have a commercial advantage.

Each producer could and, should try to ensure that their products have a reasonable lifespan and last as well as being made in such a manner to make them repairable. It is my view that they have a responsibility to do so, to everyone. Not just serve up PR spins on minor changes that are usually often meaningless in the real world use of the goods.

If governments and the population are serious about having clean air and saving the planet then they need to wake up and push harder. The technologies and ability to make appliances last far longer and to be far more eco-friendly exist now.

Only the will to act doesn't.

Details: Written by: Kenneth Watt; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 09 August 2024; Hits: 271

This is a pet hate of mine, unrepairable products. By fair means of foul.

When you talk to people about this that are not involved in industry they tend to go one of a few ways but mostly it'll be that they believe there's some sort of a conspiracy by makers to make things unrepairable and, that's not usually true. Or, it's idiotic on the part of the maker, to which there is often more truth.

The problem that brands have is, more people believe the former over the latter. You can see how that presents a problem.

If you have a brand that you wish to protect, retain customers or grow then the last thing you need is your customers thinking that you're trying to screw them over and buy new products needlessly.

You don't really want them thinking you're a bunch of idiots either but, you could suppose that's better than the former. Though, not by much.

The worst of it is, many customers just accept it as the norm these days when it doesn't have to be and, ought not to be either. There are better ways for both manufacturers and end users who, in the end, have to co-exist as they do have a symbiotic relationship.

People will even accept and live with a kinda sub-standard product, just look (for those that can recall) the crap quality of 80's and 90's Hotpoint, Hoover etc machines that whilst riddled with problems worked reasonably well most of the time but, when they broke down parts were cheap, plentiful and almost anyone with the basic knowledge of a Fisher Price toolkit could repair. That meant though they broke (too much, some will argue), they were cheap and easy to fix.

People will live with that and, buy the same brand again because of it.

Brand loyalty is a fickle thing and, a strange one at times.

Many brands have to ask themselves these days how much it costs to "buy" new customers as opposed to retaining the ones that they have.

This is just the commercial argument for better design and repairability without even considering the environmental implications of better design and longevity. It's not moralistic, not preachy, just stone-cold commercial reality.

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