Out-of-Warranty Repairs, Done Well: Good for the Customer, the Store and Your Brand

A customer emails about a coffee grinder that’s stopped grinding. It’s fourteen months old, and the warranty ran out two months ago. They know that. They’re not asking for a favour, only for someone to fix it.

For a distributor, an out-of-warranty repair is rarely about the money. The fees cover the work, and not much more. It’s about what the customer thinks of your brand when it’s over, and what the store that sold it thinks of you too.

Two quotes, two payments, plenty of waiting

An out-of-warranty repair has more steps than most, and each one waits on the one before it.

1. The customer gets in touch, and you note down the problem.
2. You capture the repair, or they fill in your repair form.
3. You send a quote for the assessment and the courier to collect it.
4. They pay, and the product is collected or dropped off.
5. You assess it, then quote for the repair, or for a new unit if they’d prefer.
6. They pay again, and you fix it.
7. The product goes back to the customer, or to the store for them to collect.

None of these steps is difficult. The trouble is keeping track of where each repair has got to, when you have dozens of them, each waiting on a different person.

Where it goes wrong

When the customer goes to their store first

Stores often tell customers to contact you directly, and many do. But the customer bought the product from the store, so plenty of them go back there first, and the best stores don’t turn them away. They log the repair and hand it on to you.

From there, you deal with the customer about the quote and the payment. The store’s part is the product. If the customer left it at the store, you collect it from there and send it back there when it’s done.

The store may not be involved in the details, but it still cares how it goes. It’s their customer, and they want to know that customer is happy. They don’t need a running commentary, just a place where they can see what’s happening.

Handle it well, and you’ve looked after the customer and the store at the same time. Handle it badly, and it’s the store that hears about it first.

One place for every out-of-warranty repair

RepairStep follows the process you already use.

A conversation can start as a query, with the customer’s details and what they’ve told you, and become a repair when they’re ready to send it in. The repair then follows your own stages, including the ones you only use for out-of-warranty work: invoice sent, payment received, for the assessment and again for the repair.

Every invoice goes out from the repair itself. The customer sees exactly what they owe on their tracking page, and you can see every repair that’s waiting on a payment in one place.

When a customer goes quiet, the repair doesn’t go quiet with them. You can see how long it’s been waiting and follow it up, and whoever picks up the phone next has the whole story in front of them.

And when the repair came through a store, the store can follow it too, on its own tracking page, seeing as much or as little as you choose. Its customer is looked after, and the store knows it.

Customers rarely remember what an out-of-warranty repair cost. They remember how it was handled.

You can try it on your first 20 repairs for free, with all the features and no credit card.