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Domestic Appliance Repairers Enjoying New Reputation

21 October 2010

Domestic & General's post-repair customer survey highlights considerable improvement in care and quality within the repair industry.

The era of an endless wait for your washing machine repairer to arrive is nearing an end, according to one of the UK's largest customer care surveys.

Since their inception in 1997, Domestic & General's Total Excellence and Quality (TEQ) award have been widely credited for enhancing service standards throughout the repair industry and changing customer perceptions. For the second consecutive year the award has been won by BSH Customer Service, who are responsible for the care of Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau and Neff home appliance brands. They are joined by Electrolux Service Force and Indesit (Hotpoint), both highly commended for their customer service levels.

The awards are based on feedback from over 425,000 post-repair questionnaires distributed each year by Domestic & General, the UK's leading provider of warranty and product protection services. About 40% of those contacted returned completed questionnaires, making it the largest independent survey of repair standards on domestic appliances.

The feedback provides a unique insight into customer care within the sector, and allows manufacturers and repair contractors to gather vital information about every aspect of their service, from the efficiency and polite handling of the initial customer contact through to the effectiveness and courtesy of the repair engineers. It also enables them to measure accurately how well they are performing in comparison to their main rivals.

There is clear evidence that service standards across the industry have improved considerably since the TEQ awards were first introduced. The graph above demonstrates this improvement in customer satisfaction during this time: the winning score in 1997 would only have been good enough to achieve seventh place this year.

Lawrence Harrison, Service Director of Domestic & General is delighted that the TEQ awards have become such a crucial benchmarking tool for the industry. "The feedback we receive from customers not only enables the manufacturers to understand specific areas where improvement in their customer service can be made, but also provides a tangible way of monitoring the softer - but often hard to measure - issues such as appearance and attitude of their engineers.

The improvement in customer satisfaction we have seen over the past thirteen years is outstanding, and is testament to the commitment of all domestic appliance manufacturers to delivering the best possible repair experience to customer."

BSH's Customer Service Director Bernhard Vocke describes how the awards have assisted the company in improving their customer service standards. "Despite winning the award last year, we still sought improvement, and the survey was crucial to enabling us to streamline our processes further. As a result of the feedback, we reinforced training for contact centre staff, created shorter lead times for engineer visits, organised more parts deliveries and a introduced a new internal mentoring scheme. In addition, our online customer service has been expanded to include a 24-hour booking service for engineer visits."

"Getting customer service right first time is good for the customer and for our business. The questionnaires have played a critical role in helping us to constantly evaluate our processes and performance, and thereby build on last year's success."

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Notes For Editors:

1. For more information, please contact Michael Rosen, Press & PR Manager, on 020 8879 8767 or 07595 550897 or michael.rosen@domesticandgeneral.com

2. Domestic &General provides warranty services for UK and International clients and comprehensive product protection for more than nine million customers.

For over sixty years we have been looking after people when things go wrong. Our primary focus is on providing product protection for major domestic appliances and consumer electronic products. Together with our manufacturing, retail and financial services clients, we provide warranty services for over 150 major UK and International brands. We manage the whole warranty process, including: customer mailing; contact centres; repair networks; in-house administration; claims handling.

We operate across a number of different international markets, most notably in Australia, Germany, Spain and France. To learn more about us, visit www.domesticandgeneral.com