How analytics can improve after-sales service

Fixing the dysfunctional washing machine or refrigerator or TV at home can be an exasperating experience, for it takes a great deal of patience to call up the company and coordinate the technician’s home visit.

Delhi-based 247Around offers to address this hitch in the after-sales service ecosystem.The four-year-old start-up has established a franchisee network across 800 cities to service all brands of white goods and small appliances, including geysers, chimney and mixies.

Nitin Malhotra, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, 247Around, said the company has tied up with 100-plus brands to reduce their last-mile dependency, right from installation to repair and regular servicing. “E-commerce majors Amazon and Flipkart are our customers,” he added.

Opportunities

Highlighting the opportunity in the after-sales service space, he said, “Around 10 per cent of the 300 crore appliances installed every year needs some intervention to make it (appliances) functional.”

“Our asset is the repair data that we have collated of the various appliances and brands over the last 4 -5 years. When a help is sought, the system (after receiving the input) will analyse and signal the job that will need to be carried out to get the appliance up and running. This aids in drastic reduction of service time.”

“As we rely on analytics for each and every repair, it (analytics) is used as a training tool for our engineers, enabling them to take better repair decisions.

“But the challenge for us is huge, because we are not catering a single brand or appliance. We have an engineering app (for our engineers/ technicians), which serves as a virtual classroom, where on-call training happens.”

“Our in-house content team is engaged in developing tutorial and videos; we have demo-video and service-video,” Malhotra said.

The company is planning to launch B2C service in the coming year.