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After relinquishing its crown for the largest smartphone manufacturer in India to Xiaomi, Samsung is betting big on after-sales service to regain its leadership in the mobile space and prevent Chinese intrusion in Samsung’s another strong base of consumer durables.
And in order to improve after-sales-service, Samsung is reaching out to the smallest corner of the country.
“With an aim to further strengthen our commitment to provide quality customer service to rural and semi-urban India, at par with urban consumers, Samsung launched 535 customer service vans,” Sunil Cutinha, Vice-President, Customer Satisfaction, Samsung India, told BusinessLine .
In the last one year, Samsung has been rapidly scaling its rural presence with over 60 per cent of its 3,000-odd service points now in rural and semi-urban areas.
The service vans are helping the company further to go deeper into these rural pockets. These service vans are equipped with an inverter and battery, soldering station, a laptop with dongle, printer, hot plate and standard tool kit to allow for repairs for mobile phones on the day itself.
Mobile phone is not the only category where Samsung is seeing increased competition. Recently Xiaomi entered the smart TV space, where Samsung currently leads and offered highly competitively priced products. Samsung says it will not have a major impact as after-sales-service will remain its key differentiator.
‘Multi-vans’
Therefore, to service products other than mobile phones, Samsung has set up ‘multi-vans’, which are equipped with a genset with extension wire, gas (for refrigerators and ACs), tools & equipment, spare parts, mobile pouch for pick up and an engineer tool kit. A multi-skilled service engineer accompanies every van. Currently, Samsung has 495 multi vans and 40 mobile service vans. In areas where there are more than 50 service requests a month, Samsung has started hiring resident engineers to set up small service points in villages.
“We are also planning to add 200 resident engineers for enhancing our customer service support. This new addition will increase our resident engineer base to 450, bringing world-class service to the doorsteps of rural and semi-urban customers,” Cutinha said.
“The expansion has enabled us to reach to customers in over 6,000 talukas across 29 States and 7 Union Territories, making Samsung’s service network the largest in this industry in India,” Cutinha said.
The initiative is helping Samsung improve its customer satisfaction ratings in rural India. Earlier, it took 2-4 days to service a customer complaint in the interiors of India. A service engineer first visited a consumers’ home to ascertain the complaint and then went back again with the required parts for the repair and frequent power cuts in these areas made it challenging to execute repairs even with the requisite spares.
“The programme is a big differentiator when it comes to providing quality service to consumers. The engineer earlier used a two-wheeler to reach a customer which often required a follow up visit, increasing the repair time. Now, with the fully equipped service vans, with spare parts, tools and jigs and other equipment, the engineer is able to close the call within the first day of registering the request,” Cutinha said.
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