Customers must feel that the vendor believes enough in the quality of the goods to offer a warranty. Le Creuset cookware products are expensive. However, I’ll always buy them as they offer a lifetime warranty. It’s an effect marketing tool to attract, convert and keep customers.

Warranties are offered across a wide range of industries covering e-bikes, cars, electronics to building materials. Yet the warranty management process is similar for all. The stages include:

• warranty registration
• claim capture & processing
• claims validation
• customer support
• parts returns
• extended warranty

Try not to treat the process as a cost-containment function. Instead use components to drive differentiation between you and competitors. Warranty software solutions are essential to implement these items effectively.  Let’s look at each step in turn:

Warranty Registration

Collecting and controlling customer data increases the value of the company. Have a direct line of data collection and establish a direct relationship with the consumer. Registering for warranty is a totally acceptable reason for a customer to provide their personal information.

Claims Capture

Many businesses are managing their claims process manually. This includes repetitive tasks like receiving requests via email and even printing them out to file. To ensure excellent and timely customer service the claims should be sent via online forms and stored securely in a cloud database.

Claims validation

Claims can be another efficiency gain. Such requests can be quickly acknowledged with alerts. The claim can be validated with information such as a sales receipt. Collect and store them in the warranty system.

Customer Support

Impress customers with service excellence that delivers rapid warranty processing. For update requests, warranty management solutions will have a dashboard that allows the warranty manager to review the status of a claim. They can then update the customer or claim owner quickly. Happy customers will sing your praises on social media.

Extended Warranty

Increase revenues by the up-sell and cross-sell of warranty products. Access to customer data collected during the warranty registration will facilitate this.

An online warranty management solution will support all the functions above as it:

• Collects warranty and customer data accurately via an online form.
• Stores data securely in an online database allowing reporting for analysis.
• Automate workflow such as alerting warranty managers, dealers and repairers at relevant stages in the process.
• Support greater efficiency, visibility and co-operation between manufacturers, dealers, repairers and internal teams.

Manufacturers of products that wish to grow and scale their business must enhance capabilities to support warranty management. This will improve service execution and product innovation with the goal of delivering higher value to customers annd opportunities for other revenue streams. 

Neglecting warranties could mean missing out on business growth opportunities. In addition, poor end to end customer experiences will result in bad online reviews. This delivers low word of mouth sales.

Summary

Warranty is a tool to grow and scale your product company. Consequently, it’s now possible for smaller businesses to greatly improve the customer experience at lower costs. This delivers new revenue streams to rise above and beat the competition. 

Businesses small and large widely now use software as a service (SaaS) . In the past, only enterprise product manufacturers could operate expensive warranty systems. Such solutions are now affordable and easy to implement for SMEs as SaaS.

Taskmatix is designed for SMEs. It’s Software as a Service for warranty management that grows with startups and smaller businesses. Online signup and no contracts is low risk and doesn’t require technical resources to set up. 

Sign-up to a 30 day Taskmatix trial for free.