Service requests after delivery: the appliance seller's follow-up process

'The fridge stopped cooling on Sunday. I could not get through to the company, so I am messaging you. You sold it to me.' Most appliance sellers get this message, and the easy reply is the brand's toll-free number. Do the opposite. Sort the request in your first reply and answer what you can yourself. Log the rest with the brand on the buyer's behalf, send them the complaint number, and call back until the appliance works. The buyer chose to message you. Handled well, the buyer remembers who answered.

Why the message comes to you and not the brand

Your number is on the invoice and already in their WhatsApp. The brand's helpline is an IVR menu, a hold queue and a ticket number that means nothing to them. You are the person they know. They also believe the seller is responsible, and arguing the point wastes the call. Whatever the position in a given case, the buyer will judge you by what happens over the next three days.

Sort the request before you promise anything

Pin this beside whoever answers the phone and the WhatsApp.

1. Did it arrive damaged, or fail on first use? This one is yours. Ask for photos of the unit and the carton, check the delivery record, and start the brand's process for units that fail on arrival. The window is short, and the evidence to collect is set out in our dead-on-arrival process for online electronics sellers.
2. Is it not installed, or badly installed? Also yours. Chase the installer, your own or the brand's, and give the buyer a date.
3. Is it a usage question that looks like a fault? A new refrigerator that has not had the hours it needs to cool, a washing machine flashing a door-lock code, an AC left in dry mode. Answer it from the manual in two minutes, with a photo of the right page.
4. A fault inside the brand warranty? Log it with the brand yourself, with the serial number, invoice and photos, and send the buyer the complaint number and the visit date the brand gives.
5. Out of warranty, or damage the warranty leaves out? A panel cracked in a move, a board burnt in a spike, a wire chewed through behind the machine, or simply an old unit. Say so plainly and without blame, give the brand's paid service route (or start the claim if they bought an extended plan), and tell them the likely visit charge before the visit.

The reviews that hurt a seller most come from the first two, which are the seller's own, and from the third handled as if it were the fourth.

One line per request

Keep a sheet or a CRM view with one line for every request, in these columns:

Order no. | Product and serial | Purchase date | Branch (1 to 5) | Brand complaint no. | Date logged | Visit date given | Your check date | Outcome, in the buyer's words

The outcome column tells you more about each brand's service in your town than any brochure. If one brand keeps missing visits in a group of pin codes, stop selling it online there, or tell buyers plainly what to expect before they pay.

The callback is the step everyone skips

Many brands close a ticket when the technician has visited. Buyers close it when the appliance works. Use the buyer's definition.

Call on the date the brand gave. If the visit did not happen, escalate through your distributor's service contact or the brand's area service manager, whom every dealer should know by name. If it happened and the fault is back, log it again quoting the old complaint number, so the repeat is on record. The general method is in how to handle customer complaints and escalations.

Where the next order comes from

Do not sell during the complaint. Sell after the fix, and only where it helps the buyer. A family whose twelve-year-old refrigerator just needed an expensive compressor repair is close to replacing it, and an honest comparison of repair against replacement is welcome. A family whose new machine needed a door-lock reset is not, and an offer then reads as opportunism.

Note what the conversation told you about the household: the age of the other appliances, the purchase they mentioned in passing.

Imagine a store in Mysuru

Imagine an appliance store in Mysuru that sells through its own site and on WhatsApp, and whose staff answered every service message with the brand's toll-free number. A buyer's new front-load machine showed a door-lock error. The buyer waited four days for a brand visit, and the technician shut the door properly and left. The one-star review named the store, not the brand. In this illustration, 12 of the store's 40 service messages in a month turned out to be usage questions like this one.

The store laminated the five branches for the counter and put the manuals for its top-selling models in one shared folder. The next door-lock error was answered in five minutes with a photo of the manual page. Real faults were logged by the store, the complaint number went to the buyer, and a check date went into the sheet. The store could not make any brand faster. It could make sure nobody waited without knowing why. It did not win everyone back: two buyers who had already posted reviews kept them.

Give last month's chats a branch number

Open the service chats your team has answered since the start of the month and give each one a branch number. Anything marked 1, 2 or 3 is work you can fix without waiting on any brand. Then write down the ladder. Who do you call when a brand misses a visit, and who after that? Many stores keep it in one person's head. Appliance dealers are one of the trades on our e-commerce sales and marketing page, and if you want the list, the sheet and the ladder set up as complaint and escalation management, tell us what you need.