Warranty and Goodwill
Car manufacturers ensure that customers are satisfied when they handle warranty and goodwill issues quickly and professionally. Satisfied customers whose inquiries are dealt with quickly and without too much red tape are much more liable to remain loyal to the company. Lean warranty and goodwill processes are thus a key element for successful after-sales management.
Recourse to components suppliers
In many cases car manufacturers can have recourse to components suppliers in warranty and goodwill cases. This is why the suppliers should be integrated into the warranty and goodwill processes. Standardised procedures ensure that recourse to the suppliers is handled quickly. This allows car manufacturers to keep their warranty costs low.
Costs under control
An important part of warranty and goodwill management is cost controlling. Innovative process models for warranty and goodwill controlling support companies in this area: they ensure legally compliant, efficient procedures and reliable cost monitoring. This also benefits car manufacturers in terms of calculating the provisions that they have to allow for future warranty and goodwill cases.
Cirquent – A competent partner for all warranty and goodwill issues
Cirquent supports car manufacturers in all strategic and technical matters related to warranty and goodwill – from planning and process analysis and design to the development and implementation of IT systems. The consulting and implementation services are based on Cirquent's warranty and goodwill integration model. This model aggregates all the success factors for a customer friendly, lean and cost saving warranty and goodwill management system: process management, warranty controlling, quality management.
Read how Cirquent developed and implemented warranty and goodwill processes for a British sports car manufacturer.
Zero administration and maximum control
At the start of the project for a British premium sports car manufacturer the aim was to define the guiding principles for processing warranty claims: zero administration and maximum control. When repairs are carried out under warranty there should be as little administration as possible for the customer, the dealer and the repair shops; however, the manufacturer should retain full control of the procedures and costs. Cirquent fulfilled these requirements with an in-house developed model for integrating the warranty and goodwill processes into the company's Service, Sales, Procurement, Quality, Finance and Logistics units. Then Cirquent defined which IT support is necessary for a warranty process that spans the entire company. The planned processes were then structured in terms of organisation and IT on this basis.
Smooth processing of warranty and goodwill
The integrated processes designed and implemented by Cirquent now ensure that warranty claims and goodwill are processed smoothly. With "zero administration" the Service unit can process warranty and goodwill orders as a partner of the manufacturer with the lowest possible administration effort. Costs are reimbursed by the manufacturer quickly, reliably and transparently. It has "maximum control" of the entire warranty process across all the company units and incurs fewer costs. The sports car manufacturer's customers also benefit from the new, integrated warranty and goodwill system: thanks to the accelerated process, they get their cars back sooner.
Process management
- Optimum warranty and goodwill processes in cooperation with customers, dealers and components suppliers
- Connecting warranty and goodwill procedures to neighbouring processes such as service, technical diagnostics, repairs and quality management
- Integration of feedback information concerning service quality, customer satisfaction or customers' complaints as well as the vehicle status and repair process
Warranty controlling
- Designing the business processes to form provisions in a legally compliant manner
- Developing control systems for warranty and goodwill costs
- Structuring the cooperation between manufacturers and dealer organisations
- Defining service catalogues to reimburse warranty and goodwill costs
Quality management
- Classifying fault patterns
- Fault coding for dealerships, sales, development, quality assurance, components suppliers
- Automatic damage pattern generation
