How to run a successful gadget repair service

Most of us will agree that gadget repair businesses' clients expect these businesses to be a fairy godmother who with the flick of her wand fixes all their worries in a jiff and flies away to heaven! This is a basic characteristic of a highly service-centric business, like a gadget repair shop.  Any gadget repair shop needs to pay attention to delivering on time, staying competitive, and building trust with their customers. To build a successful service business, the business owner must pay attention to detail, try to stay unique, and provide convenience to their customers. 

Technology has played a pivotal role, especially after the popularity of SaaS. The evolution of software and the number of people relying on them have increased exponentially, which directly leads to an increase in gadget dependency. From laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and scanners to air conditioners, televisions, and refrigerators, businesses and smart homes are filled with a variety of gadgets. It's a great time to be in the business of gadget repair service and consequently, the business now faces a ton of competition. Here are a few ways to stay ahead of the competition and run a successful gadget repair service center:

1. On-time: It is of utmost importance for every service business to be on time. However, a gadget repair service can run its business on this particular characteristic. Since technology has been playing a continuous role in all of our lives, your customers will be in an anxious state of mind when handing over their gadgets for a fix. Your customers trust you with a gadget for repair which is dear to them and is used on an everyday basis. They will, thus, be keen on receiving their devices as soon as possible. In these circumstances, you will need to perform your services quickly to stand out. Your timeliness can be one of your cherished USPs to brag about to your customers. Customers also appreciate and look forward to receiving the correct timelines from service providers. For eg.: if you have committed to repairing a customer's mobile phone within 2 days, then try to meet the target. A customer will always appreciate knowing the correct duration needed by you to fix the gadget. It makes your service providers come across as knowledgeable and experienced, making your customers confident about their choice of you as the service provider and making them believe that you have command over the problem. Simple quick service and a fixed gadget will go a long way to improving customer loyalty and word-of-mouth for your business.
2. Niche: Develop a niche. Now, since your industry is competitive, a niche is necessary to place you in a "specialist" category. For eg.: if you only repair televisions and their accessories, you will be known as a connoisseur of the television repair industry. Customers are likely to visit a specialist when they want to get their expensive devices checked. The specialist status helps build a strong image. Building a niche is also easy on manpower. Your team does not need to have an array of techniques and qualities to build or fix different types of devices. In our example, the team needs only to focus on understanding the workings of the television and related equipment, saving the business some valuable time and cost. A niche also helps build a brand image - simply speaking about television repair must remind your customers of your business.
3. Convenience: A service offering that adds value to your core service - something unique and interesting that adds to the customer's convenience - will help your customers stay loyal to the brand. These services create excellent word of mouth marketing, which is the best form of advertisement. It can even be via small gestures embedded within the service delivery workflow. For eg.: customers can be assigned a dedicated service provider, making it easier for them to clear any queries they may have which can be addressed and understood immediately, making it a hassle-free repair experience for your customer. Reduce customer wait-times, ease their process by enabling appointment-only services. Customers can schedule their appointments directly online, on-the-go as per their convenience with simple application integrations. Appointo is an appointment scheduling software which allows people to schedule appointments online and even re-schedule and cancel their appointments at their own convenience. The application helps build automated workflows to assign, approve, and trigger notifications throughout the service journey. Let's take a look at multiple mobile phone manufacturers that run stores and repair shops where customers book their appointments and a key account manager is provided to every customer along with a receipt of the gadget that requires repairing. Here the company's backend captures the customer's requirement, assigns a technician, and an account executive, and calculates a probable delivery date based on the queue and availability. As the customer leaves the shop, they're updated with the expected time of delivery, a receipt, and the details of the account executive who will be handling their request. The customer is now free to speak with their key account manager if a predicament arises or even simply for a status update. This is an experience that you need to replicate with the help of integrations and automated workflows to showcase professionalism, and expertise, and earn customer loyalty.
4. Online presence: You can make your website the focal point for your customers, where they can understand your services and book an appointment from there itself. In this era and time of the multiverse, build an engaging social media presence across platforms that your customers use. You can highlight your USPs and run advertisements on social media to reach out to potential customers. The platform also helps engage with your customers through reviews, ratings, query-solving, and more. You can interact with your audience on social media by sharing your knowledge of gadgets and how to take care of them. This will help in building your followers and ultimately affect your customer's decision-making process when looking for a gadget repair service.
5. Training: It is one of the oldest and neatest tricks of any business. Every service business can only claim one USP that cannot be replicated by any other competition and that is its human resource. Your service providers will consist of freelancers and full-time employees depending on your business model. The candidates you hire must be very proficient in their troubleshooting, installing and re-installing software, testing devices, and running diagnostics - as required depending on the gadgets you work with. Although, they would also need to have communication and other soft skills for them to deliver a successful and remarkable customer experience. Therefore, training your team with essential soft skills to help customer communication and team dynamics is a must-do. The best way to go about it is to curate a training program and build processes for your team to provide a consistent, standard, and successful service to all your customers and also overcome their weaknesses during these training sessions.