Business Challenge
The company aimed to deliver exceptional customer service through prompt warranty fulfilment, maintaining global inventories of replacement parts to minimize downtime. However, fragmented processes, inconsistent entitlement checks, and compromised serial number integrity led to increased fraud, duplicate claims, and misuse of warranty services. This lack of process integration and oversight threatened both profitability and the overall quality of customer support.
Solution
Sensitel delivered a comprehensive solution by applying advanced data analytics and robust product-tracking technologies previously developed for the logistics and pharmaceutical industries. Initially, Sensitel conducted extensive stakeholder interviews across customer support, technical support, and warranty management. This analysis revealed significant issues, including inconsistencies in serial numbers, gaps in entitlement validation, and inadequate monitoring of part shipments.
Figure 1. Warranty Value Chain Stakeholders
Based on these insights, Sensitel implemented several critical improvements. They introduced rigorous serial number tracking and entitlement checks at every stage of the warranty fulfilment process. Additionally, Sensitel deployed sophisticated analytics using the SENS Data platform to identify warranty abuse patterns, pinpointing the top 20% of problematic serial numbers and customers responsible for the most warranty costs. External stakeholders, such as distributors and repair centres, were integrated into a unified, transparent workflow to proactively detect and prevent warranty abuse. Real-time dashboards and automated alerts were created to identify anomalies, including repeated warranty claims and mismatched serial numbers.
Business Results
The comprehensive analytics and tracking solution provided by Sensitel delivered immediate and substantial improvements. The solution proposed by Sensitel achieved cost reductions of $10 to $12 per phone interaction by ensuring accurate entitlement and eliminating duplicate warranty claims. The creation of detailed customer profiles was enforced, ensuring proper classification of warranty versus service calls. Overall process efficiency improved significantly, resulting in a reduction of fraudulent warranty claims and associated costs. Enhanced customer satisfaction was achieved by streamlining service interactions and reducing warranty fulfilment errors. Additionally, proactive fraud detection and operational oversight were enabled, safeguarding the company’s brand integrity and customer trust.
Collectively, these improvements resulted in millions of dollars in savings each quarter, significantly strengthening the company's reputation for excellence and reliability. The customer experienced several critical benefits. These included substantial cost savings through reduced fraud and more efficient service operations, as well as accurate real-time tracking and reporting of warranty claims, increased operational transparency, proactive fraud prevention, an improved customer experience, and strengthened brand trust.