Viessman's five recently recruited engineers.
The roles will support a field service engineer force that has grown by more than 25 per cent over the past 18 months, including five engineers recently recruited and trained. The first UK engineer apprentice will also begin his three-year training in September.
It follows an increase in the operational hours of Viessmann customer service, which is now available six days per week, for longer periods.
A survey of nine boiler manufacturers’ aftersales care, conducted by theheatinghub.co.uk on a cold day in December 2017, found that Viessmann was the quickest call centre to get through to at just 21 seconds. It was one of only two manufacturers offering installers a route straight through to booking an engineer and it offered the quickest engineer attendance time (next day or the day after).
Other customer-pleasing factors are Viessmann’s use of a local rate phone number for its call centre, as well as the option to send an email. Its engineers are all employed by the company.
“It’s simply not true that only the biggest manufacturers in the market are equipped to service their customer and installer bases well,” said Viessmann service director, Paul Lambert. “Relative to the size of our installed boiler population, we are confident that Viessmann has the most service engineers per boiler installed in the market.”
He continued: “Customers attracted to Viessmann because of its product quality, can be assured that we are committed to providing the best all-round ownership experience. Viessmann’s aim is to provide unrivalled service excellence, with best response times for call-outs and commissioning. With our increasing boiler sales and warranty lengths, we’re adding in-the-field resources to stay one step ahead of the game.”
The four new area service manager posts have been filled through internal promotions. Primarily supporting the existing national service managers, Steven Kerswell and Shaun Stokes-Wigham will operate in the south of the UK, with Richard Hindmarsh and Andrew Lambert in the north. Each has responsibilities including field engineering support, sales support, complaint-response support, contractor management, and health and safety reviews.