By Dhaval Valia
D-Link has decided to set up 20 new RMA centers in tier-3 and tier-4 cities over the next six months by appointing a network of ASPs. Each of these centers will have L2 repair capabilities.
“Expanding and improving our warranty support will be our core focus for 2009. We will roll out our ASP strategy by April, and we intend to increase our RMA support coverage to more than 150 cities,” said Balgond Chougula, AVP, services, D-Link India.
At present, D-Link has 18 RMA centers. Of these, five are L4 centers that provide design-level repair, the remaining are L3 service stations providing chip-level (BGA) repairs.
According to Chougula, nearly 95 percent of all D-Link products carry a life-time warranty and hence beefing up RMA support is core to the company’s strategy.
“Our plan is to have one exclusive partner per city, who will also service the neighboring areas. We will be making significant investments to provide partners with the necessary testing and repair equipments, and also provide training to their technical staff,” informed Chougula.
In addition, D-Link has embarked on a plan to make its RMA support more accessible to partners by opening new centers and relocating the existing centers closer to the IT hubs in metros.
As part of this plan, the company recently inaugurated its second RMA center at Nehru Place in New Delhi, and will soon launch a second RMA center in Mumbai at Lamington Road. In Kolkata, Secunderabad and Chennai, the company has already moved its RMA centers to Chandni Market, Chenoy Trade Center and Richie Street respectively. In Bangalore, it is relocating the center closer to SP Road.
According to Chougula, all their RMA centers will soon have demo sections where partners can walk in to get a live demo of the company’s products as soon as they are launched. D-Link will also make available an SMS-alert facility for service status updates for end-users and partners.
Meanwhile, the company has beefed up iSMARTS, its online web-based service call logging system. “We have added several features to iSMARTS, which, apart from call logging, provides mail alerts on service status, and also allows online tracking of service requests. For partners, the web platform provides visibility to the level of identifying which service engineer is servicing their products,” disclosed Chougula.
D-Link is also working toward making its across-the-table service (for fast-moving and low-value products) more efficient. “Across-the-table is where we repair the product on the spot at our RMA centers. Our across-the-table success ratio in metros is 35-40 percent, which we aim to increase over the next six months,” Chougula stated. |