Why do repairs get lost?
Most lost repairs aren’t lost at all. The phone is in the drawer, but nobody knows whether it’s waiting for a part, waiting for the customer or finished. Paper tickets, sticky notes and memory all fail on a busy day. The fix is the same in every shop: one place where every job lives, with a stage everyone understands.
How do you book a repair in properly?
Write down, before the customer leaves the counter:
- Who: their name, phone number and email.
- What: the make, model and IMEI or serial number.
- The fault, in the customer’s words.
- The condition: scratches, cracks, missing buttons. This protects you as much as them.
- Your terms, accepted by the customer.
Give the job a number and put it on the device and the ticket.
Which stages should you use?
Use a short, fixed set, and move the job on the moment something changes. If a job can sit in a stage for days (awaiting parts is the usual one), that stage should be easy to find, so you can chase it.
How do you check a repair before it goes back?
Use the same short checklist every time: power, screen and touch, cameras, speakers and microphone, charging, buttons, signal. A checklist turns “I think I tested it” into a record you can point to if the customer comes back.
How do you stop customers ringing for updates?
Tell them before they ask. An email at each stage and a page where they can check the repair themselves answer most calls before they happen.
How Fixory tracks repairs
In Fixory, you book a repair in with the customer, device, fault, condition notes and technician, and the customer accepts your terms at booking. Each repair moves through set stages, from booked in to collected, and every change is kept in its history. If the IMEI can’t be read, you add it later.
A quality-control checklist must be passed before a repair is marked complete, and each shop can edit its own. You can print job sheets. Customers get emails as the repair moves along and check its progress online with their repair number and last name. The dashboard shows repairs by status, so you see what’s waiting at a glance.
Questions shop owners ask
What stages should a repair go through?
Keep them few and fixed, for example booked in, awaiting parts, in repair, quality check, ready to collect and collected. What matters is that everyone uses the same stages, so the stage alone tells you what happens next.
How do customers find out their repair is ready?
In Fixory, customers get emails when their repair is booked in, when its status changes and when it's ready to collect, and they can check its progress online with their repair number and last name. Fixory doesn't send text messages.
What if I can't read the IMEI when the phone comes in?
Book the repair in anyway and add the IMEI once the phone is working. Fixory lets you book a repair when the IMEI can't be read and add it later.