First within industry to allow the purchase of appliance parts through texting & social media platforms

Center Line, Michigan – 1st Source Servall, one of the largest distributors of appliance parts in North America, today announced it has launched a new state-of-the-art ordering and customer service system  throughout the company.  The service system allows customers to inquire and purchase any of the company’s thousands of appliance parts through their preferred communication channels, including social media platforms such as Facebook and SMS texting, while receiving the return communication in the same format used to place the inquiry or order.

Customers currently place orders or communicate with the company’s award winning customer service via phone, in store visits and online but 1^st Source Servall is now the first within the industry to enhance its ordering and customer service processes to meet the growing demand of customers who want to utilize SMS texting and social media. This is especially beneficial for appliance repair professionals, a large segment of the appliance part industry, because this will allow them to determine pricing, inventory availability and order parts from the road or onsite without the financial burden of purchasing new technology.  Anyone with a cell phone or a smart phone now can place an order or ask a question various ways without taking time out of what they have scheduled.  An appliance repair professional can order a part while working on the appliance, with a quick text and finish the job as the reply comes back to his or her phone, saving time for them and their customer.

“The decision to enhance our ordering system and customer service is based on our desire to give our customers the flexibility to order products and ask questions through the communication vehicle they prefer that fits their busy schedules,” said Kim Adler, president, 1^st Source Servall.  “We are confident this new system will distinguish us from our competition providing customers the most convenient options of ordering the parts they need as well as having much quicker access to our customer service representatives.”

1^st Source Servall made a major investment to overhaul the company’s customer service and ordering technology. During the due diligence process, the research showed that it was imperative to utilize social media and text messaging because of the growth potential within these communication channels. 

The newly launched technology is already achieving many of the objectives that 1^st Source Servall set out to obtain, all with the goal of benefiting customers.  The new system is cutting wait times and allowing orders to be processed much more efficiently, especially by those using social media and SMS texting. The company estimates that the new technology will help improve its industry leading customer response times by another 30 percent.

In addition, the new technology features multimedia queuing, which will allow customer service representatives to speed up response times and reduce abandonment rates.  Multimedia queuing offers smart features like intelligent call delivery allowing the best customer service functionality. Calls can be routed to specific agents, based on pre-set parameters to match the caller with the agent best suited to help the customer. Customers will also be able to web chat live with a 1^st Source Servall representative to place orders.

“Our business model has always focused on providing personalized and superior customer service and the launch of our new customer service and ordering technology is just another example how we are constantly looking at providing our customers with the utmost convenience,”   Adler continued.  “We realize the needs of our customers are always changing and as an innovator in the industry we need to stay ahead of the curve in anticipating how we can help save them time and money.”

To utilize SMS texting to place an order a customer must text the phone number 586.480.2167. For customers wanting to use Facebook to order parts, they must “like” www.facebook.com/1stsourceservall and then place the order through the page’s private messaging option.

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