A Working Day for Neil Emmott

Warranty Communications Author

Neil will tell you that his love affair with the motor car began back in 1977 when he became an apprentice with a multi franchise garage. The cars to be seen in those days were SD1 Rovers, original Mini’s, Ford Granada/ Consul /Capri, Vauxhall Viva, the VX490 and the “good old” Austin Princess. Technician days saw Neil right through to around 1990 before a career in workshop supervision and control ‘kept the wolves from his door’. Fed up with dealer life he moved into the arms of the OEM manufacturer looking after all things warranty. A short time away at the turn of the century with Motability was swiftly followed by a return to the safety of the manufacturer and the warranty department, supporting written dealer publications.

Based on our client’s site in the English south-east, my day always begins with the opening of the e-mail inbox to reveal the progress of existing communications, new requests, and items that are now ready for publication, plus a quick check of the calendar for any pending meetings during the day.

A typical day could see the request for a new warranty manual change or the need for a new warranty bulletin.

The Warranty Manual is published electronically and provides guidelines for dealers with regard to working with our client’s warranty systems and policies. Each manual has small variations for each European market, although around 70% is common across all of them. The long term aim of our client is to increase this to over 90%, to bring about a common European warranty policy.

Warranty Bulletins are ad-hoc publications which are also issued to authorised dealers electronically. They provide information about policy changes which, for example, might affect ways which claims are assessed or submitted.

The warranty manual and bulletins are only ever communicated to authorised dealers and never directly to customers. Owner Handbooks (which are not currently part of my remit) convey warranty policy to the end customer or user of the vehicle.

Today there is a need for a warranty bulletin. First things first, I have to make sure that the request is complete and all necessary information is available. After initialising all the software tools, the draft warranty bulletin is produced, followed by a quick run-through with supervision, then it can then go for sign-off. The remainder of the process from cradle to publish cannot and does not happen in a day, however the following process will be utilised in the days to come. After sign-off, a regional review is required, then translation, followed by a local review of the translated content. All this is completed prior to publication. It is a simple process really but there is always the safety net of the process guide to fall back on should I suffer any memory lapse.

With the new warranty bulletin process taken as far as possible, this leaves me free to check my diary again for meetings with colleagues regarding future warranty content.

There are a number of publications for both the dealer franchises and customers alike. Meetings can be in person or over the telephone, whichever medium is used they are all different, all interesting, and you never say that you didn’t get anything out of any one of them.

For example: a meeting could be called by the requester of the publication or myself should there be unclear content within the request. The request may be to advise dealers that the use of a new special diagnostic tool is required for all warranty repairs, and that a previous communication should be refered to. However, on checking the “refered to” communication, a contradiction might be identified between the proposed content of the requested bulletin and the previous communication. In this context, the meeting will include the stakeholders who can decide how to deal with the contradiction.

However, my calendar is clear, so instead, with some warranty manual editorial returned from the translation agents, local reviews complete, I now have time to meet the publication deadline and publish the new warranty manual content to the dealer network through our client’s web portal.

Once published various tracking and audit systems must be updated, internal customers advised of the newly published warranty manual content. Systems that keep internal customers up to date with publication dates and content must also be updated.

Our client furnished me with a task in early 2009 to bring together a completely revised warranty manual and to publish it through the client’s technical web portal. The aim was to publish the new manual to all European markets, since at the time only three of the twenty markets had the electronic version of their current manual. This task has involved producing a completely new draft version from the base warranty policy; sending it to all market warranty representatives; collating all their requests for localisation; returning final draft versions (in English); gaining content agreement and sign off; arranging translation of all language versions; returning local language versions to market warranty representatives to proof read for grammar, translation and terminology; collating change requests and returning necessary content for amendment by the translation agents; and finally returning the amended versions for final market and legal sign off.

The final piece of the jigsaw was to ascertain publication and ‘effective from’ dates prior to final publication to the authorised dealer network in each market. I was tasked to complete this work by the end of 2010: all but four markets were successfully launched before this date, the four which remain will be published early in 2011.

Sometimes the end of the day seems to come too quickly—the beauty of full days! I always go home thinking, “I have achieved something today”, and never, “what did I do today?” The warranty communication role is never boring and always busy, I guess they go hand in hand. I can honestly say I actually look forward to getting in in the mornings; I work with a great bunch of people and in a job I really enjoy. Would I recommend a career in Warranty Communications working for USE*? “Definitely!”

Meet Our Team

View Case Studies

Jonathan Quaife

USE* Managing Director

Nick Cook

USE* Technical and Operations Director

1 2 3