One of the biggest gripes that are heard from Xiaomi customers is their lack of after-sales services. Given that Xiaomi is just over year old in India, they have not been able to create a large service centre network, that other brands like Samsung or Micromax have. If a Xiaomi phone in India needed some kind of support or repair services, they had go through lot of trouble.
Not any more…Xiaomi has partnered with GadgetWood eServices, a web-based portal that offers repair and support services to smartphones and tablet devices. The partnership entails Xiaomi phone users one-day repair and doorstep delivery services for Mi Smartphones.
Manu Kumar Jain, India head of Xiaomi said, “We want to bring door-delivery services to customers, who otherwise have no time to travel and identify outlets to service their gadgets in”
The partnership was finalized after Xiaomi ran a pilot project in Delhi NCR with Gadgetwood that allowed users from the region to get their smartphones repaired and site delivered within 24 hours. During the pilot phase over 500 users availed the services.
Gadgetwood eServices is an year old startup based out of New Delhi, who recently raised $200,000 seed funding from Ajai Chowdhry, Ashvin Chadha, Yogesh Bansal, Nitin Singhal & Others.
The Process
Going forward, whenever a Xiaomi user is in need of repair services, rather than going to nearest Xiaomi service center, they will just need to login to Gadgetwood portal and book the service. Once booked, Gadgetwood representative will come to your home to pickup the smartphone and take it back to the service center to repair it. Gadgetwood promises that they will repair the phone, test it and deliver it at your door-step within 24 hours.
If a user needs support remotely, they can just call Gadgetwood’s number to avail of remote phone support.
This is great for Xiaomi users as they will not need to visit any service center and also will get the phone back in quick time.
From Xiaomi’s point of view, partnership with Gadgetwood means, they will not have to worry about service side at all as they have now completely outsourced it to Gadgetwood. With proper service SLA’s in place, Xiaomi in India can just concentrate on just selling their phones!
A definite win-win partnership!
Question remains: Is the service available all over India? Obviously, no.