After-Sales Service by Serial Number: What Should Be Recorded

When a customer calls about something they bought, three questions come up at once: was this unit ours? Is its warranty active? And who should handle it? An organization that pulls those answers out of several files and colleagues' memory wastes the customer's time and leaves nothing traceable. The structured way is to have everything start from the item's serial number.

Why the serial number is the starting point

A serial number identifies one specific unit: it was sold, it has a date, it is tied to a specific customer and it has its own warranty. When a service request is attached to the serial itself, every new request has the full history of that unit within reach. In Afrandeh after-sales service software this model is built in: each request is logged on a serial number, and one or more requests can exist per serial.

What should be recorded

A good after-sales routine covers these steps:

1. Serial lookup: by serial number or item name, see the warranty status (active or inactive, with start and end dates), the customer and the serial status.
2. Logging the request: a title and description, a type (install, repair, replace, inspect, other), a priority (normal or urgent) and a service type from the company catalog.
3. Approve or reject: open requests are reviewed, and rejection carries a reason; until approved, a request cannot be referred.
4. Referral to a technician: while seeing their capacity.
5. Technician response and billing: a description of the work and the services, goods, additions and deductions and payment type.
6. Closing with a handover checklist: so nothing is missed.

Referral by capacity, not guesswork

Referral is one of the subtlest parts. In Afrandeh, when referring, you see the technician's free time today, the time of each service for them and their capacity table for the coming week. Capacity is a guide, not a lock: the referrer can knowingly choose a technician whose capacity is full, but the decision is made with the information in view, not blindly.

Three separate roles

Approver, referrer and service technician are three independent roles managed from menu access and technician definitions, and a technician sees only their own referrals. Separate roles mean the person who approves a request is not necessarily the one who does the work.

Connection to the rest of the organization

A service request can be linked to an official warehouse document, such as a consumable-parts issue note; every sold serial is also tied to its customer in CRM. To see how those connections come from a document chain, read the document chain in ERP.

Questions to ask before choosing software

• Does everything start from the serial number, or from a free-form entry?
• Is the warranty status of each serial visible at a glance?
• Is referral done while seeing the technician's capacity?
• Does closing a request depend on a handover checklist?
• Are costs and consumed parts recorded in the same request?

To review your warranty and after-sales routine in a short session, request a demo.