Scania Australia is establishing its own Scania Assistance centre in Melbourne, with five Scania Assistance service coordinators to provide help to drivers who break down on the road as of Tuesday, April 2.
While the assistance service has been running in Australia and New Zealand for a number of years already, it had only ever been based overseas. Now Scania customers will have a local team to guide them through any issues that may arise with their truck.
Scania Assistance Australia and New Zealand supervisor Brendon Parry says this will provide an important link between the assistance service and Scania branches and dealers who can provide roadside assistance.
“Scania Assistance stands ready to help any Scania owner or driver who has had a vehicle breakdown, for example a flat battery, or a warning light or message that instructs the vehicle to be stopped safely,” he says.
“We then contact a Scania branch or Scania authorised independent dealer who can provide help at the side of the road using their roadside assistance van and technician.
“We are the interface between a distressed customer or driver at the roadside and the technician dispatched to analyse and hopefully fix the problem in situ. We provide the customer with one point of contact throughout the process, and keep them informed as we are updated by the technician at the roadside, or via the data he is providing using the Scania OnScene app.
“In some cases where a vehicle is stranded in a remote location, using the Scania Communicator we can pinpoint the vehicle’s location, sending the technician the exact coordinates, which again reduces downtime. In most cases, the truck can be fixed at the roadside.
“Now with the establishment of the local Australian centre, we will have more local knowledge and more local options for helping customers in need.
“Over the past decade Scania in Australia and New Zealand has been delivering record numbers of trucks, which will create greater demand for assistance services. Trucks, buses and marine and industrial engines are mechanical devices and sometimes they break down.
“Despite our laser-like focus on uptime and scheduled servicing, our vehicle operators accept there may be unplanned stoppages and what they are interested in is how quickly we can get them rolling again.
“Our focus has always been on uptime and ensuring the delivery gets through.”
The new centre is being established at Scania’s Australian national warehouse facility in Campbellfield, north of the Melbourne CBD.
If Australian customers need assistance but are a long distance from one of the nine Scania company-owned workshops, the nationwide network of more than 60 independent authorised dealers can be called into action. In New Zealand, the same applies.
Scania Assistance project manager Andrew Greenwood says that the Melbourne centre will give Scania greater access to data in order to address the needs of each specific customer.
“From the opening of the centre in Melbourne we will be operating a new generation system that allows us to access more data to match the customer and vehicle, as well as identify fault codes, all of which will help speed the resolution of the issue by the technician at the scene,” he says.
“In the future we anticipate the customer will be able to report a fault or breakdown using the Scania Driver app, and obviously that will bring a lot more stable data into play and make it easier for the nominated technician to see the exact details of the vehicle as well as potentially its service history and the fault codes generated.
“Further down the track we may be able to use live data from trucks to predict when breakdowns might occur and be able to avoid unplanned mid-journey roadside stops.”
You can reach Scania Assistance free of charge from anywhere in Australia on 1300 722 642.