Home-Appliance Warranty Network Recovery Leader

The mandate

The business operates a multi-tier warranty network spanning contact teams, independent service partners and claim-processing systems that handle repairs and parts fulfilment for refrigerators, cookers and washers sold through retail channels. The role will build end-to-end visibility from call logging through parts dispatch to household service completion, restore serial traceability across the supply chain, and rebuild sell-through partnerships with major retailers.

The interim starts within three weeks and serves eight months through campaign containment, peak winter demand and selection of a permanent successor in month four. Days one to twenty-one create a truthful installed-base and open-household view, triage food-safety and vulnerable-customer consequences, and stop unsupported closure. Months two through five rebuild diagnosis, parts promise, technician routing, partner control, repeat-repair and replacement decisions. The final quarter proves recovery and transfers it country by country.

Handover is complete when the successor has chaired six network reviews, priority appliances have consequence-based service thresholds, serial-level parts movement reconciles through return, repeat visits and cannibalisation are visible, and every country can explain open demand by customer outcome rather than claim status. The permanent team receives partner heatmaps, parts constraints, quality feedback, retailer commitments, aged households, disputed claims and a ninety-day decision agenda.

The interim may reallocate technicians and stock, pause a service partner, set repair-versus-replacement thresholds within policy, approve temporary capacity within budget, reopen unsupported claims and stop unauthorised substitution. Product recall, warranty-term change, country closure, permanent appointments, consumer-law positions, supplier settlements and expenditure above EUR4 million require executive or committee approval. Product-safety determinations remain with quality and regulatory officers.

Sales recovery, product redesign, factory quality remediation and replacement of the global service platform are outside scope. The intervention cannot improve first-time fix by screening out difficult homes, reset ageing through rebooking or substitute parts without configuration evidence. Its boundary is dependable restoration, safe and traceable field execution, honest claim economics and a controlled handover to permanent service leadership.

Why this seat is open

The quality campaign exposed operating debt that local teams had absorbed through spreadsheets, technician discretion and retailer appeasement. A regional vacancy now sits across customer consequence, inventory, partner contracts and product evidence. The board needs an operator able to restore service quickly without converting warranty recovery into indiscriminate replacement or concealing the demand that matters most.

What you will own

• Reconcile every open household from complaint and diagnosis through appointment, part, visit, restoration, replacement or unresolved outcome.
• Establish consequence-based priority for refrigeration, cooking, laundry, heating functions and vulnerable customers across countries.
• Reset diagnostic, parts-reservation, technician-routing and repair-versus-replacement decisions using serial and configuration evidence.
• Restore partner governance around competence, kept appointments, substitution, repeat failure, returns, claims and customer conduct.
• Link field failure and removed-part evidence to product quality without allowing campaign work to obscure ordinary demand.
• Prove recovery through sampled household journeys, depot counts, technician ride-alongs and retailer reconciliation.
• Transfer network risks, country controls, capacity decisions and the open-customer ledger to permanent leadership.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led multi-country field service, technical aftersales or warranty operations for durable consumer or installed products.
• Can evidence restoration of household service while reducing repeat visits, uncontrolled substitution and false claim closure.
• Understands installed-base data, remote diagnosis, parts supersession, technician competence, reverse logistics and warranty accounting.
• Has managed authorised partners and retailers while preserving manufacturer product-safety and consumer-law accountabilities.
• Can distinguish appointment compliance, job completion, technical fix and sustained customer outcome in performance evidence.
• Has handed a recovered service network to a permanent executive with transparent residual demand and partner risk.