Scania Australia has announced the establishment of its first Scania Assistance centre in Australia and New Zealand to help local bus and coach customers receive ongoing service assistance.
A team of five Scania Assistance service coordinators will now be based in Scania Australia’s national warehouse facility in Campbellfield, Victoria, with the new centre aiming to provide more detailed and efficient assistance.
After previously being based overseas with assistance staff working in Australia and New Zealand, the local centre is set to give more benefits to local customers in both the bus and truck markets.
“Scania Assistance stands ready to help any Scania owner or driver who’s had a vehicle breakdown, for example a flat battery, or a warning light or message that instructs the vehicle to be stopped safely,” Scania Assistance Australia and New Zealand supervisor Brendon Parry 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.”
Parry says its vehicle operator customers are more interested in how quickly his team can get their Scania trucks rolling again while accepting that there may be unplanned stoppages.
“Now with the establishment of the local Australian centre, we’ll have more local knowledge and more local options for helping customers in need,” Parry says.
“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.”
Scania Assistance project manager Andrew Greenwood says the Melbourne centre will operate with a new generation system that aims to provide the team more data on the customer, vehicle and help identify fault codes for the nation’s Scania buses and coaches.
“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,” Greenwood says.
“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.”
Parry says the new generation system will allow his team to improve customer uptime.
“As one of the few original equipment manufacturers’ owned and operated assistance systems in Australia and New Zealand, we have unrivalled access to technicians, vehicle information and spare parts to get trucks back on the road as soon as possible,” Parry says.