How Naley Vody Cut Service Requests Fourfold and Stopped Missing Breakdowns

In a network of 250 purified drinking water vending machines, every unnoticed fault means equipment downtime, an unhappy customer and lost revenue. Naley Vody connected its machine telemetry to Planado, introduced mandatory checklists for engineers and set up quality control. As a result, the number of service requests dropped from 80 to 15–20 a week, and the average time to resolve a request is 8.5 hours.

About the company

Naley Vody (Russian for "pour some water") is a network of purified drinking water vending machines: 250 units in Chelyabinsk and Moscow. The machines are connected to the mains water supply. They need regular maintenance, filter and membrane replacement, attention to their appearance and a quick response to breakdowns.

Naley Vody website

This case study is based on an interview with Raul Dzhembetov. He is in charge of the technical service: he plans the department's work, handles procurement and manages the in-house engineers in both cities.

We talked about how the technical service works in Planado, which tasks it solves with it and what has changed in the engineers' daily work.

What happened before Planado

The company had telemetry and engineers, but no shared process connecting the signal about a problem, the visit, the completed work and the check of the result.

Telemetry showed technical errors, but it was not always clear from it whether the problem was still current. A machine could lose its connection while an old event stayed on the screen. When a customer complained or an error appeared, the administrator called the engineer: had he been on site, had he fixed the fault, what exactly had he done? There was no confirmation, so the verbal answer had to be taken on trust.

Information about past visits was not stored in a usable form either. One engineer might move the water meter inside the machine or change the wiring. The next one arrived, could not find the component and called his colleague again. Months later, recalling the service history of a particular machine was even harder.

The problem also showed up in repeat visits. An engineer would arrive, say, to fix a door handle, do only that and leave. The next day he might be sent to the same place because the coin acceptor needed cleaning, the filter needed checking or another fault had to be fixed. The company spent employees' time and fuel on trips that could have been avoided.

Before the rollout, the service received about 80 requests a week. Some were customer complaints: the machine took the money but did not dispense water, the machine is dirty, the door is broken. The rest came from telemetry.

How telemetry started triggering the service team's work

Planado was connected to the machine telemetry via the API. When telemetry registers a technical event or shows that a machine is due for maintenance, a job request arrives in Planado. The manager sees which machine the task is for, assigns an engineer and sets the priority. This matters both for emergencies and for scheduled maintenance.

If a machine reports a fault, the request reaches Planado right after the telemetry signal. Urgent tasks get a separate priority. The engineer receives the job in the mobile app, and the manager sees its status: en route, on site or completed.

Scheduled maintenance works the same way. After the work, the engineer closes the job and states in the checklist exactly what was done, for example that the filters were replaced. The date is passed to the company's internal system. When the next service date approaches, telemetry and the connected systems create a new request in Planado.

This gave the company a continuous cycle: a signal from the equipment, a request, a visit, mandatory recording of the work, quality control and the next scheduled task.

One visit instead of several

Raul set up job templates and checklists for each type of work. According to him, the basic structure of sites, territories, jobs and checks took one day to configure.

A visit now starts with a job in Planado, not a verbal instruction. In it the engineer sees the site and the list of mandatory steps. He photographs the machine before starting, checks the critical components, records the result of the check and adds photos when the work is done.

Back to the door handle example. Previously the engineer could screw the handle on and leave. Now the checklist will not let him close the job until he has gone through the mandatory items: checking the coin acceptor, the filters and other components that matter for this type of machine. If he notices a problem, he can fix it on the spot or note it in a comment and create an additional visit.

A manager or quality controller reviews closed jobs using the photos and the completed checklist. If the work is incomplete, the engineer is sent back to finish it. For cases where a problem is found after maintenance, there is a separate job type: a rework claim. At the end of the month, Raul sees which technicians had rework claims and for which jobs.

"We didn't do anything grand, we just added control. And our machines stopped breaking down so often."

Scheduling without "where are you?" calls

Previously the administrator had to call the engineer, explain where to go and then check whether he had left and when he would be on site. Now engineers receive push notifications, and the day's jobs are in the mobile app.

Raul plans the work in the Planado schedule. The blocks in the calendar show him which engineers are on their way to a site, who is already working and which jobs come next. He uses the map when he needs to think through a route, while the schedule helps him quickly assess the team's workload.

Raul is often on the road, so he manages the technical service right from his phone. He opens Planado in the browser and looks at the schedule and the engineers' statuses. According to him, this access is enough for daily work outside the office.

The same process helps with emergency requests. If an urgent problem comes up, the manager assigns it in Planado right away instead of looking for a free employee through a series of calls. According to Raul, the team has almost stopped discussing visits over the phone: the job is assigned, the engineer receives it and gets to work.

The history of every machine is available to the team

Planado stores the photos, comments and all visits for each site. Engineers have read-only access to the history of their colleagues' work. Before a visit, they can see what was replaced on the machine, where a component is located and what quirks the previous technician ran into.

The history is especially useful for water treatment and connection work. If an engineer previously moved the meter or changed the wiring, the next employee does not need to track down the person who did it and call him. He opens the past jobs and looks at the comments and photos.

Raul used the same approach in his previous service business, gate repair. When a regular customer comes back, the job history makes it easy to reconstruct what happened on site a year ago. For Naley Vody, this principle matters within its own network of machines.

Scheduled maintenance no longer depends on people's memory

The water machines use filters and reverse osmosis membranes. Before the rollout, they could be replaced by gut feeling: an employee simply decided it was time. Planado, together with data from internal systems, made it possible to record each replacement per machine and see the date of the next service.

For example, an engineer records a filter replacement on September 1. The date is saved in the system. When the next service date arrives, a new maintenance request appears in Planado. The company also uses sales data, so consumables are replaced according to the actual load on the machine. Raul notes that some consumables can now be replaced less often with no loss of water quality.

Working in a basement without internet

Purification units are sometimes located in basements and other places with no signal. The engineer can open the job, fill in the checklist and take photos offline. When he goes outside and the phone gets a connection, the data is sent to Planado.

For the company, this means that a lack of signal no longer turns into a gap in the service history. The manager still gets the photos, comments and checklist marks.

Engineer incentives are built on Planado data

At the end of the month, Raul exports the job data. He sees how many requests each technician completed, how much time was spent on the work, whether resolution deadlines were met and how many rework claims there were. The incentive system and payroll are based on these figures.

This changes the conversation about the quality of work. Instead of a general impression, the manager has data on specific visits, statuses, deadlines and repeat requests.

Results

After the rollout, the number of service requests fell roughly fourfold: from 80 to 15–20 a week. The average time to resolve a problem is 8.5 hours. The company counts it in full calendar time: if a request arrives in the evening and the engineer comes in the morning, that time counts too.

On average, one engineer completes four to six requests a day. Before the rollout, there were cases when a customer kept calling for two weeks about a water machine that was not working while the team believed it had already been repaired. Raul also found two machines that had been out of service for a week. After the rollout, he says, such lost downtime has disappeared: the request is visible in Planado and has an assignee, a status and a work history.

The company also began spending about 30% less on fuel. Raul attributes a significant part of the savings to engineers going through the mandatory checks during the first visit, so unnecessary trips have almost disappeared.

Why Planado

For Raul, easy setup, clear pricing and the ability to integrate with internal systems were important. He had already used Planado in a gate repair and maintenance service, and at Naley Vody he connected the system to telemetry and internal data via the API.

"I've been using Planado for many years, and I genuinely like it. Twice it has helped me build a strong, well-functioning department."

The Naley Vody experience shows how a field service team can build a clear process around a signal from the equipment. Telemetry reports that a machine has a problem or is due for maintenance. Planado turns that signal into a request, guides the engineer through the checklist and saves the result of the work for the next visit.

Naley Vody plans to expand its network to other cities. We wish the team every success and thank Raul Dzhembetov for his detailed and candid feedback. We hope to remain a useful tool for the company's technical service.