We are Smart Clinic

Mark bought his first iPhone, an iPhone 3G. I just looked out of my head like a bunch of students and chilled because I didn't understand that for a phone it could be close to 200,000 forints. At that time, my spending money was 30 thousand forints, so I wasn't really relieved, so it was an incomprehensible transaction for me. But the fact that it was a novelty, I looked, I pressed, but I did not understand. Maybe I had a Sony Ericsson T20.

The big display was vulnerable, of course, and before Mark broke it (never broke it), he tried to know it safe and get an iPhone 3G case for it. Needless to say, the choice of iPhone cases in Hungary at that time was as large as the opportunity to choose between space walks. I remember there were about 3 types of cases in the iStyle in Westend, but only 1-2 of each. It was so nowhere to be found at the time that no one would believe it today. Then I finally bought Mark in iStyle for more. Classic Collection sliding leather case for lack of right. A few days later, we looked for the curiosity that you can’t get a normal case anywhere at home or anywhere in the world. Then we got to more-thing.com, who also made this case, and then we were faced with the fact that they also have 6-7 varieties that you can't get anywhere in Hungary.

It took a couple of months until nothing happened, and then Mark wrote them an email about the conditions under which their cases could be sold? After 1 day came the answer to send a number of pieces and which type should they send the invoice, we will transfer it. Can we refer you? Blindly? But they don't believe that either. Then, after all, it was that we wrote down an order, they sent the invoice. It was almost 600,000 HUF, of which there were 5 types of cases, 3 of the cheaper ones by color and 5 of the more expensive ones. Of course we didn’t have the money for it, so we had to apply for a loan. Mark's father was our savior. You could say if he isn’t, we won’t even embark on this path now.

We quickly (in 2 months) created a more-thing.hu webshop with nice pictures, as it is written in the big book. And already 3 weeks after the order, we unpacked the package in the room at Márke, fearing that it had not been cut through and everything had arrived in full. He has arrived.

Unfortunately, it was already the middle of December, so we started advertising our webshop at the very end of the Christmas season. We still sold 6 cases until Christmas. I was so happy for our first customer - who came to pick up the case in person - that I handed over your order so that I forgot to ask for its price. It was nice to call, but Mark did it, so in a very fair way, our customer came to pay for the case that day. Well, that's how we started on the road.

We sold the first dose of the supplement in about 3 months, bought more cases from the money we earned, and so on. Until we collected for a new brand, which was the American SENA CASES. the year 2012 was like this, we brought more and more new brands to the country. This year we already had so many brands (6-7) that we created a new webshop, iphonetok.hu. We also sold the webshop in Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Romania. Bargaining with courier companies to get the best possible price for shipping in the beginning, we personally took our packages to their depot, sometimes after midnight. It was a never-forgotten period. There was a story when a customer ordered a case at 12 noon and we were still inside. We quickly packed it up, rushed it out to the depot so the courier could take it away for another night. The next morning at 9:30 a.m., the customer called in amazement to do this, that he had barely ordered it yet, but the courier had already woken him up with the case. He was very surprised and very happy for him. Well, what else.

After the Christmas season, we formed a small financial reserve from which we wanted to import another brand. However, this period put us at a crossroads. We had so many customers and we had a lot of questions about whether we could offer a good iPhone service because your device was shattered, soaked, broken ... etc. Of course we tried to help, but with a good heart we could not recommend anyone. That’s when we decided that we might want to try to open an out-of-warranty Apple service center because we see a need for it.

This year has brought a real breakthrough in our business. The first 4-5 months were spent searching for suppliers and developing the concept of iPhone Service Buda. We painted and renovated the Bölcső Street site. We went around our circle of acquaintances to get away with the furniture and equipment cheaply. It was our idea from our own point of view that people no longer like to be without their phones because they are already storing more and more personal things on them. It was also a problem that at that time there were still GSM shops / services in the market, where in a good case a not very qualified, less trusting person took the phone for repair for 1-2 weeks. Starting with our own mindsets, we saw what the good direction would be instead. It was then that we came up with the concept of "visual service" as it would be if the repair did not take place behind doors in a sufni, but in front of the customer. We thought it could give us a lot more confidence if we weren’t afraid that something might be stolen from the phone. If everyone sees everything, there is no sackcloth, just the facts. Of course, this immediate repair requires a sufficient amount of stock and a high level of customer service. The lesson was given up for us, so we saw fit to put ourselves in the front desk ourselves at the beginning to experience first-hand feedback. Of course, the date also played a part in this.

On June 3, 2013, our cradle street iPhone service opened, which many people know as iPhone Service Buda to this day. We started with 1 service colleague who has been with us ever since, now as a service manager. The concept of "visual service" was very much loved by our customers, because they could safely entrust the repair to us and even get a little behind the scenes. When designing the service, we also took into account that everyone could feel at home. So in the back we moved a living room with leather sofas, a Nespresso coffee machine, magazines, a mineral water machine. The repairs take approx. 80% of it is completed in roughly 20-30 minutes, so a lot of people are happy to wait for the end to this day.In the meantime, the service palette has been expanded to the entire Apple device family, so we’ve started iPads, iMacs, MacBooks, iPods ... etc. to correct.The mobile phone service market has undergone a bit of renewal, so fortunately more and more people are recognizing the possibility that service providers can become more reliable with a “visual service” concept. At first, we were a little stunned to see market participants advertise themselves as "real visual service" or "the first real visual service," but that 's all it should be. In fact, everyone is just fine with this copy. Both the customer, who can get better service in more and more places, and the market, which can be renewed by the GSM shopkeeper style hidden in the mall underpass, increasingly forgetting, and we too, because we get strong feedback from everyone that this is the way to go.

2 years of successful operation, the number of employees has increased from 3 to 15, our sales have doubled, we repair more than 10,000 devices on average every year. Then we thought of a boldness and we expanded again. We also started servicing the Sony, Samsung, LG, HTC brands, for which the iPhone Service Buda brand was scarce. We’ve been thinking a lot about what the new summary brand should be, making us known across the country. That's when the name Smart Clinic popped up. Smart came from smartphones and Clinic came from the clinic, healing. Putting the two together, the perfect name was born. From 2015, leaving the iPhone Service Buda brand (many people already know us that way), we started operating under the name Smart Clinic. No need to fear, the quality just got better of course.

Back in the same year, we dreamed of a giant, and of course we wanted to expand, to develop, to cover larger areas, because we are starting a business for nothing more than to create something. In early November, we opened our second service station at the Mammut Mall called Smart Clinic Mammut.

The year 2016 was very difficult for us. We could cover the whole investment with a loan, and the rent was not famous for its cheapness either. Our bigger problem was more that we overestimated ourselves financially and had no money left to buy parts anymore. So even though many of us came to us, we couldn’t really serve everyone, which wasn’t a good message for our customers. What we have always been good at, speed, quality, started to lose. We couldn't be fast or they were quality. This period was very difficult for us, here we were scared how we would finance this. If there are no parts, no repairs, no revenue, no pay, no workers. It was a vicious circle, of course people didn’t experience much out of it. With the help of family and friends, we were able to break this deadlock. We started to fill the holes with a lot of loan money, while we did not have any energy at all for development, service improvement and renewal. Luckily, we worked with people who stood by us all along and were with us even in the most difficult times.

This year we have already tilted a bit financially into place. We had parts, we were able to receive our customers with more and more stock, so we found our way back to being able to do almost anything repairs right away. We started to breathe and enjoy the work tasks again.

In the meantime, we won EU support, job creation support and we were fine pretty slowly. We paid off our debt to everyone in a year, so we could continue what we dreamed with a clean slate again.

In May, our 2-year contract with Mammut Shopping Center expired, so we had to think about how to proceed. Since the rent couldn’t be reduced, they even wanted to raise, so we decided not to stay any longer, we didn’t want to work to fatten others out of profits. We then had 2 months to decide which direction to go. This is how we chose the XIII. district, where we managed to find a much more sympathetic, much friendlier location, with the same parameters as our Bölcső Street service. We surveyed why our customers love our Bölcső Street service, so we created Smart Clinic Pannonia along the same parameters. Its accessibility is very good both by car and by public transport. There is a car park right in front of the service, so you don’t even have to walk much and you don’t have to drive around for free parking space for minutes.

We can say that it is a year of peace for us. We can finally deal 100% with what we really mean. And this is the maximum customer service in all areas. Processes are in place, everyone knows their stuff. The best guard in Hungary now works at Smart Clinic. Both professionally and humanly. Thanks to our stock, the time for repairs is as short as possible. We are constantly expanding our service range. This year will be about the spread of Huawei devices in Hungary as well. Fortunately, you can get better quality parts. Our suppliers are also getting better. The average warranty administration for all repairs in our services is 5.26%. For every 100 fixes, 5.26 fixes will be returned to us. Our customer satisfaction value is over 98%. The proportion of our returning customers is 44%.

This year has been mostly spent optimizing our workflows. We have put a lot of energy into how we can perform our tasks most efficiently at the organization level with the least amount of energy investment. We have merged several subtasks, simplified them in the hope that it will be permanent and clear to all our colleagues what their business is. It is still our secret goal as to why we needed this optimization, but we are already seeing that our customer satisfaction value has reached 98% as much as in 2018. So the conversions did not involve a loss of quality, which we definitely wanted to avoid. Next year, we want to make a big leap forward in the life of the Smart Clinic, for which all the conditions were fortunately given.

The year 2020 has completely dragged through our dreams, our plans. January got off to a great start, the first month of the year has never been so strong in terms of customers. It was a dreamy start, but at the end of January the bad news started leaking, but heck he wouldn’t have thought what awaited us. Our Chinese suppliers celebrated the Chinese New Year just at the end of January, when they do not work for 2 weeks, so we also managed to procure the parts so that we would be fine by the end of February at least. Then in early February, the news arrived that they would not be able to go to work for another 2 weeks because of COVID-19. At that time we weren’t worried yet because we’re safety players, no problem for 2 weeks, but not even 2 months of slippage luckily. But the problem started there, until April 6, no picture, no sound, no parts. This has already sounded the alarm that there will be big trouble here. We took out our European suppliers to make up for the missing space, but we had to find that our stock was more abundant than that of some German, Dutch, Czech wholesalers.

Then the country closed in March. We were so lucky to be able to work behind closed doors, although we lost 45% of our turnover. Some of our colleagues went to the home office, while a few took the city around our necks and went home with our own cars to bring in our customers ’faulty appliances. It was a terrible situation. No one knew how long it would last, everyone was just hoping that maybe a few more weeks. But now we know our whole year has gone by.