Savvy's unique methodology combines the strength of our remarkable team with innovative technology and rigorous protocols and procedures to assure out clients consistently excellent maintenance outcomes. Here's how it works...
Your Savvy account manager
When you first sign up with Savvy, we assign you an "account manager" who serves as your primary point of contact with Savvy and has primary responsibility for managing the maintenance of your aircraft. Your account manager is a seasoned A&P/IA with extensive expertise in your aircraft make and model. In addition, we will assign you a backup account manager to support you should your primary account manager be unavailable for any reason. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that you are unable to reach your primary or backup account managers, you contact any member of Savvy's technical team. Complete contact information for every member of the Savvy team is always available to you via our password-protected client-only website.
From time to time, we will probably involve other members of the Savvy technical team, particularly if you have a maintenance issue that requires special expertise. For example, we'll probably involve our avionics expert if you have an avionics squawk or are contemplating an avionics upgrade, or our structures expert if you have a structural problem, or our engine specialist if you have a particularly thorny engine issue.
This underscores one of the striking advantages of being a Savvy client: No GA service center even comes close to offering the technical depth and breadth of expertise that Savvy's extraordinary team can bring to bear on the maintenance of your aircraft.
We will urge you to contact your Savvy account manager first, early and often. Your account manager should always be your first point of contact whenever an aircraft maintenance issue arises, whether scheduled or unscheduled, at home or on-the-road, serious or minor, day or night, weekday or weekend. Regardless of what kind of problem or question you may have, we ask you to contact your Savvy account manager first. Please don’t contact a service center or mechanic directly, that's now your account manager’s job.{htmlfile}images/savvy/image_popup_script.html{/htmlfile}
Client login "Client login")
List of client's tickets  "Ticket list")
Ticket header and initial post  "Ticket header+post")
Post to a ticket, attach documents and files  "Ticket entry") |
Savvy technology
As a Savvy client, you will be given access to Savvy's secure client-only website, which serves as Savvy's "nerve center" and will become the primary focus of your aircraft maintenance activities going forward.
The client-only website hosts the Savvy ticket system, which is the principal means of communication for you, your account manager and other Savvy team members, and the service centers and technicians that work on your aircraft. The ticket system offers huge advantages over traditional communications methods like telephone, email and fax. It provides a contemporaneous written record of all communications, including squawks, decisions, instructions, status updates, discrepancy lists, cost estimates, invoices, maintenance records, and so forth. It puts all this information in one place, and ensures that everyone with a "need to know" can access it easily. By documenting everything in written form, it greatly reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings, surprises and disputes.
Should your primary account manager be unavailable for any reason, another Savvy account manager can step in, review your ticket to get up to speed quickly, and pick up where your primary account manager left off. Or if we need to call in another member of the Savvy team for special expertise (e.g., avionics, engines), our specialist can review the ticket and jump right in without having to "play 20 questions."
When you post to a ticket, your post is always visible to your account manager and other members of the Savvy team. However, you have the option of making the post visible or invisible to the service center and mechanics working on your airplane. By default, your ticket posts are NOT visible to shops and mechanics; if you want the shop to see your post, you should mark it "visible to everybody" before submitting it.
Of course, from time to time verbal communications (face-to-face or telephone) is unavoidable. If your account manager communicates with you or your service center by telephone, he is instructed to document the phone call on the ticket system as soon as possible. If you have a maintenance-related conversation with anyone, we ask that you do the same. Similarly, if email communications takes place, we ask that the email be transferred to the ticket system via cut-and-paste so it becomes part of the record and available to anyone who needs to see it.
In most cases, it’s quicker and more efficient to communicate directly on the ticket system than to do it verbally or by email and then transcribe it to the ticket after the fact. The ticket system is easy to use—even from your iPhone or Blackberry or Droid or other smartphone—and we encourage you to use it whenever possible.
Savvy protocols and procedures
Our protocols and procedures are designed to ensure that you obtain the best possible outcome from every maintenance event. It's important for you to follow them to obtain an optimum experience with Savvy-managed maintenance. We've already talked about two of the most important protocols: (1) contact your Savvy account manager first, early and often; and (2) use the ticket system for communications whenever possible. Here are some others that are equally important...
Never approve work without a written estimate. One of Savvy's most important objectives is to protect you from misunderstandings, surprises, disputes, and "sticker shock." To that end, one of our inviolable rules is that we never authorize any service center or mechanic to perform work or order parts for your aircraft until we receive a detailed written cost estimate. The estimate will be posted to your ticket, we will review it, ask you to review it as well, give you our recommendations and advice, and then ask you how you want to proceed. We will recommend that you approve work to be done in accordance with the shop’s estimate only if we are convinced that it is both necessary and reasonably priced. We will recommend that you decline work and parts that we believe to be unnecessary, and we will question the shop about any items whenever we feel the estimated cost is excessive. We ask that you cooperate in this regard by never authorizing anyone to work on your aircraft—whether at home or on the road—without having a detailed written cost estimate in hand. It’s almost always best to let your account manager handle this.
Let Savvy guide you about what maintenance is worth doing and what isn't. Most service centers will recommend that your aircraft be maintained in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommended schedule. Don’t be surprised if your Savvy account manager recommends that some of these manufacturer-recommended maintenance items be declined or deferred. In our experience, many of the manufacturer-recommended maintenance intervals are overkill, and other tasks are better performed “on-condition” (when demonstrably necessary) rather than on a predetermined timetable. We will often recommend that such items be declined or deferred. (We’d rather see you spend the money on fuel rather than maintenance.) Of course, the ultimate decision is always yours.
Never pay a maintenance invoice until Savvy reviews and approves it for payment. Your account manager will examine each invoice line item to make sure that it is correct, reasonable, and consistent with what we directed the shop to do and with the written estimates they provided. If your account manager finds the invoice acceptable, he will approve it for payment by posting to your ticket. If he has any problems with the invoice, he will work with the shop to get the problems corrected and ask the shop to submit a revised invoice. If the shop presents you with an invoice directly, please post it to the ticket immediately so your account manager can review it and advise you whether or not to pay it.
Work with Savvy to troubleshoot problems. We need to come up with a precise diagnosis of exactly what’s wrong, and decide what work needs to be done and/or what parts need to be replaced to resolve the problem. Usually, your Savvy account manager will walk you through the troubleshooting process before making a decision to put your aircraft in the shop. Frequently we can troubleshoot the problem completely; other times, we can arrive at a partial diagnosis that narrows down the possibilities to just a few. Wherever possible, we would like to resolve your problem without putting the airplane in the shop—often we can instruct you how to fix it without getting a mechanic involved. If a problem occurs away from home, we want to be able to offer you thoughtful advice as to whether it’s safe for you to fly home and deal with the problem at your regular service center, or whether the problem affects safety of flight and needs to be fixed before further flight. The bottom line is that you should always contact your account manager first before deciding to put your airplane into the shop.
Let Savvy help you with service center selection. We work with hundreds of shops throughout the U.S., and we are in a unique position to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it’s best to use a different service center for the annual inspection than the one you use for routine maintenance. For an annual inspection, it's crucial that the shop has as much experience and expertise with your particular make and model as possible. The choice of shop may also be influenced by any specialized work that may need to be done (e.g., sheet metal or composite repairs, avionics work).
Never bypass your Savvy account manager. He should be the sole point of contact with all service centers and mechanics hired to perform maintenance work on your aircraft. You should always communicate your wishes, concerns, questions, decisions and directions to your account manager, and let your account manager communicate them to the shop or mechanic. If you bypass your account manager and communicate directly with the shop or mechanic, it often injects ambiguity into the relationship. The shop can easily become confused about whose directions to follow. We know from experience that to prevent misunderstandings and surprises, it’s essential that shops and mechanics must “serve one master.” Letting your account manager deal with with the shop keeps communications on a professional, IA-to-IA level, and is much more likely to achieve an optimal result for you.
An unbeatable combination
Aircraft owners consistently rate maintenance as the worst aspect of aircraft ownership. Savvy is the answer. We're confident you'll find our unique combination of technical experience, state-of-the-art technology, and proven protocols and procedures to be a total game-changer. It's no accident that nearly 90% of Savvy clients renew their service agreements year after year.
Next: What it costs.