A fault spotted on site. A quote that never goes out.

Imagine a lift maintenance business with around ten technicians and a few hundred lifts under contract. During a visit, a technician spots worn ropes, writes “replacement recommended” in the service report and moves on to the next job. Back in the office, the quote is still waiting to be prepared.

It is a familiar situation: scheduled maintenance has uncovered work to propose to the customer, but several steps still stand between the technician’s observation and a proposal the customer can consider. Information needs gathering, replacement parts need identifying, and someone needs to find the time to handle it.

Let’s follow this imaginary business to see where the repair recommendation stalls and how to follow it through, without leaving everything to the memory of your office staff.

What happens after the visit

The service report arrives with all the others. The person who prepares quotes is answering the phone, ordering parts or raising invoices. They read the note and put it aside: they will deal with it once they have finished. The quote gets pushed back to the evening, if there is time, or stays in the queue.

“Replacement recommended” can leave several questions unanswered. Which component? How urgent is it? Is there a photo that would help? To prepare the proposal, the office needs to contact the technician again and piece together what they saw. By then, the technician is already working on another lift.

For lifts, reporting a problem also carries a specific professional responsibility. Italian legislation, available on Normattiva, requires checks at least every six months, with the results recorded in the lift’s logbook. It also requires the maintenance provider to promptly call for the repair or replacement of broken or worn parts, and the owner to have the work carried out promptly.

The service report therefore shares the information your business needs to act on the findings, while the requirement to record the checks in the logbook still applies. In our example, it is this handover to the office that needs attention.

Why repairs matter to Kone too

On 28 October 2026, Kone presented its results for the first nine months of the year. In its announcement, the company identified service and modernisation as offering the best growth opportunities and reported more favourable pricing conditions in these markets.

In the call transcript published by Investing.com, the chief financial officer focused on a very practical activity: repairs. He explained that they account for a significant share of the growth opportunities and deliver excellent margins for Kone. He also said the company is digitising the entire repair process.

The chief executive described what this means for a technician’s working day: digital technology helps reduce trips back and forth between the depot and customer sites, as well as hold-ups in the field.

For the business in our example, this raises an immediate question: what happens to the repairs technicians identify during scheduled maintenance? Looking only at maintenance fees leaves out this part of the work, which needs a proposal, a customer decision and a job to organise.

Kone did not describe its tools or procedures. The process below is one possible approach for our example business, rather than Kone’s own method.

From service report to a draft you can review

Let’s return to the technician looking at the worn ropes. In the process we are imagining, the service report has a dedicated section for a proposed repair. The technician records the component and the urgency, then adds a photo. The office receives a repair recommendation with the information needed to start working on it.

The difference becomes clear when the person preparing the quote opens the report: they can see what was found and what information is already available. If anything is missing, they know what to ask the technician. The note has a clear next step, instead of remaining one more comment to interpret among many others.

Once the maintenance visit is complete, the repair recommendation is used to prepare a draft quote, with the replacement part and labour hours to be checked. Where needed, artificial intelligence can help read the notes and prepare the draft. A person reviews the content, makes any necessary corrections and sends the proposal to the customer by a set date.

The review covers the proposed work: the component identified, the replacement part and the estimated hours. Whoever approves the quote needs to be able to trace it back to the technician’s recommendation and compare that with what they are about to send the customer.

For the technician, this means knowing how to report a problem so the office can act on it. For the person preparing quotes, it means starting with information collected during the visit and having a deadline for sending the proposal.

At https://www.gitogi.com/en/field-service/ we explain how we integrate artificial intelligence into your business’s work, including reading documents and preparing drafts for a person to review.

Who follows up on repair recommendations that have stalled

Preparing the draft only covers part of the process. Our example business also needs to know what happened next: was the quote sent? Did the customer accept it, reject it or ask to wait?

The outcome is recorded for every repair recommendation. That way, when the technician returns to the lift, the business can see what happened to the proposed repair. A rejection or a request to postpone also needs to be easy to find, without having to rely on anyone’s memory.

For recommendations still waiting for action, let’s imagine a simple routine: those that have been stalled for seven days go onto a list that a designated person reviews on Mondays. For each item, they establish the reason for the wait and decide the next step.

A replacement part may need checking, or a customer may need a follow-up call. The list makes pending recommendations visible and gives someone responsibility for handling them. The technician’s recommendation still has someone responsible for it after the service report reaches the office.

What to measure in your service reports

Before choosing a tool, you can map out what happens in your business. Take the service reports from the last three months and look for repair recommendations. Then trace each one through to the quote and, where a response has already come back, the customer’s decision.

Look at how many repair recommendations were recorded, how many quotes were sent and how many were accepted, along with the number of days between the visit and sending the quote. Tracking rejections and requests to postpone also helps you understand the process and distinguish between different situations.

If you find plenty of repair recommendations but few quotes, start by checking what happens after the service reports reach the office. Is the information sufficient? Who is responsible for preparing the proposal? Is there a deadline for sending it?

If quotes go out but take a long time, you can identify where delays build up. If they reach customers quickly and are rejected, you need to examine the proposals and the responses received: preparing quotes faster will not explain those rejections.

This review helps you choose a specific step to improve. In our imaginary business, it might show that the notes are too brief or that draft quotes are waiting for review. Those problems need different solutions. You can assess what artificial intelligence contributes to that specific work once you understand what is slowing it down.

How to get started with Gitogi

At Gitogi, we help Italian maintenance businesses digitise their operations and use artificial intelligence through custom software, integrations and training (https://www.gitogi.com/it/servizi/integrazione-ai/). We start with your everyday work: how technicians complete service reports, what information reaches the office and how it is used to organise the next steps.

Where needed, artificial intelligence reads incoming documents and prepares drafts for a person to review and approve. During the initial analysis, we work with you to choose a team or type of job to start with. You can read about our work with businesses that send technicians to customer sites at https://www.gitogi.com/en/field-service/.

We start with one month of your service work: service reports, invoices and contracts.

In the business we started with, “replacement recommended” is the thread to follow through those documents: what the technician saw, what happened to the note and where the work stalled. That is where you begin to understand what needs to change.

If this sounds familiar, write to us and tell us how you work. We’ll start with one month of your service work: service reports, invoices and contracts.