Citizen survey Repair Connects shows opportunities for digital repair platform after COVID-19

Repairers from all around are taking speed on Repair Connects. Since new test groups started to join us as of February of this year, we got to 240+ active repairers on the platform, and to 440+ completed repairs. 

Working closely together with these repair groups, we have quite a good view on what they think of the Repair Connects experience, and what future elements they would like to see in the coming months.

Besides repair groups and their repair volunteers, we were very curious to know how citizens appreciated the process in Repair Connects.  Those 440+ broken devices came from somewhere, right. How did these people find the way to Repair Connects? What was their first impression? What were their questions or concerns when registering their broken device at an active repair group? How did they experience the 'online matching', and do they see an opportunity for this digital repair platform once we all go back to our physical repair events setting? 

With several groups having repaired a considerable amount of devices, we decided to get in touch with their owners, and find some first answers to these questions.

And with success! An online survey was shared in May 2021 by Maakbaar Leuven (BE), Repair Café Zug (CH) and Repair Café Virtuel Wallonie-Bruxelles (BE). 66 out of 167 citizens shared their feedback with us (37/100 MAL, 10/32 RTO, 19/35 Zug).

The survey looked at 3 specific aspects, i.e. the affinity that citizens have with repair, their experience and evaluation of the repair process on Repair Connects, and their future ideas and wishes. 

Repair experience of citizens

Almost 60% of device owners said to sometimes repair things themselves, 17% often repairs stuff, and 21% never repairs anything by themselves.

Where this seems like quite a large amount of people with some repair experience, 58% of respondents has never been to a repair café event before. About 30% has visited one 1 to 2 times.

People registered their broken devices specifically to the Maakbaar Leuven group, Repair Café Zug or to the Repair Café Virtuel Wallonie-Bruxelles. 42% of respondents already knew the repair group before, for 58% the experience on Repair Connects meant a first interaction with this group.

Motivation and experience of Repair Connects

Asking for citizen's motivation to register their broken device on Repair Connects, 68% of respondents said they just want to repair as much as possible (!), for 36% of respondents, the fact that physical events did not take place, was (part of) a reason to register their device online.

Respondents had few doubts before registering. If they had any, the general concern was the uncertainty whether the repairers would be able to actually repair their device. Some people weren't sure whether they would have to pay for this service or not. 

The online registration process got a good score for ease of use (almost 90% said this process to be easy to very easy), and especially the interaction with repairers was highly appreciated (83% were very satisfied).

Future of Repair Connects

92% of respondents would register another broken device on Repair Connects, or recommend the platform to a friend. 

When asking for people's preference in visiting a physical repair café to registering an being helped online, we saw a striking good balance (37% vs. 40%) between people that clearly prefer the online setting and others who definitely opt for the physical repair events. The others had no preference. 

90% of citizens believe the Repair Connects platform could be of value even for physical repair events. 

The possible future functionalities that are most wanted are: 

• find guidance on how to repair themselves (50%)
• receive a report after the repair (26%)
• follow the status of repair (24%)
• get updates on activities of the group in my region (30%)
• get updates on the impact numbers of the group in my region (27%)

Lots of positive vibes to continue our work!