How it works

Manuel doesn't start with an empty account.

Adoption is hard in this industry — technicians have seen systems come and go. So we don’t hand over an account and wish you luck: we build it around your equipment, work history and knowledge, and stay next to your team until it’s part of the working day.

Talk to us
Manuel
Not configured yet
Asset list.xlsx
Work orders
Service manuals
Manufacturer documentation
Technician tips
Internal procedures
Technicians
Service desk
What we build with you
01
Baseline
How does your team search today?
02
Coverage
Your brands and models
03
Historical work
Knowledge from previous jobs
04
Company knowledge
Your own documentation
05
Team adoption
On-site onboarding
06
Improvement
Sharper every week
01 · Baseline

First, understand where your service capacity is going.

Short surveys among technicians and the service desk — a few minutes each. We map what a technician really does when he hits hard technical knowledge on the job, and where that costs time or creates dependency on one colleague.

How a question gets answered today
Diagnosis only
Technician Google PDF
Search time
Technician Service desk Senior technician
Technical call
Escalation
Technician Supplier
Waiting on a reply
Technician Manufacturer portal
Repeat lookup
What we establish up front
Technical answer time
Technical help calls
Independent resolution
Knowledge coverage
Where reliable data exists
First-time-fix
Repeat visits

Measured with your own data. Nothing is improved at this stage — this is the line we compare against later.

What you get at the end of step 01
A baseline report for your service organisation.

One document: how your technicians look things up today, which questions keep coming back, where the dependency sits, and the numbers we will compare against after go-live.

Baseline report
Where technicians search today5 routes
Recurring questionsTop 10
Dependency on colleaguesPer team
Brands without coverageList
Baseline for laterCaptured
Manuel
Asset coverage
Historical work
Company knowledge
People connected
02 · Asset coverage

We check your asset list against what is already inside Manuel.

Manuel already holds manufacturer documentation for 80+ brands. This step is the check: you send us the brands and models your technicians actually work on, we verify each one is covered, and we add what is missing — before the first technician logs in.

Asset list.xlsx
organised by
Manufacturer
Model
Product family
Frequency
Seen most often
High volume
In the fleet
Occasional
Coverage starts where the work is. It keeps widening as the team asks about equipment we haven't covered yet.
03 · Historical work

Your work orders already contain years of technical experience.

The solutions your technicians wrote down over the years sit in your work notes. We pull that tacit knowledge out, structure it, and place it inside your own workspace — so when someone asks the same question again, the fix that worked before comes back with the answer. Manufacturer documentation and your own field experience, in one answer.

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Recurring issues
Common equipment
Previous solutions
Repeat patterns
Worth preserving
Patterns are reviewed with your service team before they land in your workspace — not interpreted blindly. From then on, an answer can carry both the manual and the fix your own colleague already found.
04 · Company knowledge

The manual knows the product. Your people know what happens in practice.

Manufacturer knowledge
Manuals
Fault codes
Parameters
Schematics
Parts
Your company knowledge
Technician tips
Internal procedures
Previous fixes
Service notes
Practical experience
Already documented somewhere?
Work instructions and procedures often already live in Google Drive or SharePoint. We can bring those into Manuel — this too happens before the technicians start.
Google Drive
SharePoint
Your own folders
One answer
Fault code E10 indicates water pressure that is too low. Top up to 1.8 bar and then check the expansion vessel pre-charge.
Official source · page 19
Company knowledge · tip from the service desk
05 · Team onboarding

A knowledge system only works when the team actually uses it.

Adoption is the hardest part — we know that. So we onboard technicians and the service desk ourselves, online or on site. Everyone understands the idea first, then everyone logs in, and before the session ends every technician has asked their first real question. That first answer is the moment the app sticks.

Monteurs van Van der Sluis downloaden de app tijdens de kick-off
Kick-off at Van der Sluis — everyone installs the app in the room
See a kick-off up close
Uitleg over het stellen van de juiste vragen tijdens de onboarding
“How do you ask the right questions?” — asking the first questions together
Onboardingsessie bij Harwig Installatietechniek
On-site onboarding at Harwig Installatietechniek
People are now part of the system — every question they ask feeds the next section.
After go-live

Go-live is the beginning, not the finish line.

The first weeks tell us what the team really asks — and where the knowledge system still has holes.

Week 1
Real questions begin
Week 2
Usage patterns emerge
Week 3
Knowledge gaps become visible
Week 4
Coverage and adoption improve
Questions
Answers
Knowledge gaps
New knowledge
Better answers
…and the loop starts again
06 · Continuous improvement

Every real question makes the knowledge system more useful.

A
Technician A asks
Where is sensor S5 on this model?
Manuel
No usable answer yet
Signal
Knowledge gap identified
We add what's missing
Documentation or company knowledge added
B
Technician B, same question
Answer available
✓ with source
The system gets richer
Coverage

A living knowledge system, not a static search engine. Unanswered questions are the work list.

Measure what changes

If we promise hours back, we should measure them.

We compare the way technical work happened before Manuel with what happens after the team starts using it.

Baseline vs. after rollout
Baseline After
Technical answer time
Technical help calls
Independent resolution
Knowledge coverage
Where reliable data exists
First-time-fix
Repeat visits
Bars show direction of change, not customer figures. Every number in a real review comes from that customer's own data.
four signals combined
Estimated service hours recovered
Your
baseline × usage

Results are based on available baseline, usage and operational data. Measured outcomes and estimates always stay clearly distinguished.

Your team runs the service operation. We help make Manuel work inside it.

We don't disappear after implementation. Usage, unanswered questions and customer feedback tell us where the knowledge system needs attention next.

Your team
Service manager
Service desk
Technicians
Internal experts
A stronger service organisation
One shared outcome
Manuel
Knowledge setup
Onboarding
Usage review
Coverage improvement
Support
The complete system

From scattered knowledge to a system that keeps improving.

Inputs
Manufacturer documentation
Assets
Historical work
Company knowledge
People
Manuel
Baseline
Coverage
Historical work
Company knowledge
Team adoption
Continuous improvement
Output
Technician · mobile
Service desk · desktop
Signals
Search time
Technical calls
Independence
Knowledge coverage
Service capacity recovered
Teams who went through it

This is the same rollout these service teams did.

Bart van Uuden, Van der Sluis
Van der Sluis
+10% first-time-fix
16% faster junior onboarding
Read story
John Jongkind, Wahlen en Jongkind
Wahlen & Jongkind
30–40% less senior time on simple questions
“Just start if you are in doubt.”
Read story
Peter de Jong, Van Delft Groep
Van Delft Groep
From a crate of manuals to one app
Field and office on the same knowledge
Watch story
See all customer stories
Webinar · 24 min

Prefer to see how the implementation runs?

In this session we walk through the whole rollout: what we set up in advance, how on-site onboarding works, and what happens every week after that.

Build the knowledge system your service team can actually use.

We'll build the starting point with you, get the team working with it and keep improving from real use.

Talk to us
Manuel
One technical knowledge layer for service teams and manufacturers.
Contact
info@manuel.chat 0543 227 272
Manuel B.V. · KVK 96013540
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Winterswijk, the Netherlands
Manuel
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