Field Service News in partnership with RealWear, and OverIT have worked together to produce a detailed 22 page Essential Guide to Remote Service. In this second in a series of excerpts from that guide we continue to look at the benefits of an effective remote service solution...

In the last feature in this series we discussed improving health and safety, increasing geographical expansion opportunities and reducing the time it takes to get new engineers out into the field as three key benefits. Now we look at three more... 

Empowering the blended workforce

By moving your most experienced resources away from the field and onto a remote service platform there is also an opportunity for field service companies to begin to completely re-imagine the way they develop their field workforce.

One of the outcomes of the millennial generation replacing the baby boomer generation in the workplace is a fundamental difference in how they perceive careers. The baby-boomer workforce was, in many respects, simpler to handle.

The concept of a job for life was common, and the career ladder was just that, a vertical route upwards.

However, the millennial generation is a very different beast entirely.

Millennials statistically are far more transient within the workforce than their baby-boomer colleagues. For millennials, career progression spans not just many companies but also many industries. This consideration must be factored into the equation when we begin to look at the makeup of the modern field service workforce.

Many field service organisations are beginning to move towards having a ‘deskilled’ field workforce where the majority of field workers have a broad yet shallow skill set that allows them to handle most routine tasks across a wide spectrum of devices/assets in the fleet. These technicians are supported by subject matter experts who have a narrower, yet far deeper and more granular level of knowledge and expertise in specific areas. These subject matter experts are then available to offer guidance via remote service delivery tools.

Indeed, let’s take this one step further.

Such an approach also sits well within the blended workforce model (which is where the workforce comprises a mix of internal and third-party workers), potentially unleashing the largely untapped potential of the gig economy within the field service sector - again an approach that is better aligned to the societal changes we are seeing which impact workforce planning and structuring.

Additionally, we must now also consider that many field service companies are facing new challenges to overcome the vast amount of lost capacity throughout 2020 as a result of the pandemic. With the spectre of COVID still looming across 2021 resulting in ongoing potential fluctuations in capacity at any given time, the need is more significant than ever for third-party workers. It is therefore likely we will see even further adoption of external workers within the sector.

Those organisations with the capabilities already in place to ‘dial-in’ knowledge and expertise instantly and on-demand via remote service tools are far better placed to make such a transition to leveraging the blended workforce more effectively.

Embracing the tools for outcome-based services

Another important emerging trend within the field service sector is the shift towards outcome-based services and servitization.

Servitization is a complex topic; however, the most straightforward definition would be when product and service are sold holistically across an asset’s lifecycle.

Crucially in a servitized approach, the customer’s key metric is no longer SLA adherence, but instead meeting guarantees of uptime.

With this shift in focus, the weighting on mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) becomes an essential aspect of the service delivery program.

This is another area where remote service adoption at a sophisticated level, such as we have discussed in this paper, can have a considerable impact. In a world of remote service delivery, the service provider can turn to the closest available engineer, regardless of their level of expertise and still, in most instances, achieve a first-time-fix by having a remote expert with the knowledge and experience available instantly to guide them through the repair.

Indeed, alongside the connectivity of assets, remote service delivery is a fundamental layer of technology that can make the transition to a servitized approach possible. Field Service News Research recently outlined that currently, almost two-thirds of service organisations are introducing some advanced services into their portfolio.

Therefore, the importance of sophisticated technologies such as AR and head-mounted computers are likely to become increasingly commonplace within a field service setting as the move towards servitization continues.

Differentiating your service against that of your competition

As we commented on during the introduction, remote service as a service delivery method went from being utilised by a relatively small section of the industry, to being commonplace in 2020 as service companies scrambled to find a means of delivering service while under the restrictions of lockdowns.

With so many companies having simultaneously introduced some means of delivering service remotely, it is almost certain that both the service provider and their customers alike will be keen to harness the benefits of such an approach beyond the pandemic’s duration.

Research by Field Service News outlined that while nearly three-quarters of the field service companies had introduced remote service capabilities due to the pandemic, only a fifth of these were using sophisticated tools such as AR and head-mounted computers to do so.

This leads us to an interesting scenario and one where there could be a clear window of opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.

It is reasonable to assume that remote service delivery will be a significant part of the future. Yet currently the standards of delivery of remote service remain relatively low.

With so many companies suddenly arriving at the same place, it could well be that remote service may become a key battleground for competing service organisations.

Those who choose to adopt a more sophisticated approach to remote service delivery and who choose to leverage the latest technology within this space, are likely to be well-positioned when it comes to being able to differentiate on their ability to deliver service remotely.

In the next article in this series we will look at three more benefits of remote service; empowering the blended workforce, embracing the tools for outcome-based services and differentiating your service against that of your competition...

Further Reading:

This interview was undertaken as part of our development of our recently published Essential Guide to Remote Service. This guide offers insight into the important considerations field service companies need to be aware of when selecting remote service solutions suitable for their needs.

The guide looks at both the hardware and software considerations as well as containing a case study from Rail Cargo Group that looks at how they implemented such a solution which has revolutionised their industry.

This essential guide is currently available on our free-forever FSN Standard subscription tier for a limited time as well as being available to our FSN Premium subscribers and our FSN Elite members. If you are on any of these subscription/membership tiers you can access this guide by clicking the button below.

If you are not yet a subscriber, the button will take you to a dedicated registration page for FSN Standard that will give you instant access to this guide as well as access to the other Premium Resources currently available on this tier. 

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