Edwin Pahk, VP Of Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant outlines some key findings from their Service Intelligence Benchmark Report...
AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Edwin Pahk
About the Author:
Edwin has a deep understanding of the service industry. He's gotten to know service leaders across the globe and digs into their organizations to understand what makes them tick, and what keeps them up at night. Prior to joining Aquant, he was Principal Solution Engineer, Field Service Lightning at Salesforce. Before that, he led the Solution Consulting team at ClickSoftware.
What the Workforce Skills Gap Costs Field Service And why the skills gap is thwarting your KPI goals
Jan 29, 2021 • Features • Digital Transformation
Edwin Pahk, VP Of Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant outlines some key findings from their Service Intelligence Benchmark Report...
The bottom quarter of the workforce costs organizations 80% more than the top quarter. That’s according to the newly released 2020 Service Intelligence Benchmark Report from Aquant. The data reveals that a knowledge gap in the workforce is a major contributor to higher-than-average service costs and service delivery hurdles.
Key Observation: The Skills Gap is Expensive
The report, which analyzed actual service records from more than 2 million work orders, found that the biggest impact on service costs and performance was directly related to the skill level of the workforce.
When the top 25% of the workforce is overloaded with tasks, called on to solve the most complex service issues, and still asked to mentor junior staff, that imbalance is reflected in high attrition, low morale, and poor service. And, the Knowledge Gap is Expensive!
- The bottom quarter of the workforce costs organizations 80% more than the top quarter
How the Service Industry Got Here
Service leaders are navigating a shifting industry. They are juggling multiple challenges that are exacerbating already-existing workforce gaps, including:
- A retirement wave
- Difficulty recruiting experienced workers
- Changes in customer demands, requiring new skill sets among the workforce
- Pandemic-driven need to limit time spent on job sites
This shift has left service leaders struggling to upskill junior employees and erase the knowledge gap that exists between the highest performing 25% of the workforce, and everyone else.
The Opportunity: Leverage Data to Increase Workforce Knowledge for Big Service ROI
By better understanding workforce performance, and adopting tools that erase the knowledge gap between employees, service organizations will be able to quickly scale performance and reduce costs.
Here’s why. The report found a close relationship between workforce skill level and service performance.
- Service organizations whose workforces had a smaller discrepancy between top performers (heroes) and lower performers (challengers), or in other terms, -- had a low skills gap -- show higher performance overall versus those with a high skills gap
- Small workforce improvements add up to big ROI. Here’s why:
- Boosting the bottom 25% of the workforce up modestly to the level of your average performers will result in a nearly 17% savings in service costs
- Additionally, helping boost your contenders up closer to your top performers will increase ROI by another 17%
- If everyone had the knowledge and skills to perform like the top 25% of the workforce, organizations would save 38% of service costs
Read the full 2020 Service Intelligence Benchmark Report at Aquant.io to learn about cost-effective methods to quickly upskill the workforce, improve KPIs, and drive rapid ROI across the entire service team.
About the 2020 Service Intelligence Benchmark Report
The report measures:
- 52 organizations that include service divisions within OEMs and third-party service organizations across manufacturing, medical devices, capital equipment, HVAC, commercial appliances, and more
- More than 2 million work orders
- From 38,000 technicians
- Totalling $3 billion in service costs
- With an average of 5 years of service data per company
* All data was anonymized
Further Reading:
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
Aug 19, 2020 • Features • White Paper • Aquant • Managing the Mobile Workforce
Having published a series of features based on excerpts from their latest white paper, Aquant's Edwin Pahk, has outlined the importance of field service companies measuring KPIs, now more than ever before. He has also identified for us the five...
Having published a series of features based on excerpts from their latest white paper, Aquant's Edwin Pahk, has outlined the importance of field service companies measuring KPIs, now more than ever before. He has also identified for us the five KPI's he believes are crucial for service leaders to measure. Here in this bonus addition to the mini-series, Pahk concludes with an overview of the Aquant Workforce Performance Index...
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the button below. If you are yet to subscribe join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe now by clicking the button below...
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper.
HELPING YOU CREATE AN ENTIRE TEAM OF SERVICE HEROES
Aquant accesses and analyzes hidden data and creates an accurate snapshot of the health and balance of your entire workforce.
The Workforce Performance Index factors in a wide range of KPIs, providing a holistic view of each team member in relation to peers. It’s easy to see, at a glance, who excels at solving complex problems while also understanding who needs additional support or training. What sets the Workforce Performance Index apart from traditional workforce rankings is that it’s based on an organization’s diverse set of service data including service tickets, technician notes, parts usage information, CRM data, and more.
That hidden data isn’t the only nugget of info that makes this measurement so effective, it’s also about Aquant’s domain expertise.We have decades of collective experience and understand how service organisations really work behind the scenes (we know about the many service shortcuts and all the data that’s supposed to be entered into a database, but never is). This led us to build a system that applies an organisation’s own knowledge and data in real world scenarios, to
- Create dynamic service intelligence that delivers robusts findings, recommendations, and best practices that’s personalized to each organization
- Apply AI-based continuous learning that learns the behaviors of service heroes and applies that knowledge to empower the entire workforce
HOW THE WORKFORCE PERFORMANCE INDEX LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
Before you can solve a problem, you need to understand the root cause -- that’s the critical step required to resolve problems faster and foster performance improvements. Then, provide equal access to information so everyone has the right tools to succeed.
AI, enhanced by the feedback of experts, is key to capturing siloed tribal knowledge and making that knowledge accessible across your workforce. That’s how your hidden data helps empower less tenured employees with the wisdom of your service heroes. By making information easily accessible to everyone, from customer-facing service reps to field engineers, you’ll impart domain expertise on newer employees in a matter of weeks, helping them to understand problem-solving in a way that teaches them how to think like your service heroes.
ONCE YOU HAVE A BASELINE INDEX, WHAT’S NEXT?
Now you can accurately plan how to distribute expert resources in the most effective way while understanding what kind of guidance junior team members need to get up to speed. Benefits include:
- Accurate resource planning. Give your service heroes time to breathe by allocating them to the most complex jobs while allowing time for mentoring or training
- Provide the challengers in your workforce with the resources or training they need to become more successful
- ○ Better, more cost-effective service outcomes
- Less customer churn. Your customers may even shower your team with praise!
- Track progress and make continuous adjustments based on the data and desired outcomes
TAKE THE 7 DAY CHALLENGE AND MEASURE THE SERVICE PERFORMANCE THAT MATTERS
FOR A FREE AI-POWERED WORKFORCE ANALYSIS...
Give Aquant a sample of your service tickets and get results, including a Service Workforce Performance Index, in a week!
Aquant’s AI engine takes your service data and provides you with meaningful insights that demonstrate how AI benefits your workforce and service delivery.
Find out more at www.aquant.io/7-day-challenge/
If you missed out on the earlier features from this series or you would like read the full white paper it is available to subscribers to www.fieldservicenews.com who can access the white paper on the button above alongside the rest of our entire premium content library!
If you have yet to subscribe then join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe @ www.fieldservicenews.com/subscribe
Further Reading:
-
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
Aug 12, 2020 • Features • White Paper • Aquant • Managing the Mobile Workforce
In this last article in this series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant outlined the first two fo five critical KPI's field service organisations must monitor....
In this last article in this series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant outlined the first two fo five critical KPI's field service organisations must monitor. Now in the third article in the series we look at three more crucial KPIs...
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the button below. If you are yet to subscribe join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe now by clicking the button below...
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper.
KPI#3: MEAN TIME BETWEEN FAILURES
What is it?
Mean time between failures (MTBF) measures the average time between customer issues. The goal for service organizations is to maximize this metric because a high time between failures represents high service quality and maximum uptime.
How it measures workforce performance
MTBF is less about resolving the single issue that prompted a failure, and more about a service professional’s ability to holistically maintain the health of the machine. This is a skill that is typically difficult to measure. Seasoned service heroes know how to take advantage of time in front of an asset to ensure that everything is working properly. They’ll work to proactively maintain or replace parts before a failure occurs, and understand how to keep failures from happening in the future.
How it measures customer experience
The less you notice this measurement creeping up, the better. Tracking MTBF is a great way to measure customer uptime and service reliability — ultimately resulting in happier customers. While service is about providing a great experience in each customer interaction, a better outcome is preventing the failing in the first place.
Challenges to measuring mean-between-failures
- Measuring mean time between failures requires long intervals of data because it’s a lagging indicator: MTBF is a big picture measurement. It requires a sustained ability to measure the time difference between failures. Quite often, organizations may only look at a quarter’s worth of data, and that’s not enough time to accurately measure MTBF because a good indicator of health means that failure may only happen every few quarters.
- Attribution of mean time between failure to service professionals is up for debate: What is the definition of failure? Is it when different, unrelated issues arise in the same asset? Or can it also be a problem that (unknowingly) is not fixed correctly the first time, and subsequent service calls were needed to address the actual problem? Because multiple service technicians are usually contributing to service across one asset or customer, it’s difficult to attribute a long or short MTBF to a single individual.
How to measure mean-time-between-failure:
It’s straightforward with the exception of these scenarios. When dealing with long MTBF intervals (6 months or longer) or an extremely short average asset lifecycle, using the standard approach to MTBF might not be suitable. Instead, using MTBE (mean time between events) might be a better measurement. When using MTBE as a metric it’s less about whether a particular interaction with a customer constitutes a failure and more about measuring how many times you had to interact with that customer. Fewer interactions signal fewer service issues.
KPI#4: SERVICE COST PER WORK ORDER
What is it?
Service cost per work order (or per case) is an effective measurement of the total cost of each work order or case created. It’s also known as the average cost per truck roll.
How it measures workforce performance
The cost per work order provides a measurement of the duration and/or parts usage a technician uses, on average, to resolve an issue. Higher performing individuals innately know how to solve problems without shotgunning expensive parts.
How it Impacts Customer Experience
While customers aren’t concerned with how much it costs to resolve each problem, the bigger quality issues remain true here. A lower cost per work order generally highlights a higher quality of service -- and that’s what customers notice.
Challenges of measuring mean time to resolution
- Service cost per work order might be a misleading indicator of performance: Context is key, especially when a few experts are regularly assigned complex jobs. These are cases when top employees may have a higher average service cost per work order. If yours is an organization that saves the most difficult cases for workforce heroes, know that the more complex the cases, (typically) the more expensive the service costs. ○
- Service costs can have an inverse relationship to customer satisfaction: You likely get requests from service teams for additional help because more resources (and faster response times from those with lighter workloads) typically result in better service performance. So don’t look at this metric without regard to the customer experience component. ○
- Service cost per work order doesn’t differentiate poor experiences and repeat visits: After scouring data from hundreds of organizations, it’s clear that one of the most difficult challenges in measuring service costs hinges on the ability to identify when consecutive work orders are related to the same issue. Organizations that carefully track when cases that were previously closed, were closed in error -- because the root issue wasn’t resolved properly the first time -- are rare.
How to measure mean time to resolution:
One of the best ways to track cost per work order is to use the metric to measure service cost per success. By flipping to the positive outcome, your organization will have a better understanding of who within your workforce are the heroes of your organization (those who resolve issues with minimal parts and visits). The difficulty with measuring each success is understanding whether a case is isolated or related to another case. Depending on how you capture data, you can use different methods to measure successful events, including the method describing how to measure repeat visits previously.
KPI#5: NET PROMOTER SCORE
What is it?
Net promoter score (NPS) is one of the most widely used methods to identify customer satisfaction and loyalty. Simply put, it measures the number of promoters and detractors for the service you provide
How it measures workforce performance
There is no other metric that reinforces the statement “customer is king” more than NPS. Happy customers overwhelmingly signal strong workforce performance. Typically, NPS measures a qualitative experience (technical workforce skills), such as how quickly a problem is resolved, but sometimes, NPS reflects a customer’s opinion about how they feel they’ve been treated (soft workforce skills).
How it measures Customer Experience
This is one of the most straightforward measurements possible to gauge customer satisfaction.
Challenges of measuring mean time to resolution
- Net promoter score alone is not a true measure of workforce performance: While customer satisfaction is a critical component in delivering great customer service, NPS alone is an incomplete measure of the performance of your service workforce. In service organizations where NPS is the measurement used, service costs skyrocket. Customer service professionals provide endless perks and free services in order to create customer loyalty. Unless this is part of your organization’s objectives, be careful when using NPS alone.
- Net promoter score is difficult to attribute to any one service factor: While NPS is a comprehensive measure of a customer’s experience, it’s difficult to use it to clearly identify any one specific factor or event that impacts score.
In the final feature in this series we will look at the Aquant Workforce Performance Index and how field service organisations like yours are leveraging this to improve their customer satisfaction ratings. Look out for this article in a weeks time!
Alternatively, subscribers to www.fieldservicenews.com can access the white paper on the button above and the rest of our premium content library! Join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe @ www.fieldservicenews.com/subscribe
Further Reading:
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
Aug 05, 2020 • Features • White Paper • Aquant • Leadership and Strategy
In this first article in a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant explained why now more than ever what we measures matters. Now in the next feature in...
In this first article in a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant explained why now more than ever what we measures matters. Now in the next feature in this series we look at the first two of five crucial KPIs that field service organisations must monitor
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the button below. If you are yet to subscribe join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe now by clicking the button below...
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper.
KPI#1 FIRST TIME FIX RATE
What is it?
First time fix rate (FTF) is one of the most popular metrics for workforce measurement. It’s simply how often someone is able to fix the issue in question on the first try. This is typically referenced in both a contact center and field service scenario.
How it measures workforce performance
Generally, it’s assumed that the higher the first time fix rate, the more competent or skilled the technician is.
How it impacts customer experience
FTF makes a big impact on great customer experience. Customers want resolution quickly, and they don’t want to have to place a service ticket two days later because the issue was never properly resolved. Solving issues correctly the first time boosts a brand’s value and acts as a competitive differentiator, making it just as important as the quality of the initial product or service.
Challenges to measuring first time fix rates
- Service costs can increase: Service organizations often throw a lot of money at the problem to increase first time fix rates. The problem? First time fix rates alone do not represent the skill level of your workers. For example, a technician tends to swap costly parts for a new one every call instead of digging deeper into how to fix the root issue. Stats will show a high FTF, but doesn’t take into account that a cheaper option could likely have fixed the problem
- First time fix doesn’t reflect technician skill: Not all issues resolved on the second attempt reflect technician error. Often, failure to achieve FTF happens in tandem with an accurate diagnosis. If the dispatcher didn’t provide insight into the situation, a tech may arrive onsite, quickly diagnose, but need to come back later that day or days later with the right part. Understanding the context of what the metric represents is just as important as measuring first time fix rates.
- Properly defining and tracking first time fix is a challenge: This is especially problematic depending on how an organization tracks the KPI. If each new ticket is measured in a vacuum, a first time fix rate may be high. But what if tech thinks they fix the issue on the first visit, only to be called back a week later because of a different problem with the same machine? If the tech makes another quick fix, you record that as another FTF. Go team!
But wait a minute. What if a third ticket is issued a week later and a different tech arrives on-site to realize the first tech was simply putting a band-aid on a more complex root issue? A deeper analysis of these common miss measurements finds that service organizations really have more chronic repeat visit problem than they realize.
How to measure first time fix:
It’s not an exact science, but a much more accurate approach is to measure whether there was a visit for that same asset or issue that occurred within X number of days of the previous visit. While this isn’t a complete solution, it addresses the major fallacy of the first time fix rate.
KPI#2 MEAN TIME TO RESOLUTION:
What is it?
Mean time to resolution (MTTR) refers to the time it takes to resolve a customer issue. This is typically defined as the time between the case creation date and its closure date. Similar to the pain of staying on hold when trying to resolve a personal issue, minimizing MTTR is a key factor in increasing positive customer experiences and reducing costs. Organizations with high MTTR often have techs who find themselves in escalation black holes.
How it measures workforce performance
MTTR has an inverse relationship to first time fix rate. As your FTF rate goes up, MTTR should go down. How so? That’s usually related to service heroes resolving issues (really resolving the root cause) on the first visit, with the right parts and tools to make quick work of the problem.
How it Impacts Customer Experience
Consumers and B2B clients want immediate service. Amazon Prime, overnight shipping, Netflix, and more all represent the demand for immediacy. MTTR is a critical part of that customer service experience, and if your customers don’t receive the attention and quick resolution they want, they’ll seek out a competitor.
Challenges of measuring mean time to resolution
- Poor data collection or lack of uniform data: This is the biggest issue related to measuring MTTR. While case creation/creation date is a fairly consistent data point across organizations, case resolution time or date is much less reliable due to poor data collection. The biggest issue here is a lack of compliance among users -- technicians often forget to close out cases until days after the problem is resolved.
- Dependence on first time fix measurement: MTTR is highly dependent on how FTF is measured. Failed visits have a profound impact on MTTR, and the stats are grim. Issues not resolved the first time require, on average, another 14 days to resolution. The reason is often attributed to the need to order additional parts, scheduling issues with customers. MTTR suffers from the same challenge as FTF if the root causes of failure aren’t addressed.
- Mean time to resolution is a measure of process and people: It’s tough to separate the two. MTTR can be used to measure workforce productivity, but it’s also a measure of capacity and process. Sometimes when MTTR slumps, that’s the result of lack of enough headcount versus workforce performance.
How to measure mean time to resolution:
There are several approaches to mitigate some of the challenges faced when measuring MTTR.
- Measure the difference in mean time to resolution rather than overall rate. Instead of looking at MTTR as a single unit, focus on the aspects of MTTR that reflect workforce performance. For example:
- This can be identified in the difference in MTTR between individuals when a failed visit occurs. Service professionals who often require multiple customer visits will generally have greater MTTR rates versus your best experts who seldom make repeat visits.
- Use only open dates to measure mean time to resolution. Given the lack of quality in measuring accurate resolution dates, using open dates and visit dates to define the MTTR threshold is a way to identify MTTR. This eliminates the inconsistency in resolution or close dates, and will only work on customer issues with failed visits.
In the next feature in this series we will look at three more crucial KPIs, Mean Time between Failure, Cost Per Service Per Technician and Net Promoter scores. Alternatively, subscribed now for access to the white paper above and the rest of our premium content library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/subscribe
Further Reading:
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
Jul 22, 2020 • Features • White Paper • Aquant • Leadership and Strategy
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is an oft repeated phrases amongst management professionals of all sectors. As we establish the way out of the toughest crisis our industry has ever seen, good management is crucial and that means the...
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is an oft repeated phrases amongst management professionals of all sectors. As we establish the way out of the toughest crisis our industry has ever seen, good management is crucial and that means the metrics we measure are more vital than ever. In this first article in a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by Aquant, Edwin Pahk, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Aquant explains more...
Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full white paper on the button below. If you are yet to subscribe join 30K of your field service management peers and subscribe now by clicking the button below...
Sponsored by:
Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content, Aquant who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this white paper.
The service landscape is facing a dramatic transformation that ranges from the need to skill up a new workforce, to the move away from a reactive break-fix work towards a predictive service model. This, coupled with the desire to limit expensive on-site visits and customer demands for enhanced SLAs, means every service moment matters.
To make this transformation a reality requires a workforce of high performers, but there are plenty of hurdles on the path to achieving this goal.
Assembling and nurturing a powerhouse service team is challenging
- Baby Boomers are in the midst of a powerful retirement wave
- There is a sizable skills gap between new recruits and those who are retiring
- High paying service jobs became less desirable over the last decade as enrolment in vocational schools declined in favor of university programs
- Millennials and Gen Z seek to work, collaborate, and develop professional skills using speedy tech tools versus long-term learning plans
And the service landscape looks different, too
- Machines are more complex and require a workforce with advanced technical skills
- Consumer demand for standardized service costs are driving more predictive service offerings
- A move towards remote diagnostics and self-service triage offerings empower the customer to handle simple issues that don’t require a technician to be dispatched
- Changing economic factors are driving renewed pressure to stabilize or cut service costs
When we peel away the layers, all of this reinforces that a high-performing workforce is a key competitive differentiator. But how do service leaders move forward in this new service
landscape? Tools that map out your workforce, providing a snapshot of your experts versus challengers, and provide guidance on how to upskill the whole team is the first step.
Why Measure Individual Workforce Performance?
Service companies need to zoom in and out when it comes to KPIs Organizations have dashboards and charts to measure the service KPIs of the entire team, but few are zooming in to look at individual performance. Big picture knowledge is essential, but without visibility into great performers (service heroes) versus those who would benefit from training or upskilling (challengers) it’s hard to create service plans that address the root cause of workforce issues.
You likely know the shortlist of service heroes.
They are saved to your favorite contacts. And you may have a training plan for a few of the team members you know are struggling. What about the other 98% of the team? How are they really performing, and what do they need to do to level up and develop the skills and confidence of your superstars?
There are some obvious signs that members of your service workforce could use additional training. For example, those who regularly require repeat visits to remedy less complex issues is an obvious sign. What about more subtle indicators?
Some on the team may appear to check all the right boxes but may be struggling in other ways, such as racking up high parts costs by swapping out parts until the job is fixed.
This is where workforce measurement helps make sense of employee data by analyzing KPIs in a way that really matters. It can spot inconsistencies in service quality among the team and help you pinpoint who needs training and who is in the best position to provide mentoring.
But, there’s a caveat! Before you can get here, you need to measure the right things the right way.
Do the KPIs You Measure Provide the Right Insights?
We see you shaking your head. Service organizations already spend quite a bit of time and effort tracking workforce KPIs, and most service leaders keep a constant eye on those numbers.
But right now those KPIs tend to be narrowly focused on single measurements such as productivity or first time fix, and they don’t provide a holistic snapshot.
Without zooming out for a 360-degree view, measuring in isolation often leads to systemic and costly service issues. Instead of focusing solely on “what” to measure, it’s more important to ask “how” you are measuring. Do you have access to the right mix of information to measure what really matters? That should include understanding metrics at a macro level across the organization and on an individual level. Take a deep dive into your data.
Does one KPI improve, only to have another fall below target? Not analyzing the right data, or not doing so in the right way, can be just as harmful as not measuring at all.
In the next feature in this series, we will look at the five key KPIs that, when understood in relation to each other, can provide an accurate snapshot of what’s really going on with your service teams.
Further Reading:
- Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
- Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
- Read more news and articles featuring Aquant @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=aquant
- Connect with Edwin Pahk on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwin-pahk-8a066515/
- Find out more about the solutions Aquant offer to help field service companies @ www.aquant.io/
- Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io
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