AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Samir Gulati

As part of an excellent ‘analyst’s take’ paper commissioned by ServicePower, Bill Pollock has provided an in-depth look at the service requirements for the security sector, here Samir Gulati offers us a key excerpt from that paper...

There are now more security systems players than ever, bringing refined ways of doing business and new efficiencies to the marketplace. 

In addition, there has been a complete transformation of the security installer/service technician into an “everything as a service”

professional, supported by service delivery models that embrace Cloud technology, interactive services, predictive diagnostics and customer self-service.

The most successful companies will ultimately differentiate themselves with unique and seemingly indispensable services and solutions that make it easier for a consumer (or business) to be smarter, safer, and more cost-effective.

For those organisations that install, monitor, and maintain commercial or residential security systems, ServicePower enables faster, smarter service, so they can deliver on today’s consumer service preferences and expectations, while also reducing operational costs and driving new and more predictable revenue streams.

 

"The most successful companies will ultimately differentiate themselves with unique and seemingly indispensable services and solutions..."

 

The five primary factors to focus on when evaluating alternative Field Service Management (FSM) and Warranty Management (WM) solutions for the security services segment are critical to the success of the vendor/solution evaluation and selection processes.

They include:

• Customer Engagement – by offering a customised, self-service portal to enable customers to log in with their account number and report issues or order add-on security services, schedule the appointment, watch their installer/ service technician en route, and communicate with him or her, if needed; also to suggest relevant new cross sell and/or upsell services during this key interaction opportunity.
• Smart Scheduling – the ability to pair parameters such as skills, certifications, and geography with the latest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for real-time scheduling to ensure that the best installer/service technician is assigned, at the least cost; and provide the opportunity to re-optimise schedules and routes in real-time to accommodate intra-day changes, increase on-time arrival and completed jobs per day, and decrease travel costs.
• Mobile Tech Enablement – to ensure that the installer/service technicians arrive with everything they need to get the job done the first time, driving consistent quality service delivery, improved productivity, and increased completion rates; also to provide a value-based experience by personalising the customer’s experience via fully configurable mobile functionality which also improves schedule compliance and first-time installation/ fix rates, and proactively offer additional value-added security solutions while onsite to increase revenue.
• Contractor Management – to facilitate better management of outsourced or supplementary third-party contractor staff to quickly expand geographic reach or support changing demand; the ability to dynamically choose a contractor based on rank scores, credentials, crowd-sourced Better Business Bureau (BBB) info, and dynamic rules configuration; and confidently being able to book an appointment based on available time-slots, coupled with the ability to view the current job status and track overall progress.
• Reporting & Analytics – the ability to use real-time Business Intelligence (BI) to measure performance metrics, fine tune future operations, and enhance the customer experience; along with the ability to access Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), scorecards and reports in real-time, from either mobile devices or the desktop, and share them both inside and outside the organisation, as warranted.

The best FSM and WM solutions will also be those that include additional functionalities, such as:

• Claims Management
• Work Order Management
• Inventory, Asset and Contract Management
• Outsourced Managed Services

The main benefits that can be realised through the implementation and use of a Field Service Management (FSM) and Warranty Management (WM) solution designed specifically for the security services segment are many, and quite compelling, as follows:

• Improve management control over service provisioning
• Reduce manual processes to create and manage field schedule routes, thereby reducing travel times
• Increase appointments, per day
• Less time spent on-site
• Enable improvements in overtime, travel, skills, and spares
• Grow revenue
• Increase customer engagement
• Serve customers more efficiently with convenient scheduling, increased first-time installation/ fix rates, and improved service levels
• Use Business Intelligence (BI) to better measure and improve service operations KPIs
• Research has shown that for a typical Fortune 1000 company, just a 10% increase in data accessibility will result in more than US$65 million additional net income, according to Forbes.com.

These benefits, albeit on a smaller scale, can also be realised by small-to-medium-sized security services organisations as well.

 

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 Samir Gulati is Chief Marketing Office with ServicePower

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The customer experience is a crucial differentiator between organisations and that experience needs to be consistent across the whole customer journey, Samir Gulati explains why this is so vital...

Today’s field-service customers demand responsive support, especially digital natives who are used to getting what they want when they want it.

But even though these customers expect field service to be speedy, it pays to slow down and examine the customer journey to better understand their expectations. Field-service providers then know what elements are worth measuring and can, therefore, leverage software solutions to direct their technicians to respond appropriately in real-time.

So let’s take a look at the five stages of the field-service customer journey, as well as the key metrics worth tracking at each step.

 

#1 The Service Request

The customer journey starts with the creation of a service request. But even a simple request carries the opportunity for deep insight so long as field service providers measure the flexibility of their engagement with the customer and their access to the servicer.

Can users submit such inquiries through multiple channels? Fewer and fewer customers want to communicate through a call centre. Instead, they prefer self-service online portals and machine-to-machine service requests generated automatically by their smart appliances.

But just as customers need access to technicians, technicians need access to customers - namely their service agreements. Automated registrations and entitlement checks, using preconfigured warranty information, allow service providers to assess maintenance options and confirm services instantly.

 

#2 Scheduling Service

Once a service request is submitted and subjected to the automated entitlement check, it’s time for scheduling. At this stage of the customer journey, scheduling options and response times matter most.

Customers should be able to easily book truth-based appointments, which reflect your technicians’ skill level and actual bandwidth based on a combination of real-time and historical data.

This ensures that the right technician is sent out to the right job, which increases first-time-fix rates.

That same information should populate estimated arrival and completion times so customers can plan for their field-service slots and appointments accordingly. Users can then utilize self-service scheduling to reschedule their service calls, at which point they have access to updated information regarding technician availability.

 

#3 Tracking Technicians

Modern customers value visibility and expect field-service companies to offer real-time tracking, much like Uber, for two reasons.

First is compliance with scheduling - simply, will the right technicians be selected, and if so will they arrive and complete their work on time?

This is as important for customer satisfaction as it is for maintaining a tight schedule and limiting unnecessary expenses. Second is real-time updates. If a technician finishes a job early or gets stuck in traffic, will the next customer in the queue receive a notification?

Furthermore, if a customer has extra information they’d like to communicate to the technician, can they send it directly to him or her without routing the message through a call centre?

Even simple messages that tell technicians, for example, what the code to a locked gate is or that the dog in the backyard is friendly can make all the difference in the timeliness and quality of a service call, but only if field-service providers open a direct line of communication between the customer and the tech.

 

#4 On-Site Repair

Once technicians arrive on-site, there are several key metrics that they and their employers ought to track:

• Preparedness: Does the tech have all the right information (and parts) necessary to complete the job on time?
• First-time-fix rate: the percentage of service requests resolved with a single technician visit.
• Time-to-repair: the average period of time it takes for a technician to repair a malfunctioning product.
• Time-on-site versus estimated: the difference between the estimated time-to-repair measurement and the actual repair time.

Field-service providers can use these measurements to assess the productivity and efficiency of their technicians as well as the effectiveness of their appointment workflows.

They can then fine-tune their processes and improve their service.

 

#5 Post-Service Engagement

Post-service engagement is the crucial last step in the field-service customer journey, which includes payment, customer satisfaction surveys, the ability to re-open a ticket, if necessary, and backend reporting.

By tracking order to cash (OTC), field-service companies can reduce the complexity in payment channels complicated by contract work, warranties claim management and sourcing parts.

And in a world where nearly 7 out of 10 customers leave reviews after purchasing products or services, channels for tabulating repeat services and gathering immediate feedback on services rendered can further provide valuable insight that field-service companies can act on immediately.

 

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Samir Gulati, is Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower 

 

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Samir Gulati outlines four key technologies that are forming the bedrock for twenty-first century field service...

Twenty-first-century technological advancement has transformed how businesses everywhere communicate and interact with their customers.

Gone are the days of the occasional customer service call. Mobile technology has forever changed how people connect with product and service providers.

Field-service businesses that have yet to embrace digital customer engagement methods and tools must work quickly to do so. Modern consumers don’t like losing whole days waiting for calls from service personnel. They expect field service companies to use the latest technology to streamline the customer experience, create visibility into appointments and reduce hassle.

But which technological innovations should field service providers focus on? Here are some of the key technological tools gaining steam among the customers of the connected age.

 

Customer portals

Because of the pervasiveness of mobile technology, customer portals are everywhere.

Although the quality of these web-based assets varies from business to business, there are a couple essential components that creators of customer portals will always include:

• Information-rich, personalized dashboards allow users to view critical service data.
• Payment and account management give customers transparency into their past service requests and a place to pay for services rendered.

With tools like these, customers can serve themselves, which 67 percent prefer over speaking directly with a customer service representative. That said, direct communication tools such as instant messaging are still valuable, especially if they connect a customer with their personal technician or central dispatch.

These features not only meet the high standards of connected customers. They also simplify field service operations and reduce the likelihood of miscommunication between the provider and the customer.

 

Internet of things:

The internet of things is perhaps the most powerful innovation transforming business-to-consumer interaction today. At the moment, more than 11 billion IoT assets are active worldwide. By 2020, that figure is expected to jump to around 20.4 billion, a good number of which will likely be part of connected field-service operations.

In the field-service industry, asset-based deployments are common. Sensors embedded in equipment or appliances leverage internet connectivity to notify owners or even field-service providers when maintenance may be required, accelerating the repair process. Technician facing IoT workflows are also common and use geolocation to track service teams and route them to customers in need.

 

 

Smart home technology:

Even though web-enabled smart home technologies have received a lot of buzz in recent years, relatively few homeowners have adopted such solutions: In 2017, only 10 percent of families across the had any connected home solutions.

But smart home adoption isn’t unlikely to remain this low for long. Consumers are beginning to understand how much time and money smart home tech can save.

Field-service companies in the utility sector are catching on to the building momentum behind these innovative hardware and software solutions. Smart thermostats, for example, give customers greater visibility into—and control over—their electricity and gas usage. They also give technicians a better way to leverage data in order to provide personalised service and communicate effectively with the customer and the manufacturer.

 

Augmented reality:

Reality, augmented by real-time data, delivers benefits to connected customers by giving their technicians all the resources they need to perform perfect maintenance.

Field-service companies of all sizes are leveraging these tools to revolutionise on-site operations. Many are equipping technicians with augmented reality headsets that allow them to view updated product operating instructions or best practices while performing maintenance or repairs. Others are using these tools in training exercises so new technicians can ramp up quickly.

 

Summary: Embracing Innovation:

Field-service providers without these technologies may still be tempted to hold off on adoption. Perhaps they find these solutions too expensive or too complicated to deploy at the moment. It’s up to the decision-makers at these companies to decide what’s viable and what isn’t.

But these leaders should not underestimate the power of creating a bold new strategy for technology. It can lay the groundwork for excellent service effective operations in the age of the connected customer. As technology moves forward, so do consumers.

Field-service enterprises would be wise to recognize this reality and put into place up-to-date hardware and software that meets the needs of those driving the modern marketplace.

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Samir Gulati, is Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower 

 

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