AUTHOR ARCHIVES: Sumair Dutta

It’s been several years since the official end of the Great Recession and we finally see organizations beginning to switch from a cautionary mindset to one of business expansion. However, business and revenue expansion initiatives need to be built on an infrastructure of growth, an area where organizations haven’t invested significantly in the previous 5-10 years. The desire for growth needs to be matched with investments in knowledge, technology, and innovation.

Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer, Service Council explains why he anticipates that the next twelve months will be a period when service leaders begin to transition into new revenue models.

The Voice of the Service Leader:

In The Service Council’s annual trends survey of 2017, service leaders indicated that their top initiatives were focused on the improvement of customer management, the enhancement of service operations with the aid of business data, and an expansion of knowledge management across the enterprise.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued. In several industries, we also noted that organizations were balancing the demands and needs of various customers within an organization.

2018 initiatives are similar to those planned for 2017 and we don’t see a major deviation for service leaders. The push is to continue to drive operational efficiencies and business capacity with the aid of data, information, and technology. In parallel, organizations are looking to continue to ramp up their customer experience initiatives. As these initiatives get more mature and move from the listening phase to the customer understanding phase, organizations are hoping to use customer insight and data to support revenue generation efforts.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued.Voice of the customer efforts have been popular for several years and were championed by those in business to consumer industries.

In serving a larger number of customers and customer transactions, it was essential for these organizations to get a pulse of customer sentiment tied to service transactions and business relationships. The effort from these organizations was to improve operations to support better loyalty and retention.

Some would argue that the intent of these organizations is now shifting to ensuring a greater use of purchased product and service features, akin to the customer success model.

In enterprises that work directly with other businesses, the volume of transactions and interactions might not be as large; nevertheless, these interactions can have a high degree of value or impact attached to them. Historically, organizations were happy to capture feedback from their customers, but customer listening wasn’t a prioritized activity.

That has changed; as over the last three years, we have seen more organizations invest in voice of the customer and customer surveying programs.

More so, service leaders have also sought after resources to map customer journeys and identify key pain points in the service delivery ecosystem.

These customer experience activities have led to a handful of initiatives that strive to assuage frustrated customers, increase visibility into the service process, and reduce the effort required to access the service organization.

We now believe that organizations are fairly well equipped to deal with direct customer feedback but now need to dive deeper to truly unearth customer value.

Deciphering value requires a deeper look at customer feedback. Customer complaints and outreach are typically a channel for customers to share their expressed wishes. Answering expressed needs and wishes is essential to maintaining customer satisfaction, but addressing unexpressed needs is the key to differentiation.

This requires the ability for service teams to dig deeper into the reasons for a customer contact and what that specific customer might be looking to accomplish with the delivered information.

Addressing constraint:

The delivery of improved experiences must occur in a constraint heavy environment. The biggest constraint faced by organizations is the capacity of the service workforce.

This capacity isn’t solely tied to the quantity of service tasks that must be met, but in the quality of service interactions that must be supported by service personnel. In organizations with field service groups, there is a major focus on replacing retiring service workers and in retaining and replicating their knowledge for future generations.

Several industries are having major issues tapping into the next generation of service workers. Yet service requests continue and customers require a higher level of service.

Technology might seem like the best answer to addressing capacity issues, but the real solution comes from a better understanding of available service data. This explains why service leaders are looking at their major sources of data to identify:

• Inefficient service delivery processes
• Opportunities for automation and elimination of manual intervention
• Opportunities for enhancement of service worker output and coverage

The data that is available at the service leader’s fingertips can come from multiple sources. It may come direct from the product being serviced, and this mode of data communication continues to gain traction. Yet reliable data is already available from:

• Customer requests, complaints, and claims
• Point-of-service systems tracking work completion and resources required

Once operational improvement opportunities are identified, it makes sense to inject technology solutions to address these opportunities.

For instance, portals can be created to offer customers an easier path to service information or to the creation of a service request as compared to a traditional 1-800 call queue.

Routing technology can be used to directly connect customers to higher-level technical support. Video solutions can allow for assisted service resolution or improved diagnosis prior to dispatch. And just-in-time content can be sent to technicians to ensure that their service visits are successful.

We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.

If customers indicate that the ease of access to service personnel is a priority for them, or that other areas in the service delivery ecosystem need improvement, then these could help service leaders rank needed changes.

The growth plan:

Operational and customer-focused initiatives are being paired with those that focus on business and service revenue. In discussions around service’s impact on the business, TSC has previously highlighted two revenue buckets that are directly enhanced by service.

• Service-Impacted Revenue – Revenue generated as a result of positive customer satisfaction, typically tied to up-sells, cross-sells, renewals, new purchases, and referrals.
• Service Revenue – Revenue generated from the sale of service products such as service parts, time & material work, or service agreements.

In pursuing growth in 2018, service leaders continue to support the first bucket of revenue typically driven by other parts of the organization but are taking aim at enhancing their overall service revenue contribution.

This expansion is typically supported in two ways:

1. Understanding customer use of current service products
2. Uncovering appetite for new service products

For those organizations with service agreements in place, it’s essential to understand which customers are covered by these agreements and which ones are coming up for renewal. Better visibility into coverage and renewal opportunities can uncover millions in revenue opportunities.

Once visibility is established, it is essential to identify why customers chose to stay away from service agreements or other products. This might uncover awareness or sales opportunities for the service enterprise.

In addition to actual coverage and renewal, service organizations must understand how customers are utilizing products and services. Awareness of customer adoption and usage will allow for improved account management opportunities. It might also yield ideas for net new services that can be valuable to customers.

Summary/Conclusion: the need for service innovation

While organizations are navigating what it means to be a digital business, they are also looking to new collaboration models with their customers to ensure longer and more profitable relationships.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.In innovation-focused research conducted by The Service Council in 2017, less than one-half of organizations highlighted that their service businesses received as much focus on innovation, as did the other parts of the business.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.

Service leaders must develop and fuel a culture that welcomes and accepts new ways of doing business, even at the cost of cannibalizing existing revenue streams. The promise of innovation is ripe at service organizations; it’s now time for service leaders to execute on this promise.

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Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer at The Service Council offers his insight on how to leverage the untapped power of your field service operations to build additional revenue streams...

There is an increased responsibility on field service organisations to complement operational and customer facing improvements with commercial results. In The Service Council’s (www.servicecouncil.com) 2016 field service research, the lack of revenue opportunities was seen as a major strategic challenge by 40% of organisations.

To counter this challenge a number of organisations were looking at their front-line field service personnel to identify new business opportunities (aka Leads) or to sell when in front of the customer.

Most organisations currently have some form of a field service lead program in place and more are beginning to equip their engineers with the tools necessary to sell. There’s not enough room to debate if field engineers should be selling in the first place. In our research, we’re finding that more field service customers are accepting of a sales approach from a field service engineer if they have a relationship with that engineer or if the engineer has resolved their current challenge and is working to provide them with additional value.

In terms of field service lead generation, there are several best practices to consider when building a program. These best practices are compiled from our 2015 research on service sales and revenue growth and from a recent IdeaShare discussion that we hosted with several business leaders.

Develop a Dedicated Lead Management Process and Support it With Technology

Lead generation must be easy and effective if the field service team is going to bother with the added responsibility. Field engineers will abandon the process immediately if it doesn't work. Typically, the two major failure points occur around lead follow-up by sales and in lead affiliated compensation for field service engineers.

 

A lot of the core areas of lead management can be automated with the aid of mobile and CRM solutions. That said, its essential that there is well thought out process for how leads are managed throughout the entire sales cycle, all the way from identification to closure.

Deliver Training Materials at All Levels of Field Service

Change management is essential in the rollout of any new program. Poor attention to this often leads to unsuccessful adoption of the program and poor attainment of desired goals. Its likely that field service engineers will resist when asked to participate in lead generation as they will see this as a proxy to selling.

Therefore, organisations need to prepare this engineers on the purpose of the program and then reinforce the impact of the program on all stakeholders impacted, including the customer.

Once purpose has been established, the ‘how’ of lead generation needs to be reinforced with training sessions and materials. Preferably training content and scripts are available on-demand for engineers to refresh their knowledge as needed.

Its also essential that relevant instructional content is developed for multiple parties in the field service chain, starting with the engineers and moving up to supervisors and regional leaders.

Communicate and Then Communicate Some More

In this day and age of mobile content and self-service portals, it might seem silly to develop flyers and brochures to reinforce the message of a lead program, but these methods do work.

The message is simple, the more a program is discussed and reinforced, the more it is adopted.

 

In addition to reinforcing steps, best practices, and procedures, its also beneficial to reinforce the value of the program in the form of engineer success stories or customer results.

What’s even more impactful is an actual testimonial from a customer of how the extra time spent by a front-line engineer directly impacted the customer’s results and outcome.

Ensure Visibility Across the Lead Lifecycle

Part of the communication process involves giving engineers visibility into the status of their leads. If its assumed that leads are just going into a black hole, the lead pipeline will eventually dry out. Engineers don’t need to see every lead be successful, they just need to know that their effort is being followed up on.

Push for Sales Accountability

The monetary value of a service lead might not compare with that of a regular sales opportunity.

This might be enough to detract sales people from following up on service-generated leads.

 

Therefore, its essential that sales leadership is bought into driving accountability for a service lead program. An easy way to do this is to show the impact that top performing regions or districts are having when it comes to top-line revenue.

If sales isn’t motivated by that performance, business leadership will be.

Compensation – Make it Timely

Most organisations develop a financial reward system for field service engineers based on leads closed. Some offer incentives for lead generation.

The issue is that most programs stop here. While the field engineer cares about the amount of recognition received, they care more about getting recognised in a timely and painless manner.

They shouldn’t have to fight for the recognition or have to wait for it for a considerable amount of time. Therefore, its essential that the reward system developed, monetary or otherwise, is efficient enough to deliver the reward to the field engineer in an expedited manner.

Evaluate Metrics that Drive Action 

Activity drives results and while its essential to measure the impact of a lead generation program to garner further buy in, its absolutely essential to track activity-based metrics as leading indicators.

[quote float="Right"]Activity drives results and while its essential to measure the impact of a lead generation program to garner further buy in, its absolutely essential to track activity-based metrics as leading indicators.

These metrics could include participation rates, referrals per tech, and average cycle or follow up time for leads. One of the organisations participating in our IdeaShare uses an engineer confidence index to measure the health of their lead program.

 

The index measures how confident the engineers are in their ability to get paid on leads. The higher the confidence, the greater the activity.

We’ve worked with organisations that have developed and grown lead generation programs into significant revenue contributors. These programs don’t require a great deal of investment from a technology point-of-view, but they do require leadership, a rigorous process, and a focus on change.

Sumair Dutta is the Chief Customer Officer at The Service Council. He has over 12 years of experience as an analyst in the field service management space. His work can be found at www.servicecouncil.com.

 

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Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer, Service Council takes a look at some of the key areas of focus field service organisations need to consider in order to deliver success in 2017...

Annual predictions and forecasts are an interesting activity/discipline. I like to think of them as annual affirmations as strategic investments don’t necessarily change year-over-year.

In some instances, organisations are looking to expand on what they’ve been doing.

I believe the four primary areas of focus that will yield success in 2017 will be:

1. Increasing Predictability
2. Enhancing Efficiency
3. Identifying New Opportunities
4. Empowering Customers with Access and Information

The internal investments in data, automation, talent development, and engagement process realignment must be aligned with these objectives .

In each of the four focus areas, I’d like to share an activity or investment that’s likely to be top of mind.

Increasing Predictability

Focus Initiative: Executing on Predictive Models.

In our research, we’ve found that most organisations have used investments in IoT or analytics to increase their efficiency.

They are finally turning an eye to the predictive power of this information and in building delivery models to support predictive service. Effective delivery models (over-the-air, self-service, remote assistance, partner-based support, field support) of predictive support can be built on the existing reactive infrastructure, but do require an investment in training, communication, and change management. To that end, the service organisation needs the support of other business groups, mainly R&D, IT, and Sales and Marketing.

Emerging Initiative: Going deeper into customer feedback data to predict future events and avert negative outcomes.

Enhancing Efficiency

Focus Initiative: Better Use of Better Information.

Over the past five years, service organisations have made significant investments in mobility to empower the field service staff and in unified desktops to empower contact center staff.

In these investments, organisations have focused on making sure that all information necessary was available at the front-lines. The problem was that the information wasn’t available in context, making it difficult for front-line staff to use this information.

To tackle the glut of information on the front-end, we do see organisations re-evaluate technology investments to ensure that the right information is prioritised for front-line staff. Outside of technology, we actually see a great deal of investment into the structure and design of training programs and content to ensure that front-line agents are able to act on information that is made available to them.

Emerging Initiative: Evaluating Augmented or merged reality in field service and in training as it enhances the reach and scale of a centralised expert model and drives more from available and experienced talent.

Identifying New Opportunities

Focus Initiative: Diving into Installed Base Management.

While organisations are always on the lookout for new customers and new services to sell to those customers, there is an increasing recognition of the need to accomplish more with the existing installed base. In this, organisations are focusing their analytical minds on the portfolio of existing customers and the products and services that might be needed to improve retention and increase customer value.

Emerging Initiative: The development of customer care (customer success) teams that enable a consistent communication with customers to uncover pain points, challenges, and opportunities.

Empowering Customers with Information and Access

Focus Initiative: Improving Ease and Reducing Effort.

Motivational speakers often state that a differentiated experience comes from the ability of an organisation to surprise and delight its customers. In equipment-centric service the word surprise isn’t looked at as a positive.

Yet, there is a greater push from equipment manufacturers (and other organisations) to improve the experience that’s delivered to customers. Some of this can be attributed to consumerised experiences delivered by the likes of Uber and Amazon. Organisations we work with are looking to make it easier for customers to do business with them and this correlates with reducing customer angst and effort in seeking and acting on information.

Emerging Initiative: The use of messaging as a communication channel in on overall interaction portfolio to offer customers a greater degree of choice and convenience.

2017 is going to be anything but predictable. Yet the recipe for service success doesn’t change much.

Customers continue to take charge with increasing demands and expectations and organisations must respond with clinical efficiency internally and value filled interactions and touch points with customers.

 

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Sumair Dutta of The Service Council explores the findings of their latest IoT research...

Of the near 70% of organisations in The Service Council’s (TSC) community with connected service (or M2M or IoT) projects in place in a 2015 research survey, 53% indicated that they have had remote access to machine data for over 5 years. In return, they have built improved responsive and predictive service delivery processes.

As organisations get more mature around the use of IoT-enabled data in service, they are beginning to identify the opportunity present in leveraging data across other areas of the organisation. This sharing strategy follows a maturity path, wherein engineering and product design are the initial beneficiaries before sales, marketing and other groups can access this data for revenue programs.

Inside the Enterprise
Organisations continue to be extremely silo’d and the use of IoT-generated data is no exception. Largely, service data is typically used by service and operations in an organised manner. Use outside of service tends to be mostly sporadic or ad hoc with a few exceptions. This will change, and the bullets below highlight areas of opportunity currently untapped by most service organisations.

Engineering[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Improve quality of products tied to failure and performance information (currently done by 68% of respondents)
• Work with service teams to improve serviceability of products (currently done by 58% of respondents[/unordered_list]

Product Design and Systems Support[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Track software versions and make necessary updates (currently done by 40% of respondents)
• Add/remove product features tied to usage (currently done by 19% of respondents)[/unordered_list]

Operations and Business Planning[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Predict future business trends and plan resource needs (currently done by 36% respondents)
• Work with service teams to manage performance-based contracts (currently done by 40% of respondents)
•  Manage and administer pay-per-use[/unordered_list]

HR and Training[unordered_list style="bullet"]

•   Improve and modify training based on service event occurrence (currently done by 36% of respondents)
• Deliver real-time training during a service event (currently done by 23% of respondents)[/unordered_list]

Sales and Marketing[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Improve account management with better access into customer usage of product and features (currently done minimally)
• Personalise messaging and content tied to customer preferences (done minimally)
• Recognise need for and build new services (currently done by 28% of respondents)[/unordered_list]

Supply Chain
[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Manage inventory replenishment levels (currently done minimally)
•  Evaluate partner performance and isolate quality issues to supply chain link (currently done minimally)[/unordered_list]

Other teams such as compliance and finance cam also tap into these data streams for better results, but as with most maturity models, this takes time. Progress requires interest on behalf of non-service groups to tap into this data; the ability to easily acquire and analyse data; and a set of processes to use this data to enact business change. These changes aren’t usually part of the short-term goals provided to these teams. However, as organisations begin to take an integrated look at customer journeys and customer success, there will be better alignment of functional activities with broader organisation and customer objectives.[quote float="left"]Delivering value is extremely important, but so is selling the sizzle...[/quote]Outside the Enterprise
In increasing the reach of IoT investments, organisations still run into a large group of customers who are unwilling to connect. Security and regulatory concerns lend to this lack of commitment from customers but it also comes down to a fear of connectivity and the lack of understanding in the true value.

Most of the financial value discussed with remote monitoring accrues to the servicing organisation. While there are uptime and efficiency benefits for the end customer, these customers either have to pay more for it, or are unaware of the benefit provided. In some instances, customers believe they are receiving less value, as the service teams are less visible. Therefore, delivering value is extremely important, but so is selling the sizzle.

To this end, it is important to consistently provide customers with visibility into:[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• IoT infrastructure investments made to support their businesses
• Reporting tied to issue, failure and cost avoidance
• Data on asset usage and performance
• Strategies to maximize customer outcomes[/unordered_list]

More than 60% of those in TSC’s research with IoT deployments in place already provide operating and performance information to customers. Traditionally this data has been in the form of emailed reports featuring historical performance. Now, there is a greater emphasis on providing diagnostic information and transaction logs in a more real-time manner. In addition, organisations are also providing their customers with access to benchmarking data tied to the performance of other like assets or other like customers.

With the aid of this information, customers see additional value in connecting via IoT, on top of the improved service delivered by their servicing partner. It also opens up the door for co-innovation opportunities where the customer and the servicing organisation can create new relationship and value opportunities that benefit both. It is also worth noting that these data reports generate additional revenue. Fifty-five percent (55%) of TSC’s community with IoT deployments in place indicate that their customers currently pay for reporting and additional data that is provided by the servicing organisation.

As service organisations look to transition to become solution partners, they can greatly improve their positioning with customers with the aid of IoT-enabled performance data. However, there has to be a greater emphasis on collaboration and innovation around the use of IoT data to truly drive sustained enterprise and customer value.

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In the continual evolution of field service, mobile will continue to be the most impactful technology for enterprise field service in the near future, more so than the Internet of Things, writes Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer for The Service Council

Field service, as a discipline, is changing. The rate of change isn’t as dramatic as the typical prognostications of technology-focused publications and outlets. Yes, IoT is having and will have a huge impact. So will wearable technology. But remember, this is an industry that isn’t completely mobile. Pen, paper, and the clipboard, are still considered useful tools. Technology is increasing the rate of change in field service, but the overall industry is one that is still quite cautious.

In early 2015, nearly 200 organisations participating in a field service study conducted by The Service Council highlighted the following as their top focus areas for 2015:

• Process control, review, and management
• Field service execution
•  Talent management
• IT infrastructure for field service

These areas are similar to some of the priorities outline by survey participants in 2014. What is different about 2015 is the increased focus by organisations to lay a strategic foundation for their field service businesses to support sustained business growth. It's not just about cutting field service visits, but more about maximising the value of necessary field service visits. With this in mind, we see a continued evolution of field service around these three major areas:[quote float="right"]It's not just about cutting field service visits, but more about maximising the value of necessary field service visits

[ordered_list style="decimal"]

 

1. Service Model Integration:
   Reactive field service isn’t dead. Organisations were more likely to see an increase in reactive field service visits in 2014 than they were a decrease in these visits. In 2014, 41% of organisations polled saw an increase in reactive field visits over the course compared to only 28% of organisations that saw a decrease. While organisations are looking to eliminate unnecessary reactive field service visits with the aid of connected or self-service business models, their service portfolios are still comprised of a heavy dose of reactive field service visits.  The primary goal with reactive visits is to increase efficiency so that the first reactive visit is the last reactive visit. However, organisations are also looking to enhance value delivered per service visit wherein an onsite visit is seen as an opportunity to share knowledge with, provide advice to, and improve relationships with the customer. Eventually the hope is that this leads to better trust, increased retention, and continued customer spending. In looking at the overall service continuum, the objective is to eliminate effort and inconvenience in dispatch-less service models but to maximise value when a dispatch is required. This requires a focused integration of the service delivery models around the end outcome felt by the customer.
2. Talent:
   While most organisations we poll are able to deal with their field service workloads with current resource levels, most are looking for new field service talent and are having a hard time a) finding this talent, and b) getting the talent trained and out of the door. Our research shows that 46% of organisations had unfilled positions for field service technicians at the end of 2014. In searching for new agents, organisations are prioritising customer management and communication skills so that these agents aren’t only good at fixing things, but are also able to effectively communicate with customers. Organisations are also looking to hire agents who are familiar with the use of mobile devices and applications adopted by the organisation. We’re also seeing a significant change in training philosophies when it comes to field service. The overarching objective is to get new hires out in the field as soon as possible and so organisations are prioritising online training, collaboration, and knowledge platforms, to provide field agents with an always-on and always updated mode of instruction while on the move.
3. Mobile: Mobile will continue to be the most impactful technology for enterprise field service in the near future, more so than the Internet of Things. The reason for this is that we are just scratching the surface of what mobile can do for field service, especially when it comes to workforce empowerment.[quote float="left"]We are just scratching the surface of what mobile can do for field service, especially when it comes to workforce empowerment

    

   While most organisations we poll have provided their agents with some form of mobile device, they have yet to fully empower their field agents with the capabilities of mobile technology. We’re still in the early stages of mobile maturity for field service wherein most investments have been made primarily to replace ineffective paper-based processes. However, mobility presents the opportunity to provide richer information to field agents to allow them to effectively resolve customer issues. It also offers field agents the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with broader groups across the organisation with the aim of improving productivity and enhancing customer satisfaction. Finally, mobility also allows organisations to create an army of data gatherers. This data can be used to monitor service demand, improve customer relationships, and identify opportunities for service business growth. In our 2015 service big data research project, 40% of organisations identified mobile point-of-service solutions as the avenue of data collection that they most wanted to tap into.

Field service is changing. The speed of change is picking up with the aid of mobile technology. Yet field service is still a human discipline, and human empowerment and engagement is key to supporting field service growth.

 

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