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Customer Expectations 4.0

Headlines of Industry 4.0, advanced services and exceeding customer expectations dominate the pages of industry press and conference presentations alike. It is, therefore, perhaps inevitable that the coming together of these key industry drivers is now becoming a central pillar of the future of our sector.

Just what exactly does service look and feel like today, and perhaps, more importantly, how is it delivered?

Customer Experience 4.0 (CEx 4.0) is the logical evolution of how we have connected with our customers historically. For the purposes of this paper, let’s look at how comunicating appointment times with customers has evolved.

For example, CEx1.0 would have been a knock on the door from the engineer himself as he arrives (i.e. no communication at all). Version 2.0 would be a direct mail notification of when the engineer would be turning up. In Version 3.0, things become more recognisable with the introduction of phone, SMS and email being used to improve communication with the customer further.

Indeed, many field service companies have still yet to fully embrace CEx Version

3.0 even today; such is the current poor state of last-mile communications within field service. However, such methods of communication are already becoming outdated as we move firmly into the fourth iteration of customer expectations of last-mile customer communications – real-time mobile experiences.

The fact is that Uber blew the ceiling of what last-mile interaction should be. Their disruptive influence has had a massive ripple effect across industry verticals far, far away from mere private transportation – including field service.

The 2020 consumers’ view

In many ways, the third decade of the twenty-first century is shaping up to be the age of the consumer – and industries are already adapting to that shift today. 

As we see an industry-wide move towards service-centric revenue strategies, field service companies are now moving beyond the traditional view of service as a an afterthought to support the sales of products. In the past things were expensive and people were cheap. That is a dichotomy that has been flipped almost entirely 180 degrees now.

This has led to a race for service providers to become more than just a supplier of products.

Companies now, whether they operate in a business to consumer or business to business environment, are in a race to become providers of outcomes - that powerful and heady mix of service and product that can embed them deep within their customers’ own needs. 

At the same time, customer expectations today are moving beyond those established in previous eras of simply suppliers and consumers into something far more akin to a longer-term partnership, largely as a result of this shift in how we view the consumer-vendor relationship. As such companies today find themselves in a race to position themselves firmly into what will inevitably become a market place more competitive than ever.

"Customer expectations today are moving beyond those established in previous eras of simply suppliers and consumers into something far more akin to a longer-term partnership..."

Moreover, as with any race, there will always be those that win and those that lose. Those who pull ahead and those who drop off the pace and some who may eventually fall so far behind they have no chance of recovery.

Right now though, the race is far from lost, even if you’re only just arriving at the starting line. Indeed, there exists something of a paradox in this new service paradigm. For whilst advanced service strategies offer an opportunity to become deeply embedded into your customers’ way of life or workflows, today’s customers are highly fine-tuned to the negative impact of poor service.

Service needs to feel personal and tailored if we are to come close to meeting the service expectations of today’s consumer. Welcome to the experience economy. It is the economy of service today, and it is one whose importance is growing in tandem with the move towards outcome-based service solutions. Undoubtedly these are challenging times when it comes to service delivery. The

bar of expectations is seemingly inching higher every time we look away, while new hurdles to overcome are continually appearing.

Modern life is connected and impatient

It seems the challenge of providing excellent customer service has never been greater. Expectations for ‘everything now’ has become the standard – driven in large by the disruptive influence of companies like Amazon, Uber and JustEat.

Simply put, we must change our perspective of service entirely if we are to compete on such terms.

We can no longer benchmark our service standards against our peers within the same industry vertical. We are now competing with the most exceptional service experience our customers have ever had, be it in their personal or working lives. In real terms, this means the opportunity to innovate and delight customers is becoming increasingly harder as expectations continue to rise, as does our view of what ‘exceptional’ service is.

Another facet of this customer-centric new world order we find ourselves operating in is how organisations need to be wary at all times that ‘Little Brother’s watching you.’

The power of social media is vast, as we have seen within the political sphere in recent times. Elections have been won and lost by harnessing or failing to appreciate, the size and power of the communication platforms social media provide.

"68% of the world’s population will live in urban conurbations by 2050 according to UN predictions..."

For a service business, the smallest issues handled poorly in the realm of social media can be magnified quickly to an audience of millions, if not more. This instant opportunity for customers to voice their opinion can be an excellent tool for understanding your brands positioning if used correctly. However, the flip side is that social media is a two-way street. This incredibly powerful tool, can often easily be wielded clumsily by disgruntled customers in the full glare of the public. It takes a skilled and responsive approach to nullify the danger to your brand such service-related complaints could cause. Hand the keys to your social media account to the intern at your peril.

Also we must add into the mix the fact that we as a society are becoming ever more condensed and urbanised. This heightens the challenge of delivering effective and timely service within increasingly congested inner-city areas.

Indeed, 68% of the world’s population will live in urban conurbations by 2050 according to UN predictions.

Such congestion is, of course, having a significant impact on the last mileof service delivery, which is often where the customer-service provider relationship is at its most fragile. There is one term which neatly sums up a lot of the challenges listed above, which was coined by the team at Localz. That term is the Individual Economy or the ‘IConomy’ for short.

The IConomy is perhaps best defined as an economy in which the pressure of consumers - who have elevated expectations of service around what they want, where they want it and when, is directly placed at the feet of the providers trying to meet those expectations. In the IConomy, consumers demand visibility of their services, expecting real-time notifications and a frictionless punctual delivery of service.

To reiterate, these are undoubtedly challenging times for field service companies. Yet increasingly, service is becoming a core revenue driver - both within individual businesses and the broader economy.

The increase in complexity of field service, plus its growing importance within business strategy, would suggest that it is not only crucial for field service companies to get to grips with how they can overcome these challenges, it is now imperative.

Want to know more? The full white paper relating to this series is available as premium content to fieldservicenews.com subscribers...

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, Localz, who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.