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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Astea
Title: What is the next phase of service innovation

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Synopsis:

Innovation causes company evolution and every year service is becoming more important to companies not only as a source of revenue but also as a key driver of customer loyalty...

It is no longer enough to merely deliver quality service in a timely manner. Customer demands and competitive pressures are driving service companies toward service innovation – developing new service offerings and service delivery mechanisms that their customers will find valuable.

To remain competitive, service organisations need to make investments in developing and designing new service products, tapping into new markets, and finding new ways to deliver service – making innovation part of the culture, from the executive suite to the field technicians.

This White Paper published by Astea takes a look at best practices for companies looking to innovate their service and it covers:

• Where the best opportunities for service innovation exist
• How to institutionalise innovation with 'service innovation teams'
• What metrics to use to measure the ROI of innovation activities

Overview:

As service has grown in importance as a source of revenue and a key driver of customer loyalty, customer expectations of service delivery have increased. It is no longer enough to merely deliver quality service in a timely manner. Service organisations have to do more than simply keep costs low and maintain market share.

Customer demands and competitive pressures are driving service companies toward service innovation – developing new service offerings and service delivery mechanisms that their customers will find valuable.

This type of service innovation has become an increasingly vital component in a company’s competitive strategy. Executives recognise that focusing on cost control is not in line with long-term value creation. To grow, organisations need to reinvent customer relationships and embrace new technologies and business models.

Where is Service Innovation Needed?

In March 2016, The Service Council (TSC) conducted a survey on service innovation to gauge respondents’ perceptions of their own organisations.

When asked how innovative their entire organization was, the majority of respondents said their company was somewhat innovative (58%), while roughly one-third (31%) said their company was innovative. Asked specifically about their service organization, the responses were very close, with 23% responding “innovative,” 56% “somewhat innovative.” A slightly larger group said the service organization was not innovative (11% for service compared to 3% for the entire company).

Service companies can innovate on a number of levels: the service delivery process, customer management and communication, service design, new product/ service development, the client interface, and in their technological choices.

Institutionalise Innovation

According to The Service Council survey, just 31% of respondents have a service innovation team in place. For service organisations to thrive in a marketplace that puts greater value on innovation, that has to change.

Service organizations have to look at innovation on a strategic level, and at all the ways that the service team can innovate – from developing new services and process-oriented changes to focusing on external service delivery processes and finding more opportunities to provide service.

These companies need to develop a service innovation team focused on fostering such projects. The team should include input from supervisors and managers, frontline employees/technicians, VP-level service leaders, regional leaders, and C-level executives.

Measure Your Success

Those innovation investments can’t be made blindly, however. Establishing whether a given innovation provides a return on investment (ROI) requires metrics around those innovation activities and their results. In The Service Council survey, just 20% of respondents said they already had innovation metrics in place.

Measuring innovation is a combination of art and science, which makes those metrics difficult to develop. You have to find the right things to measure; every company has its own organizational culture, so every company must fine-tune what it measures to reinforce the goals, values, and norms that it finds critical for inspiring innovation and best practices.

Technology Enables Innovation

One key enabler of both new service products and new service delivery mechanisms has been technology. Digital technologies have driven radical change and disruption in the service sector.

These include customer self-service portals and mobile apps, mobile field service automation and work order management solutions, GPS-enabled fleet tracking/management systems, and automated dispatch and scheduling solutions.

Getting Started

Service organisations that want to improve these efforts should institutionalise innovation by establishing dedicated innovation teams and resources and develop metrics to measure the effect of innovation. Frontline employees should be involved, and customer needs and insights should be analysed to develop an innovation road map.

• Begin with customer insights
• Understand the funding mechanism
• Determine who will develop and deliver new innovative service products and models
• Track innovation activity
• Institutionalize innovation

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Brand new infographic from Astea shows how field service organisations can work towards innovating their service delivery mechanisms...

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Astea International Ltd
Title: Standing alone or part of a bigger picture?

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Synopsis:

First-call resolution or first-time fix rates have become a critical key performance indicator (KPI) for field service organisations interested in gaining a competitive advantage.

While historically automation efforts in field service have focused on improving efficiency and productivity in an effort to reduce costs or complete more work orders each day, they have not necessarily had a direct impact on customer satisfaction.

This white paper looks at the importance of first-time fix rates when it comes to customer satisfaction and explores means in which you can improve your own first time fix rates.

Overview:

Customers don’t necessarily measure field service effectiveness in terms of efficiency. Yes, they want a technician to arrive as quickly as possible, but they also want their problem solved quickly and, preferably, in a single visit.

If a repair can’t be made because of a missing part or lack of expertise on the part of the technician, customers experience costly downtime as well as frustration.

That’s why first-time fix rates should be a top priority for companies interested in improved customer retention.

There is significant room for improvement in many organizations. According to data from The Service Council, the average first-time fix rate for service companies is just 74%, while failure to resolve an issue on the first visit was a top customer complaint according to 34% of respondents.

In an Aberdeen Group survey, first-time fix rate was cited as a critical service metric by 38% of respondents, just below service profitability (41%) and customer satisfaction (68%). (Source: “Evolution of the Field Service Business: Optimizing the Field Service Chain,” Aberdeen Group).

First-call resolution plays a critical role in improving customer service and profitability. However, improving first-call resolution rates is not a simple proposition. There are a number of different factors that play a role, including parts availability and logistics issues, technician training, vehicle management, optimised scheduling, diagnostic tools, and dynamic dispatching capabilities. Without the right systems in place and without proper process design, it can be difficult or even impossible to improve performance.

Tackling any one of these elements individually won’t solve the problem. Service organisations have to take a systemic and holistic approach that will enable them to get the right technician to the customer site, equipped with all of the necessary parts and technical know-how in a timely fashion. This is crucial to ensure successful customer interactions.

This white paper looks at:

• The high cost of return visits
• A fix for first time fix rates
• Integrated Service Management
• Preventative measures
• Continuous improvement

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Improving first-call/visit resolution rates can be challenging and frustrating for field service organisations, because there are so many factors and variables that prevent technicians from completing a repair on the first visit writes Astea's Debbie Geiger...

 

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Find out more about this subject in Astea's latest white paper here

 

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The customer may not provide enough information to the call center representative, or that information may not be accurately relayed to the dispatcher or tech; the technician may need assistance with the repair; the parts might not be available, or the tools may not be on-site; the dispatcher may not allot enough time for the repair in the schedule.

There are ways to improve first-call resolution rates, but they require a shift in strategy and an investment in work order, dispatch, and scheduling automation solutions.

We recently held a webinar in conjunction with RTM Consulting. During this webinar we presented some operational and technology strategies for improving first-time fix rates in our webinar “First Call/Visit Resolution: Getting it Fixed the First Time.”

Aberdeen Group found in a survey of service organisations that first-time fix rates were considered a top key performance indicator (KPI) by 38 percent of respondents. That’s because failing to fix an issue on the first visit can be detrimental to customer satisfaction and retention.

 

Yet, according to The Service Council (TSC), average first-time fix rates are just 74 percent; that means more than a quarter of all calls require multiple visits.

Those additional visits come at considerable cost. Aberdeen found that service calls that aren’t resolved in a single visit require an average of 1.5 additional visits to complete. Even for small organisations, that can result in thousands of dollars in additional costs per day. And that doesn’t even include the cost of lost business from those disappointed customers, who are more likely to look elsewhere for their service needs.

The problem, according to Randy Mysliviec, president and CEO of RTM Consulting, is that many service organisations take a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to solving the problem, addressing the causes of first-time fix failures in a disorganised fashion.

 

The key to addressing the problem is to take a more disciplined, holistic approach, and RTM has outlined three critical planning components for addressing first-time fix rates:

Prevention:

Improved training of call centre staff and technicians, increase use of remote diagnostics and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and improved preventive or predictive maintenance approaches can reduce the number of equipment failures that need fixed in the first place.

Triage:

Carefully outline incident handling, support tiers, parts management, and other processes that affect the likelihood of having the right technician and the right part at the customer site.

Continuous Improvement:

Institute knowledge management, variability analysis, root cause analysis, and process improvement strategies so you measure, track, and log information that will help make your service organization a little smarter after every incident.

Clearly outline what you want your first-call resolution processes to look like, and implement the technology needed to manage and support delivery of those services. Create a gap analysis so you know how you are performing now, and how you’d like to be performing in the future.

To succeed, you must have a collaborative field service management infrastructure in place that provides a seamless flow of information from the call centre to the dispatcher and out to the technician.

 

Through collaboration and improved data visibility, your team can find better solutions for each customer problem, and do so more efficiently and likely at a lower cost.

Remote monitoring of assets helps capture service diagnostic information that can be provided to field technicians in advance. Giving call centre staff more guidance through question trees and full access to customer history data can help resolve more calls over the phone (without costly truck rolls), and provide better information to technicians when they do have to go on-site.

 

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Find out more about this subject in Astea's latest white paper here

 

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Improving first-call/visit resolution rates can be challenging and frustrating for field service organisations, because there are so many factors and variables that prevent technicians from completing a repair on the first visit.

This great infographic from Astea highlights the importance of getting them right... 

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Want to know more? Download the white paper that accompanies this infographic here

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Contact information:

Key Contact: John Hunt
Phone:+44 (0) 1628 915 100
Web: www.astea.com
Email: info@astea.com

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Services Provided by Astea:

 

• Customer management
• Depot repair
• Service management
• Asset management
• Scheduling optimisation
• Contract & warranty management
• Forward & reverse logistics management
• Mobile workforce management

 

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About Astea:

Astea International is a global provider of end-to-end service management software solutions that offer all the cornerstones of service lifecycle management, including; customer management, depot repair, service management, asset management, warranty management, forward and reverse logistics management and mobile workforce management and optimisation.

Astea’s solutions link processes, people, parts, and data to empower companies and provide the agility they need to achieve sustainable value in less time, and successfully compete in a global economy.

Since 1979, Astea has been helping more than 600 companies drive even higher levels of customer satisfaction with faster response times and proactive communication, creating a seamless, consistent and highly personalized experience at every customer relationship touch point.

 

Astea has licensed applications to companies, around the world, in a wide range of sectors including Medical Device & Diagnostics; IT/High Tech Equipment; Imaging/Copiers/Office Equipment; Industrial Equipment; Scientific & Technical Instruments; HVAC; Process Controls & Instrumentation; Construction; Point of Sale Equipment; Telecommunications; Food Service Equipment; Fire & Security; Professional/IT Services; Property/Facilities Management Services; and Gaming/Leisure Equipment.

Our market-proven solutions enable companies to:

• Streamline and automate business processes
• Reduce the contract-to-cash cycle
• Identify incremental sales opportunities and improve revenue recovery
• Eliminate non-value added workflows
• Enhance resource utilisation and reduce downtime
• Coordinate efforts of sales, marketing and service organisations
• Improve compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs), contracts and warranties
• Synchronize every customer touch point for increased customer satisfactio

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Latest Video from Astea 

Watch the On-Demand Webinar now to learn about:

• The current state of field technician labor force
• Profile of real-life millennial technicians
• How to improve your technician recruiting, hiring, training and development
• Explore contingent and third-party workforces

 

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Resources from Astea

Infographic: 6 Biggest Field Service Trends for 2018

According to TSIA’s State of Field Services, there are 6 major trends you must understand if you want to succeed in 2018 and beyond.

Download the infographic to learn how to embrace all 6 field service trends including:

• How to evolve from response-time contracts to resolution-time service contracts
• What innovative service offering can help your clients get higher ROI on equipment
• How “digital twins” help hardware manufacturers offer ‘Product-as-a-Service’ models
• How to get paid a fair price for the value you create by adding capabilities to meet new customer demands

 

 

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Aberdeen Report: A Maturing Mobile Field Service Landscape

As mobile field service evolves beyond location tracking, here’s what needs to be in your mobile strategy if you don’t want to fall behind.

Download the Aberdeen report to learn:

• The top challenges “Mature” mobile field service organizations are facing
• Best practices for connecting offline systems to always-on environments
• Key considerations for upgrading your mobile infrastructure
• How to improve knowledge management and track service performance in real-time

 

 

 

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