ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘clicksoftware’ CATEGORY

Click’s Scheduling Optimization Module was Just a Teaser! Now, Salesforce has Gone All In, and Click’s Found a Home. Bill Pollock, gives an analyst’s take on the acquisition...

Aligning capacity planning with dynamic work order scheduling is the key to planning for tomorrow not just getting through today unscathed argues Click’s Paul Whitelam. Kris Oldland reports...

There has been much talk in field service circles, but particularly in the manufacturing space, with regards to the importance of moving away from the traditional break-fix approach to field service delivery. In the past, the relationship between the service provider and customer has always been one whose nature has been primarily transactional.

An asset breaks, the customer calls to request a repair, and the service provider delivers that service within a previously agreed SLAs or at a designated cost if the asset lies out of warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it has been around in one way or another since service delivery itself, with the odd refinement here or there.

So why, all of a sudden, does it seem that field service companies of all stripes and sizes are prepared to walk away from the ‘old ways’ to embrace the new? The truth is what we’ve done in the past has been good enough, it doesn’t mean it is the best we can be. Moreover, as technology drives both customer expectations and service provider capabilities forwards simultaneously, the need for better’ has in many senses been thrust upon us from all angles.

It is of little surprise then that we are seeing field service companies begin to adopt a new approach which positions them more firmly within a business ecosystem built of partnerships between service providers and customers. Talk of servitization and outcome-based service delivery has moved from niche concept to mainstream discussion in a relatively short time, and an understanding of advanced services has, well, advanced.

However, this shift in thinking is also being seen in the way some field service management (FSM) solution providers are approaching how they design their offerings. More and more we see talk revert to technology stacks which harness best of breed solutions versus the platform. For a long time, it seemed that the platform was going to be the future of the FSM.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management..."

However, as integration becomes almost effortless in the age of the API, we see once again a shift in the direction of best-of-breed solutions. Take, for example, ClickSoftware, a company who have for a long time been regarded as a leading specialist amongst scheduling providers, who remain a best-in-class specialist, having previously appearing to flirt with the idea of a platform approach, for a short time at least.

“If you take the high-level strategic view, you can be a platform, or you can be a specialist in field service management,” explains Paul Whitelam, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, when I caught up with him earlier this year at the Field Service USA conference in Palm Springs, California.

“There are some arguments about where are the boundaries on field service management because that boundary’s changing a little bit. It’s certainly true that if you listen to service managers, they’ll say that an integral part of field service management is work holder management. Technically it’s not, it is an integral part of work order management.

“However, it’s perfectly acceptable for an organisation to have a best of breed work order management or a work order management system within their CRM and then also have field service management as an adjunct.

“As a best-of-breed field service management player, we can differentiate on how strategic we are, and we can expand our addressable market vertically and horizontally - vertically both in terms of industries and then geographically.

“When I say we differentiate on the strategic nature of field service management, what I mean by that is that a lot of the implementations you’ll see around, are centred on the day of service. For example ‘I’ve got a task, I need to allocate it to someone, and I can put various degrees of automation around it.’ Our approach incorporates this, but also questions what you did six months ago or a year ago.

"Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge..."

“What moves did you make to make sure that you’ve got the right skills, you’ve got people who have trained appropriately with the appropriate parts in the proper geographies who speak the right languages to be able to support your broader business strategies?” he adds.

This approach is certainly in keeping with the current zeitgeist becoming prevalent within our sector as touched on above, where field service is taking a much more central role within the long-term planning of many organisations.

“We’re looking at a field service management organisation that is about more than just delivering transactionally on the day of service. It’s more about making sure that, that team is set up for success and they’ve got the right skills, they’re the correct size.” Whitelam explains. 

It is interesting to hear Whitelam talk about the longer-term strategic planning of field service organisations both on the industry vertical and geographical focus. Click has undoubtedly made some significant gains in specific industry sectors such as telcos and more recently, the insurance sector. However, when it comes to increasing geographical coverage, this is often at the core of the challenge for expanding field service operations for companies in all industries.

Capacity planning has become a perennial challenge, but it has been revolutionised since the advent of cloud computing which enabled dynamic scheduling engines like Click to leverage the higher computational power of the Cloud to make modelling of potential capacity requirements into new regions a far more straightforward task than it previously once was.

“Capacity planning is a big area where we’ve invested in the product side of things,” comments Whitelam. “The advantages for linking capacity planning to work order scheduling is that if you’ve got your day of service review on how you’re doing, having that hooked in real-time with capacity management is becoming essential. It makes an excellent argument for having a tightly coupled planning and execution engine.” 

With strategy in field service evolving, it is undoubtedly prudent to consider how you can leverage the tools you have, or what tools you might need to invest in, to support you, not just with the ongoing day of service operations, but in your strategic growth in the mid and long-term future.

SFG^SM's Bill Pollock gives an analyst response to Salesforce's $1/35bn purchase of Click Software.

From a general market standpoint, the acquisition bodes well for both companies, as each has built a strong market, product and management reputation over the years in its own domain; and each is, arguably, the leader in its respective marketspace.
This acquisition should firmly entrench Salesforce as one of the acknowledged/perceived leaders in FSM, based on an extrapolation from SFG℠’s 2014/2015 FSM Tracking Survey, as follows:
In 2014/15, prior to the acquisition, Salesforce had already been recognized as a potential FSM solution provider by a majority of the field services marketplace (i.e., 56% FSM application familiarity among the respondents in SFG℠’s 2014/2015 Field Service Management Benchmark Tracking Survey*) – despite the fact that it did not actually offer an FSM solution at that time. ClickSoftware was cited third (i.e., behind SAP at 50%) at 35% FSM application familiarity. The combination of the two companies should place its familiarity quotient to the top of the pack.We all knew it was coming – several years ago – but, we all thought it would be by SAP!

This is also good news for Salesforce Field Services Organization (FSO) customers that have historically been relying on the company’s platform to support their Sales and Marketing Management operations, in that, with the strengthening of the Field Service Lightning offering, they will now be afforded with much greater FSM functionality from a single solution that is specifically designed for use in running an entire services business –and not merely their field service operations.

Now, Salesforce can use the Microsoft argument (i.e., “You already use Microsoft Dynamics for CRM; it’s easy to use, and you’ve been using it for years! Why not also use Microsoft Field Service?”). (Just replace “Microsoft Dynamics for CRM” with “Salesforce Sales & Marketing Management”, and “Microsoft Field Service” with “Salesforce Field Service Lightning”!); Also, the fact that Salesforce’s FSM solution is built on a foundation of the ClickSoftware’s scheduling optimization platform – and soon, will be supported directly by former ClickSoftware professional services experts – is an added plus.

"Will the Salesforce acquisition prompt (or tempt) the big Internet/IoT guns to acquire their own Field Service Management (FSM) capabilities?"...

Also, the perennially open question of “What’s going on with ClickSoftware; Will it stay private? Will it be acquired by SAP? Will it go public again?” will officially end! This has been somewhat off-putting for many of the company’s potential customers in the past. However, as of the close of the deal, we will all know exactly what’s happened to ClickSoftware! However, a new question arises: “Will the same thing happen to ClickSoftware that happened to TOA Technologies?” Many industry analysts (and customers) believe that since TOA’s acquisition by Oracle, it has never been the same – and not in a good way!

Looking further down the road, will the Salesforce acquisition prompt (or tempt) the big Internet/IoT guns to acquire their own Field Service Management (FSM) capabilities? What are the tech leaders like Amazon, Apple or Google likely to do? To what extent? And, if so, when?

While other large Software/IoT companies, many with fairly deep pockets, have either tried to buy their way into FSM (e.g., Microsoft), grow an FSM capability organically (e.g., Salesforce), or some combination of the two (e.g., Salesforce, once again), not all have had either the resolve – or inclination – to strive to dominate the FSM market. However, with respect to Salesforce, the combination of a corporate mentality that looks to dominate in each of the markets they serve, with a documented history of key players in the FSM community having already been using (i.e., or mis-using) their CRM platform to assist in running their respective field services organizations, the prospects for Salesforce actually becoming a dominant (more dominant?) leader in the FSM marketplace may be a somewhat safer bet.

This is an excerpt from Bill Pollock's full report on the deal which you can find here.

Paul Whitelam, ClickSoftware takes a deep dive into the healthcare sector, putting forward the case that it is high time healthcare providers embrace schedule optimisation to help cost-effectively improve operations and ensure patient care does not suffer. 

2018 saw continued merger and acquisition activity in the home healthcare and related markets as firms moved to build out their services footprint, offerings and build economies of scale.

And 2019 appears to be trending in the same direction. However, it is quite possible that many providers that have a mobile team delivering care in the field fail to understand the complexity that comes with size and multiple service offerings, especially as it relates to scheduling ever growing teams in the field.

Many organizations do not understand that as the number of appointments increase, the scheduling complexity does not increase linearly. In fact, it is not even close! The reason complexity does not increase in a linear manner is due to the fact that each scheduling decision has a factorial growth. For example, here are the number of scheduling possibilities for various jobs:

• There are 6 possible schedules for 3 jobs and 3 nurses; 
• There are 720 possible schedules for 6 jobs and 6 nurses;
• There are 3,682,800 possible schedules for 10 jobs and 10 nurses. 

This is why it is important that healthcare providers utilize scheduling software that can handle such complexities. Scheduling optimization technology, found in Field Service Management (FSM) software, enables organizations to create detailed schedules that can handle the complex scenarios detailed above.

Optimizing the schedule for an organization with hundreds to thousands of nurses and care providers is far beyond the capability of simplistic scheduling products (not to mention manual approaches). The complexity is due to the number of events that must be taken into account when developing a schedule such as travel distance, travel time, overtime costs, labor costs, employee availability and skills, patient or member availability and preferences, contractor availability, regulations and a myriad of other inputs. With FSM schedule optimization, an organization can create an optimal schedule that meets unique business rules that can:

• Minimize associated costs related to care delivery such as travel time, overtime and missed appointments;
• Meet patient and regulatory requirements by assigning only the person with the correct skill set for the visit.

An emerging trend in the home healthcare space is providers offering new services that deliver specialized, hospital-level care. For example, one program provides a 7 day a week offering that promises a 2-hour response to a patient call. While the benefits to the patient are great, the potential strain on the organization that has to schedule these appointments could prove to be difficult.

"As healthcare organizations scale, they need to invest in technologies like FSM software..."

The organization will need to estimate capacity, understand who can make the appointment (taking into account travel time and other business objectives) and who has the correct skill set to deliver care. These variables highlight the need for schedule optimization (and capacity planning) to calculate all of these variables to help deliver cost effective and safe care while delivering on their promise.

Schedule optimization provides real, tangible business results for organizations. The approach organizations take to optimize scheduling and appointment booking often depends on unique business policy and goals. Some healthcare organizations might prioritize on time arrivals or decreasing overtime, while others might prioritize a reduction in travel time. With schedule optimization software, organizations can define business goals and quality metrics, then tune the scheduling policy to comply with these variables. For example, let’s look at an organization that prioritizes on-time arrivals as a key business KPI. You have two customers who live on opposite ends of town and there’s only one nurse available in the area that is certified to deliver care. How can this organization meet the patient and regulatory requirements while maintaining business policy?

If that nurse runs into unexpected traffic, or the previous appointment runs over, he might arrive late to the next visit. With schedule optimization, the scheduler can recognize the possible conflict and assign the appointments with enough buffer to ensure an on-time arrival, meeting that business objective and satisfying a patient need.

FSM software provides advanced schedule optimization that enable a healthcare provider to schedule and manage hundreds to thousands of patient appointments. Not only does this help control costs with better routing and a reduction in overtime, it also helps to deliver a better experience for both the patient and the employee. For example, extended travel times can increase turnover among caregivers. In fact, a study that found that for every 15-mile increment that an employee must travel to a client, that provider becomes two times more likely to leave the organization. In an industry that is struggling to find and keep talent, improving travel time can be a great employee retention tool.

As healthcare organizations scale, they need to invest in technologies like FSM software that will help enable this growth in order to cost effectively improve operations and, most importantly, ensure that patient care does not suffer.

Paul Whitelam is VP Product Marketing at ClickSoftware.

With 2020 on the horizon, it’s the perfect time to think about new ways to improve your field service business. Paul Whitelam, ClickSoftware outlines nine key areas that you need to be targeting to ensure your service delivery remains competitive as we move into the third decade of the twenty-first century...

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about new trends and visions for the future, and it’s probably a little overwhelming. An easy way to get started is by throwing away some of the outdated practices you’ve been following. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of field service practices you might want to leave behind in 2019.

Manual scheduling

Field service scheduling requires making several quick and calculated decisions. You need to consider everything from travel time and routing, technicians’ schedules and skill sets, equipment tracking, and SLA compliance. It’s much easier to rely on an automated scheduling solution to make optimized decisions for you, so you can focus on the bigger stuff—like your customers’ satisfaction.

Using separate solutions

The only way to gain true visibility into field service schedules is to manage everything in a single solution. This includes schedules, capacity planning, long- and short-cycle work, crew allocations, and more. Limiting field service management to a single solution also gives you the flexibility to manage your workforce more efficiently and ensure that you’re equipped to handle urgent work.

Not prepping technicians for customer service

Your field resources are often the only face-to-face contact your customers have with your company. This means it’s crucial they are equipped to give the best customer service possible. Start thinking of your technicians as your brand ambassadors, and ensure they have the soft skills to make a great impression on your customers.

Lack of visibility into technician location

With Uber you can hail a ride and know exactly where your driver is and when they will arrive. And Amazon provides updates when your package is shipped and as soon as it’s delivered. Your customers know this level of visibility is possible, and they expect it in their service too. Allow customers to track their technician’s location and send them reminders and updates about the status of their service. On top of giving your customers’ peace of mind, this also helps you avoid no shows and last minute cancellations.

Long Appointment Windows & Exact Time Slots

According to our Field Service Report, more than 60% of consumers across all countries said a long wait time between their service appointment being booked and carried out led to a bad customer service experience. It’s no surprise because today’s customers expect service fast, and definitely, don’t want to be waiting around all day to get it. Use optimized scheduling and appointment booking to ensure shorter, two-hour service windows for your customers.

Leaving the customer site before booking a follow-up appointment

Sometimes a repair is more complex than originally thought or a technician doesn’t have the right part to complete a job. When a follow-up appointment is needed, don’t leave the customer site until it is booked. Instead of simply ordering a part and asking the customer to call and schedule when they receive it, do it for them. The customer will feel more at ease knowing that even though the problem wasn’t fixed today, it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Not measuring customer effort score

When it comes to measuring customer experience, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores are usually the go to. But in today’s on-demand world, convenience and ease are becoming more and more important to customers. Many organizations have started measuring customer experience by the amount of effort customers are putting into getting an issue resolved. Add this to your list of KPIs so you can ensure future customer engagements are simple and seamless.

Not using live traffic updates

As customer expectations continue to rise, the importance of route optimization and getting resources from place to place is ever increasing. Many organizations are taking advantage of predictive travel and applications like Google Maps to accurately estimate travel times and plan routes ahead of the service day. However, it’s also important to consider real-time, live traffic updates on the day of service to account for unforeseen traffic and roadblocks.

Leaving out change management

When your service team has been doing things a certain way for several years, bringing in a new solution can be overwhelming. Even if the previous solution was inefficient or completely manual and paper-based, change can be scary. When implementing a new field service management solution, it’s important to get everyone on board and comfortable with the new solution—so don’t skip out on change management. Emphasize the benefits of FSM—such as efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction—and make sure everyone is properly trained on using the solution.

While no one can know exactly what the field service management landscape will look like in 2020, it’s safe to expect increasing customer expectations and new technologies. Start preparing your organization for what’s next today.

 

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In the early part of this century we have seen huge technological developments impact field service management and increasingly technology and service delivery have become entwined - but investing in the wrong technology can be an expensive mistake, Paul Whitelam, VP Product Marketing, ClickSoftware outlines how we can ensure we avoid such pitfalls...

As we count down to 2020, companies are considering how to prepare for the next decade and get a jump start on the future.

There are many exciting technologies about, which offer much promise. In field service management,

where there is serious complexity that raises the stakes for any technology investment, it’s important these promising avenues realize their potential sooner rather than later.

But investing in new tech doesn’t guarantee its potential will be fully realized. It remains within the purview of the tech buyer to ensure the business extracts maximum value from new technology.

 

Identify Opportunities for Improvement 

Understanding your business strengths, weaknesses, and technological maturity is prerequisite to any exploration of new technology.

Have you outgrown an existing solution and need greater sophistication, or are you limited by processes rather than technology?

 

"Knowing your biggest obstacles and inefficiencies is the starting point for any tech conversation..."

 

Knowing your biggest obstacles and inefficiencies is the starting point for any tech conversation.

Are you able to measure everything and set benchmarks for desired performance? You will need to in order to have a productive conversation with a vendor.

For example, if you know you want to reduce windshield time rather than mileage this creates different requirements for a routing solution and what methodology it uses to map routes for service workers.

In organizations new to field service management solutions, there might be a lack of sophisticated measurement and benchmarks.

If you are moving from spreadsheets and manual paperwork for the first time, the leap can seem daunting. But this is the perfect opportunity to put prospective vendors to the test and use their expertise to source measurement frameworks, benchmarks, and best practices—then hold them accountable for delivering.

 

Invest in Outcomes, Not Products

Anyone trying to sell you a hammer will characterize your problems as nails, regardless of their nature. Once you’ve understood your challenges, you can articulate desired outcomes that can define the required capabilities for a solution.

The underlying technology is not irrelevant, but how it’s utilized is most important, and to what end.

Imagine you want to speed up response times without adding staff.

This will require the ability to schedule and dispatch workers automatically—with zero touch.

This could lead you to AI-driven automation and keeps the horse before the cart. The desired outcome first, tech and methodology second.

Whether your ultimate aim is to reduce costs, increase revenue, or improve customer experience, it should be clearly stated and technology agnostic.

Don’t let shiny new technology give you the old razzle-dazzle—you’re in the business of getting real work done—drive every conversation back to outcomes and proof.

 

Incorporate Change Management

New and innovative solutions can fall short of their promises if not wholly adopted by your workforce.

Even the best solutions can fall flat if your team is not on board.

Many field service organizations save money by using augmented reality wearables to remotely assist junior technicians on advanced jobs.

A senior technician can provide the expertise and guidance without having to travel. This sounds like a great idea to implement until you realize senior technicians are uncomfortable with the technology and prefer to use phones or to be dispatched to the job themselves—at a higher hourly cost.

 

"When talking to your technicians, extol the benefits of the change from their point of view, rather than the potential..."

 

Ensuring your new process and field adoption line up with your vision requires an early focus on change management and communicating with all levels of your service organization.

When talking to your technicians, extol the benefits of the change from their point of view, rather than the potential. They’re more likely to buy into an idea that impacts their work positively.

Have a plan for communicating with, training, and reassuring your workforce about what’s in it for them.

Looking ahead, make sure you recruit employees who are technology friendly and are eager to learn and use the latest and most advanced solutions available.

Automation, machine learning, real-time traffic based routing, and augmented reality all have practical applications in the field today.

Just as the technologies of yesteryear that they’re succeeding, these are simply tools to enable the job field service workers have always done.

To capitalize on their potential, whether you’re considering an upgrade, a process change, or purchasing a new solution, remember to lead with your biggest challenges, define your desired outcomes, and ensure your team is excited about the coming changes.

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ClickSoftware, the leading provider of field service management software, has announced a number of new customer wins and updates from the second quarter of 2018.

The company announced several new customers in a range of industries and geographies, including Enbridge Gas New Brunswick, Lloyds Pharmacy Clinical Home, IFM Restoration, and Lattelecom, as well other leading service companies. In the most recent quarter, ClickSoftware also signed a new agreement with a longtime partner, Diabsolut FSM, to resell its cloud-based field service management product, Click Field Service Edge in North America.

In May, the company enhanced its flagship offering, Click Field Service Edge, to further improve efficiency and effectiveness on the day of service by uniquely incorporating real-time traffic data into the scheduling process. Field Service Edge now automatically updates the schedule if an unexpected event impacts the planned route to the next task, such as a traffic accident or road closure, and proactively incorporates live traffic conditions whenever schedules are updated to further increase efficiency and operational insight.

“Field service today requires unprecedented agility to achieve service levels that both exceed customer expectations and are cost effective for the business,” said Mark Cattini, CEO of ClickSoftware. “Delivering measurable impact to service businesses is only possible through a combination of real-world experience and state-of-the-art computer science, and we are delighted to see our customers validating our approach.”

In March, ClickSoftware received industry recognition from Gartner, with the highest product score for the “High-Volume and Volatile Schedules” use case in Gartner’s 2017 Critical Capabilities for Field Service Management* report.

“We believe the achievement reflects the company’s commitment to delivering solutions that enable service organizations to predict and plan for exceptional customer experiences,” said Cattini.

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*Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Field Service Management, Jim Robinson, Jason Wong, Michael Maoz, March 27, 2018

Note: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

 

 

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Paul Whitelam, VP Product Marketing, ClickSoftware, puts across the case that in the race towards AI adoption we shouldn’t forget to see the value and importance of human input in the service cycle...

Like many industries, field service has seen an increase in the adoption of artificial intelligence-driven automation.

The benefits are many: improved efficiency, schedule accuracy, workforce productivity, responsiveness, cost savings and higher profit margins, and, importantly, happier customers.

Naturally, the onset of automation causes some anxiety in workers whose tasks are being handed over to AI. As with previous industrial revolutions, we’re not likely to find ourselves in a low employment high-leisure utopia. While the nature of work might change, plenty will remain to be done. Getting the full benefits of AI and machine learning still requires some human participation and a good understanding of who (or what) is best for each job.

People provide context

Service management solutions powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning can rapidly process high volumes of data to use as a basis for automated decisions. But when it comes to learning, machines can be a lot like humans— garbage in, garbage out.

When Microsoft launched its Tay chatbot on Twitter in 2016, few would have guessed that in just a day it would become a bigoted bully. The problem, of course, was that Tay was learning to converse by interacting with Twitter users, some of whom seized the opportunity to educate it on humanity’s worst impulses. Even with less shocking or inflammatory outcomes, AI learns from what it is shown and told. It’s likely to replicate bad behaviour if that’s all it’s shown.

AI-based tools can also provide simulations and modelling for multiple scenarios and highlight the interaction of various policy and process changes. For example, if the objective is the fastest response time available for every job, more technicians might have to be available for dispatching, increasing labour costs and decreasing utilization.

People must still define the process and priorities for automation to ensure your system optimizes for the right business goals. While intelligent computing power can grease the wheels of daily service operations, the real value comes from informing businesses to foster improved decision making.

Managing the unique and unusual

While humans can grow bored with the rote and routine, machines have yet to complain. Tasks that are repetitive and predictable are best handled with automation.

AI can manage most routine and ordinary tasks – chatbots, scheduling, appointment confirmation, routing, showing a mobile worker’s location and travel path to a job, it can even reassign and redistribute jobs around disruptions, addressing unplanned work with urgency. One UK gas utility can dispatch engineers to address a leak emergency in 13 seconds from the initial customer call—without human intervention.

AI can use a variety of inputs to increase schedule and travel time accuracy and optimize in real time, but what happens when you just don’t have the data?

One of the challenges faced by self-driving car producers is how to navigate remote areas, especially with routes that lack landmarks or distinguishing features.

Too few inputs can stump the machine. There is also additional context in some situations that will not be gleaned from data analysis, and impact from factors that perhaps are not being measured.

Hands off, humans

Applying new technology to solving problems in old ways yields minimal benefits, if any. Field service organizations see the greatest benefits from automation after reviewing their processes, KPIs, and business goals to leverage exactly the kind of data processing and analysis they didn’t have before.

They guide machine learning by providing good and plentiful data, filtering out the unimportant, and prioritizing the right goals. Specificity is key.

AI will do exactly what you tell it to—including replicating inefficient processes or making dubious decisions to optimize for a single outcome.

For example, prioritizing the shortest possible wait times for a technician to arrive could result in overstaffing and idle time—costing a lot of money.

Use projections and simulations to see how various goals interact to find the optimal balance, and remember that instructing your system includes telling it what not to do.

The vision of zero-touch service scheduling and dispatching enabled by AI and the Internet of Things is increasingly becoming a reality for service providers. Resist the temptation to interfere when unnecessary so you can give the machine a chance to learn, and reap the full benefits of increased productivity and efficiency.

What can your employees do with the extra time in their day? Focus on the people stuff, of course: training and coaching, brand ambassadorship, cross- and upselling, remote support—you name it.

There is still plenty for humans to do in the increasingly automated field service world, and it’s the work that relies on person-to-person connections and trust. While your people are improving service quality and strengthening relationships with colleagues and customers, trust that automation can handle the rest.

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