Leading Author and founder of Alexander Consulting, James ‘Alex’ Alexander puts forward a series of strong arguments for the reasons why product-focused companies can and must sell services. This is essential reading for the service director struggling to get their voice heard in a product-centric organisation...

Leading field services in a product company is not for the weak of heart. You must deal with executives who feel that products are the only ingredient in the recipe to organization success and that services are a bothersome, necessary seasoning like garlic in a casserole.

Like trying to convince a toddler that vegetables are good for them, you must constantly demonstrate your value internally, while confronting a product-thinking, product-is-everything culture.

Where to begin? I suggest that the best defence is a good offence. Research and review, prepare and practice, and then request individual or group sit-downs with your executive peers to address the question, why sell services anyway? Your future may depend upon your persuasion.

Why sell services anyway? Following are the benefits to articulate and motivate.

1. Sell More Initial Deals

Here is a bit of blasphemy to a product executive: Most customers view products as commodities! Regardless of how truly unique or elegant or innovative, your products are from your perspective, in most all buying situations, customers see no meaningful difference in the top two or three products in any category, across all industries, across all geographies.

Yes, I understand this may not be 100% factual, but from the perception of the customer, it is true. Hence, the old adage comes into play: Perception is reality. Kind of a sobering thought. 

Once customers have determined their shortlist of the two or three potential products or bundles of products that they will seriously consider buying, they almost always cast their product ballot based on what they believe are the best services that surround the productOnce customers have determined their shortlist of the two or three potential products or bundles of products that they will seriously consider buying, they almost always cast their product ballot based on what they believe are the best services that surround the product—services that will best ensure the product works as promised, keeps working, and does so with a minimum of hassle and added expense.

It is important to note that, in many cases, they will pay a premium for your offering if they understand the higher value your services bring to them. In essence, they vote with their pocketbook.

Furthermore, if your salespeople were strategic and sold an assessment early in the buying process—before needs were clear and products were specified—the probability of you getting the product business, later on, is greatly improved, giving you the chance to shape the final recommendations early while building relationships with people key to the final purchase.

GIST: Selling services effectively from the get-go will land you more initial deals.

2. Handle Fewer Train Wrecks

Sadly, sometimes products are positioned to the customer with these words coming out of the salesperson’s mouth: “Our products don’t break.

You don’t need any additional services,” or “It is so easy to implement our software. Just read the manual and you can do it, no worries.” This is all a bunch of baloney, especially if you are dealing with a fairly complex situation, an important customer process, and/or the customer has little if any familiarity with the implementation.

Rare is the product that will not need some type of service in its life cycle, whether a tailored implementation, ongoing maintenance, software updates, refurbishing, and on and on. Not positioning this reality of life with the customer upfront is negligent selling.

Services appropriately sold up front greatly improves the probability that:

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• The product will work the way it is supposed to work the first time.
• Greater functionality of the product will be utilized.
• Irritated customers ringing the bell of the fire engine, escalating their concerns up your organization ladder, will be greatly minimized.

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GIST: Selling services upfront saves your organization time, hassle, and money over the long term.

3. Sell More Products and Services Later

Experience also shows that when deals are sold with services up front, more products and services are sold later on.¹ Services greatly improve the chance that installation and implementation will be done correctly the first time, and services and support improve uptime and productivity.

Delivering services means dealing personally with customer personnel and, done properly, starts to build trust-based relationships. These customers are very likely to buy more of your products (and more services, of course) and are well on the way to being loyal, highly profitable customers for life. 

Figure 1 shows a real-world example of this revenue opportunity beyond the initial product sale. By selling services correctly early on along with the product, this company had a very realistic opportunity to add 2.7 times the original product revenue through incremental services. In this example, the product sold for approximately $100,000, so the potential for more services revenue was approximately $270,000. Plus, the customer was much more likely to buy this company’s product at the end of the equipment’s life.

GIST: Want to be a true total solutions provider? Services are the key.

4. Enjoy Predictable Revenue Streams

Want to see a CFO’s eyes light up?

Watch their face the first time they grasp an understanding of the predictable, repeatable sales that come from a services business built upon service and support contracts coupled with a finely tuned professional services capability.

This is pure joy to a bean counter. The services annuity stream makes life a whole lot easier for all of management, as it helps take the guesswork out of business financials and becomes an early warning, leading indicator of organization success or failure.

GIST: Strong services help you manage your business more effectively

5. Differentiate Yourself

Depending on the maturity of your industry, your competitor’s strategy, and your competitor’s dealings with distribution, services can differentiate you in a really big way. The more complex your products, the more they cost the customer; and the more mission critical they are to your customer’s business, the more the value-packing promise of services. Leading services researchers note from their studies that more and more companies in tough competitive markets are looking at services to yield competitive advantage.²

If your competitors don’t have full portfolios of strong service offerings, or if they don’t know how to sell them, this is a huge opportunity for you if you embrace the challenge. Give your customers what they need, want, and will pay for while locking out everyone else.

GIST: Services are the drivers of market dominance.

6. Create New Markets

Business consultants like to talk about adjacency strategy,³ the strategy of building upon an organization’s core competencies in one market to transport those capabilities to an adjacent, but different market space.

For example, a company with specialized battery technology designed for the automotive industry could potentially attempt to build upon that battery expertise to develop and sell to the marine market. The same possibilities hold true with services. For example, an energy utilization assessment developed for the automotive industry could be adapted for the marine market.

Taking advantage of your past experience and expertise can crack new markets and expand profitable revenue.

GIST: Services adjacency strategy can be a powerful component of any growth blueprint.

To summarize, services have proven themselves to be able to contribute significant value to many, many product companies through profitable growth of both products and services. Properly executed, strong services capabilities can increase customer satisfaction and generate customer loyalty. In addition, for some companies, having the right portfolio of services helps smooth the entry into new markets. Finally, in some cases, having an arsenal of new or better services can create competitive differentiation.

Question: But aren’t services less profitable?

Answer: Normally not.

Here are the core elements of a conversation I had with the CEO of a software company that I was interviewing as part of a services assessment for his company.

• Alexander: Tell me what role you’d like services to play in helping your company be successful.
• CEO: Frankly, I wish services was a much smaller part of the business. They negatively impact our overall profitability. Every time I talk to financial analysts, they beat me up on this issue. If you can tell me how to eliminate services altogether, I’d be extremely happy.

This perception is fairly common among executives at companies with high product profit margins. However, in most cases it is not entirely correct. 

On average, my research shows that there is no difference between the profit margins of products and those of services.⁴ In general, product profit margins have decreased as industries have matured, and services profit margins have increased as services management has learned how to optimize their organizations. For example, professional services organizations within product companies have improved their profitability by seven points over the last decade. In fact, top-performing services organizations have profit margins double that of their products. 

Adding a portfolio of services, even at lower margins than products, will increase the overall value to the customer.There are exceptions, of course. New products in new industries could have higher profit margins initially. However, experience shows that product margins will consistently drop. A few products, due to their innovation or patents or special circumstances, may be able to maintain very high product margins over time.

Yet, recalling the high value that customers place on services, adding a portfolio of services, even at lower margins than products, will increase the overall value to the customer. Hence, looking at blended margins is probably a much more realistic way to view and understand overall profitability. 

Finally, examining the financials of many services businesses inside product companies raises a few eyebrows, if not a few questions, about how profitability is calculated and the fairness of the calculations. Here are some issues to consider:

• Place your list items here

• If services consultants are spending 30% of their time in a pre-sales role, why isn’t that expense charged to sales?
• If you are a VAR (value-adding reseller) and your partner agreements require you to have a number of certified experts on staff, shouldn’t some of the costs of having these low-billable people on board be charged elsewhere?
• If a big customer has a blow-up, and company execs require a busload of top technical talent from the services business to do whatever it takes to fix the problem at no charge to the customer, should that cost be eaten by the services business?

My own biased experience says that if you sell the right services to the right customers in the right way, they will be very profitable and make the rest of your products look much better as well.

 

GIST: Re-look and re-think cost allocation, pricing strategies, and margin expectations versus customer value. There is a good chance that you don’t readily have this information, and it will take time to get the quality data you need.

 

So, there you have it—proactively communicate the value that your services deliver, help build a more profitable organization, and gain the respect you and your people deserve.

Endnotes

This article was adapted from Seriously Selling Services: How to Build a Profitable Services Business in Any Industry, by James “Alex” Alexander, and can be purchased from Amazon.com or the Alexander Consulting website.

References

1. Hahn, Al. 2007. The True Strategic Value of Services. Sandy, OR: Hahn Consulting.
2. Brown, Stephen W., Anders Gustafsson and Lars Witell. 2009. “Beyond Products.” New York, NY.: The Wall Street Journal.
3. Zook, Christopher. 2004. Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market without Abandoning Your Roots. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
4. Note that services margins are declining on average in some industries as more and more services appear alike to customers, are hence seen as commodities, and thus seem to have less value.

 

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Samir Gulati, Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower explains why savvy service organisations understand that building an excellent customer experience must begin from the first interaction, but must continue through every service touch point onwards - and how IoT data can be a key tool in achieving that...

Customers purchase products and don’t interact with the OEM or retailer again until something fails. Thus, your next contact with the consumer is one in which your product has become their problem. You are behind the eight ball right out of the gate. 

While the industry has focused on metrics important for operational improvements, such as first-time fix rates, productivity, efficiency of field technicians and fuel utilization, all of which are critical to any business, we now must recognize that customer experience must be the driving force behind our strategies, the top priority for our operators, for sales and marketing and for our service teams.   

Considering the customer experience from the very beginning is the surest way to drive downstream revenue.  

Start at the Beginning 

Customer experience must be considered from the point a product is manufactured or sold, not simply from the perspective of field service downstream. 

Customer experience must be considered from the point a product is manufactured or sold, not simply from the perspective of field service downstream. Ensure that your product includes features which makes your customers’ experience with your product easy and helpful, that it meets expectations. Don’t stop there though. Make sure the product exceeds expectations. With the ease at which IoT sensors can be embedded in products and used to provide proactive new accessories and services, makes tapping into this technology a no-brainer.

IoT isn’t reserved for heavy industry. Consumers, both residential and commercial, are using IoT in their lives every. Use it to your advantage, and theirs. 

Take the Next Step 

Your responsibility to your customer doesn’t stop at the point you ship or sell a product or service. Once the product is in hand, make sure you’ve made it easy to connect with your organization in real time.

If a customer has questions about usage or features and functions, needs accessories or complementary products, or in the event, there is an issue with a product, omnichannel connectivity gives them the ability to connect with you in ways that are convenient for them.

Use web portals and mobile apps, use Smart Speakers. Image how much better a repair experience could be if Siri could schedule an appointment for your customer.  

Go Beyond Service Delivery 

Enabling field teams with technology with the information, part and tools required to fix a problem in the field is the minimum expectation of field service organizations now.

If you’re not there, and recent data suggests that almost 50% of field service teams are not, get there fast. Look to configurable, cross-platform mobile applications that you can deploy quickly, on any device, with the process and forms needed- by your employed or contracted field technicians- to get onsite and problem solve in real time.

But don’t stop there.

Tap into the data you’ve collected from manufacturing, the point of sale, IoT and service history to offer your customers more.Tap into the data you’ve collected from manufacturing, the point of sale, IoT and service history to offer your customers more. The data at your fingertips makes it possible for you to offer new services using that data, directly from your field technicians.

Make the customer happy with a single visit fix. Make them happier with maintenance contract offers that keep their products up and running longer. Delight your customers with proactive service and seamless communication with every member of the product lifecycle ecosystem.

Use the data and the technology available to both your organization and your customer, to seamlessly drive positive, profitable post-sale interactions with every customer.  

 

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Manuel Grenacher, CEO, Coresystems explains that although Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t necessarily a new innovation with the global enterprise value derived from AI set to total $1.2 Trillion this year you need to make sure it’s working for you...

You know that voice that answers the phone and tells you to input your account number after the beep? That’s one of the numerous applications of artificial intelligence (AI) we encounter daily. If you’re reading this you probably know what AI is, but as a refresher, the term refers to a machine’s ability to imitate human cognitive abilities like problem-solving, language, strategic thinking, and learning. But its innovations and opportunities go far beyond asking Siri for driving directions to your next appointment – specifically for enterprise organizations. According to Gartner, the global enterprise value derived from AI will total $1.2 trillion this year – a 70 percent increase from 2017 – with significant expectations in areas like customer experience.

With an almost infinite number of data points and constant generation of new data, it is now impossible for the human mind to sift, sort, analyze, and draw insights from that torrent of information – yet AI uses these data sets to empower companies with strategic, informed decisions. Considering this explosive growth of AI, the following are some examples of how the field service industry can implement the technology to innovate and improve the customer experience.

Increase Productivity

Artificial intelligence optimizes the scheduling, planning, and dispatching of service and maintenance calls in real-time. Whereas traditional dispatchers must fall back on manual searches, an AI-based system values data points to generate efficient results, leading to smoother operations and the best possible utilization of your resources - which also translates into a sizable return on your investments.

An AI-supported system can factor in a variety of data with an increased level of speed and accuracy – for example, technician availability or skill level. An AI-supported system can factor in a variety of data with an increased level of speed and accuracy – for example, technician availability or skill level. Other restrictions, such as work time hours, legally mandatory lunch breaks, and travel time and distance – among others – are also be taken into consideration. Moreover, such systems can automatically notify technicians (via text, email, or other channels) about the necessary tools and parts needed for the job, not only guaranteeing higher first-time-fix rates, but also reducing wait times for available technicians.

Elevate the Customer Experience

Artificial intelligence technology also streamlines and optimizes the customer experience. With an AI-enabled platform, customers can expect real-time solutions, competent technicians equipped with the right tools and parts, and early detection of potential breakdowns. By connecting via mobile, they can track arrival times and progress, easily schedule and change appointments, and count on a quick and reliable billing system.

Support Predictive Maintenance

Lastly, with predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence is solving problems before they arise. This not only eliminates unnecessary machine condition checks but also addresses the growing skill gap between service technicians, as AI solutions can identify and address trivial tasks, which then allows the technicians to focus on customers and solutions instead.

The strides made in AI are in the direction of chatbots, language processing, image recognition, and machine learning. Even though these are considerable cost-saving and productivity benefits, many workers are afraid of AI replacing their jobs, and the entertainment industry has capitalized on an image of AI (like Star Wars, Iron Man or Black Mirror) that is more in line with types that are still being developed like Artificial General intelligence, or types that are fiction like Artificial Superintelligence.

In reality, the strides made in AI are in the direction of chatbots, language processing, image recognition, and machine learning. Rather than new technologies replacing jobs, artificial intelligence supports employees by helping them become more efficient, in areas such as predictive maintenance and customer experience. The forecasts for this inventive and advanced technology are promising, and we look forward to working with our customers to make the implementations successful.

What are some other uses that you see through your work in the field service industry? We invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Consumer & IndustryLab released its latest Insight Report today - the Zero touch customer experience – exploring the future of customer interactions with mobile service providers.

Today, smartphone users interact with operators across multiple touch points: from discovering offerings and signing up to services, to requesting support for ending a contract.

The report highlights consumers’ current frustrations at their interactions with their mobile service provider, taking on average 2.2 attempts and 4.1 days to successfully complete an interaction. This high customer effort impacts negatively on satisfaction levels.

Digitally leading brands offer the minimal effort interaction consumers prefer. Smartphone users now expect the same hassle-free, one-click digital experience from operators. The report highlights that mobile service providers can leapfrog to a zero-touch customer experience future by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics:

• Enabled by AI, telecom service providers could use data from earlier interactions and consumer behaviour to predict what consumers need before they even contact them for support. More than half (56 percent) of smartphone users expect operators to anticipate their needs even before they realize what they are.
• While we have grown accustomed to typing, clicking and swiping on our devices, new zero-touch methods are emerging based on voice, gestures, and augmented or virtual reality.One in ten households in the US already has a voice-enabled home assistant device such as Amazon Alexa. As voice assistants become more prominent in consumers’ everyday lives, they will expect integration of support interactions over those platforms too.

Digitally leading brands offer the minimal effort interaction consumers prefer.Pernilla Jonsson, Head of Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab, says: “Consumers believe telecom service providers treat touchpoints like isolated interactions."

"Siloed focus means they miss the bigger picture. Interestingly, telecom service providers could leapfrog one-click and move from multiple-click to zero-touch by deploying future technologies in their customer offerings. The zero-touch customer experience report shows that zero-touch experiences are now an expectation of their customers.”

Read The zero-touch customer experience’ Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab Insight Report here.

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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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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to New York Times and Wall St Journal bestseller, international speaker and all-around customer service guru Shep Hyken about six important steps companies must embrace if they are to deliver service excellence...

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE! You can now subscribe to the Field Service Podcast via iTunes here

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Samir Gulati, Chief Marketing Officer with ServicePower joins the exclusive ranks of Field Service News associate columnists and in his first article explains why in a world of increasing customer demands field service delivery needs to be the platform from which you wow your customers...

Customers expect more from today’s service providers. In a service environment where consumers are connected to the internet and each other 24 hours a day, they expect the same connectivity and instant response from companies they do business with. Consider the popular pizza tracker technology.

We’ve seen the technology cheekily called a baby monitor for pizza. Who among us hasn’t watched the tracker move in the right direction, just to stall right before the pizza is due to be delivered, leaving us disappointed, anxious and hungry?

Though pizza has little in common with complex field service operations, the tracker concept is very applicable.

Though pizza has little in common with complex field service operations, the tracker concept is very applicable.Consumers today expect to have full access to your services. Field service technology with supports the entire service lifecycle, from entitlement to completion is so important in today’s environment given those expectations. Consumers expect to be able to schedule a service or maintenance event whenever, and on whatever device is convenient to them, just like ordering a pizza. Enabling your customers to digitally engage with you operational teams, faster and in a smarter way, is a critical first step to building brand loyalty and increasing future revenues.

Providing visibility, just like that pizza tracker, is also now expected by consumers. Digitally booking a service event, to your employed or contracted workforce, is the first step in a faster, smarter service experience for your consumers.

Providing visibility to the appointment, the tech’s schedule and his or her location on the day or service not only improves customer satisfaction by delivering complete transparency related to the service event, it reduces costs for your organization by eliminating phone calls that historically would have occurred related to the appointment. The latest field service management technology can also enable customers to do more. It provides the ability to review new services and product offers based on asset ownership and service history, while also enabling techs and consumers to communicate directly.

Better than the traditional call ahead while en route, or a dial on a screen showing location only, consumers can upload pictures and other information related to their service event such that techs are better prepared to arrive and complete the service event while onsite.

Pizza tracker technology delivers updates based on preprogrammed timing and a series of predefined events, with very little engagement from the actual delivery drivers. That’s not good enough in field service. Field service is complex. Better visibility for the consumer is great. It’s the first step in providing faster, smarter service. However, it’s only the last mile of great service delivery.

Smart field service technology better supports complex field service delivery models.The miles in between matter just as much.  Smart field service technology better supports complex field service delivery models. It enables technicians to be scheduled with the skills and required parts to complete a consumer’s service order on time. It provides the tech with product information, repair information, and access to expert resources, even AI-based digital assistants which can define how to fix a certain product using available information, versus having the tech swipe through pages of documentation on a device to find a solution.

Field service technology delivers a great customer experience because it enables your field techs to connect to your customers throughout the entire service lifecycle, delivering service in a smarter way.

For the operational teams, the pizza tracker seems to do little else than automate the order, eliminating phones calls to the store. In field service, complex operations require robust, often AI-based technology, to deliver great service beginning with entitlement. Field service technology is the foundation on which service delivery technology is built, enabling each to manage complex processes and engage employed or contracted technicians and consumers in a smarter way, to deliver faster, more complete service using a single field service solution.

AI schedule optimization drives productivity, no doubt. Unlike the pizza tracker which can take a single input, an order, and deliver a single output, the delivery status, AI can be used in field service to harness a multitude of inputs related to consumer requirements, tech skills, and other hard and soft constraints, while also incorporating the latest in mapping and location technologies, to deliver a schedule which reduces operational costs, but which also improves service delivery, ensuring techs arrive on time, with the parts and knowledge needed to complete the service event.

Integrated contractor management solutions can ensure a similarly seamless service experience using contracted labour. Mobile technology can support full onsite processes, ensuring smarter, faster on-site service delivery.

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FLS, Fast Lean Smart, a leader in field force appointment, schedule and route optimisation solutions, has recently announced the results of its annual customer satisfaction survey in the UK.

Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director comments “Outstanding customer satisfaction is what our customers strive to achieve from their field service operations and I believe we should be setting the right example”.

FLS customers include leaders in equipment maintenance, utilities/telecoms, healthcare, financial services/insurance claims, facilities management/property maintenance, engineering compliance inspections, retail home deliveries and more. In December 2017, FLS UK surveyed every live customer it supports directly with two key questions.

The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.

The second was a Net Promotor Score (NPS) styled question “How likely is it that you would recommend FLS VISITOUR to a friend who has a similar scheduling requirement? (0 - 10)”

Using the standard formula for detractors (range 0-6), passives (7-8), promoters (9-10), there was no need for a complex calculation because every customer was a promoter for FLS VISITOUR scheduling solution, the NPS score was the maximum 100!

Best in class

Jeremy Squire reflects “I feel very proud of my team for the satisfaction they are delivering and the fact every customer would recommend us is possibly unique in this market. Our strategy will continue to focus on innovation and our customer on-going success using FLS scheduling software, and to build our business through recommendations.”

Jeremy concludes “This proves real-time scheduling and route optimisation solutions really can work well for a wide range of field service businesses, you’ve just got to choose the right technology and partner to work with”.

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Wiraya, a Marketing Technology firm based in Sweden which develops a Managed Mobile Customer Activation software, has been awarded €2 million in innovation grants by the European Commission, for the development of Wiraya Activation Intelligence (“Wiraya AI”).

The contribution is intended to enable further development, validation and optimisation of Wiraya’s artificial intelligence software to help Europe’s mobile operators improve customer value for their subscribers, and thereby customer loyalty.

The new functionality, Wiraya AI, automatically creates interactive voice and text communications, which allows individual dialogue with large customer groups. With such deployments of AI being predicted to potentially revolutionise the customer experience across a range of use cases including support issues, this development could be an interesting development for field service organisations.

We are really proud to be one of the few companies selected by the European Commission. The grant gives us a great opportunity to be able to drive the development of artificial intelligence within customer communication in Europe - Oskar Klingberg, CEO, Wiraya SolutionsCurrently, European mobile telecom operators are facing continuing rising industry challenges to tackle low customer satisfaction and loyalty and despite advanced churn prediction models, operators still often communicate with their customers as if they were still prospects, using generic communication that erodes trust and commitment. This is a challenge that Wiraya are aiming to tackle.

Using machine learning, the software predicts and customises what, when and how to communicate with each individual, by matching the individual’s profile with specific communication journeys. With the implementation of Wiraya AI, 5% of the annual churning customers can be saved each year, corresponding to substantial savings for the operator, and increased customer satisfaction.

“We are really proud to be one of the few companies selected by the European Commission. The grant gives us a great opportunity to be able to drive the development of artificial intelligence within customer communication in Europe. We have always tried to challenge ourselves by identifying and solving important industry-specific business problems. For the telecom sector, AI functionality will solve resource-intensive and complex customer communication flows with highly effective, automated personal dialogues.” says v, CEO of Wiraya Solutions.

The development of AI functionality begins with pilot projects in 2018 and then full commercial launch in 2019. Initial tests suggest up to 5 times higher conversion rates compared with today’s way of communicating, while delivering substantial yearly savings.

Klingberg adds: “We are now developing the functionality specifically for mobile operators, but our plan is to implement the functionality across other industries, proving the same opportunity for a whole range of businesses.”

Should the pilots be successful it will be interesting to see if this could as act as a proof of concept to roll out across over service-centric sectors.

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