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Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director, IFS looks at the changing realities of business and how field service companies must adapt to new expectations...

A 2015 study conducted by Microsoft concluded that the average human attention span was 8 seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000.

Technology has changed considerably since the year 2000, our smartphones have become smarter, social media has exploded and instant gratification is at every consumer’s fingertips thanks to faster-than-ever service from Amazon Prime and others.

But what does a shorter attention span have to do with field service? Firstly, it directly correlates with expectation. Consumers expect organisations to effectively capture and keep their attention. As well as do the legwork for them, facilitating constant interaction and information. Secondly, marketing becomes less effective. You have to find new, innovative ways to attract and retain customers.

So how do you combat the curse of an “uberized” world that demands instant gratification, short attention span and all? Here are three ways to solve your organisational woes to delight your customers and maximise your potential.

Problem: your future (and current) customers don’t have time for you

Solution: increase engagement using various media Attracting potential customers and keeping current customers engaged demands an understanding of their needs and behaviours.

According to a Microsoft study, 84% of millennial customers have used a self-service portal for customer service.

Find new ways to engage like a customer app or a loyalty reward programme. Incentify your prospects using gamification practices, enticing them to interact with your brand through a mobile game offering or discount site. Make booking a service as easy as possible with options like scheduling via Facebook, etc. According to Bain & Company, it costs 500% more to acquire new customers than it does to keep current ones, and the cost of bringing a new customer up to the same level of profitability as an old one is up to 16x more expensive.

 

With ever-mounting consumer demands and dwindling profit margins, empowering your technicians seems like common sense. Just make sure you have provided them with the right tools and technologies to be sales heroes as well as install-it, build-it, fix-it experts.

Use your field service technicians as your frontline sales guys. Maximise those closely developed relationships by teaching them to up-sell and capture customer attention and loyalty on-site, in person.

Problem: customers expect a completely engaged field service transaction

Solution: uberize your offering to the best of your ability

ComScore reports that, on average, 65% of consumer digital media time is spent on mobile devices. Customers now expect that the experience they get with Uber will translate into field service.

They want information at every stage of the service lifecycle, faster resolution times, more in-depth information about parts and processes and reviews to prove you’re trustworthy. Provide customers with a constant information stream from appointment to service to invoice with a robust field service management solution.

 

Send your customers a link to a customised portal that allows them to track technicians and stay up to date. Provide customer surveys onsite or after the field service interaction to close the feedback loop and improve performance.

Make your customers feel empowered at every stage of the service lifecycle by providing them with more options when it comes to their schedule, appointment windows, service offerings and add-ons.

Problem: instant gratification means no margin for error

Solution: mobility is the answer

First-time fix rate is imperative to customer satisfaction as well as maximised service margins. Short attention spans translate into higher expectations.

Customers expect field service organisations to know where their field techs are at all times and be able to report arrival times, traffic delays, and more. On-site, they expect field technicians to have the materials and expertise to accomplish tasks on the first visit. Enabling your workforce with a mobilised field service solution ensures success.

 

In their 2016 Mobile Enterprise Applications survey, Frost & Sullivan reported that a mobile solution increased competitive advantage by 55% and enhanced customer engagement by 52% for enterprise users. As your organisation moves to embrace and adopt new technologies for increased efficiencies like IoT, a strong mobile strategy is imperative to continued success.

The future of field service

The world has changed forever. It’s not enough to just sell a product, and then provide service if something breaks. Customers expect more. This goes hand-in-hand with diminishing attention span. Even the process of evaluating and buying a product has changed dramatically.

Convenience is key for buyers and oftentimes it is the aftermarket service that becomes the competitive differentiator.

Thanks to the reducing attention span and the need for instant gratification, the process of buying has changed, the criteria for product selection have changed, and the expectation for aftermarket service has changed. Are you ready to embrace this transformation in your organisation?

 

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Manuel Grenacher, CEO at coresystems looks at why the predicted boom of the field service management market is set to bring workforce challenges of its own and proposes that the crowd-sourcing of field service could be the solution to these issues...

According to a recent report from Markets and Markets, by 2020 the field service management (FSM) market will be worth $5.11 billion – nearly triple its size in 2015. Major drivers behind that projection include skyrocketing customer expectations, the ever-increasing demand for enhanced productivity, and the steady escalation of field service operation costs.

Furthermore, Gartner forecasted that by 2020, two out of three large field service organisations will equip field technicians with a mobile application that drives profitability by creating revenue streams, efficiency and customer satisfaction. This is a positive outlook for the FSM market, but there’s a problem with the traditional field service delivery model that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

The exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the real-time connectivity it enables has led to a massive spike in consumer expectations for instantaneous customer service. As a result, organisation of all sizes and across all industries have been forced to rethink their strategies for customer service delivery, including their workforce resources and supporting technologies. In doing so, many organisations are finding that they lack the technician specialists required to deliver real-time field service to their customers, and until now there has been no technology-based solution to help organisations find and deploy those specialists.

 

Compounding this resource availability problem is the fact that every day the number of IoT connected devices in circulation is increasing, which further adds to organisations’ backlogs of field service requests. But what if the field service industry were to adopt a new delivery model – one that could shift the balance of technology versus technicians back to a sustainable equilibrium for organisations?

This would be the tipping point that could help organisations leverage FSM to realise the true promise of the IoT. And the field service industry need look no further than some of the forward thinking companies that lead the way in the sharing economy, such as Uber and Airbnb.

By introducing technology that enables the crowdsourcing of field service to independent, for hire field service technicians (just like Uber does for drivers), FSM software providers would be able to help their customers find those field service technicians anywhere and anytime. This would check organisations’ critical box of providing real-time customer service.

[quote float="right"]The bottom line is that businesses today need to focus as much – if not more – on stellar customer service as they do on building innovative products

Furthermore, by utilising crowdsourced field service (or “crowd service”) for IoT-connected technologies, organisations will not only be able to deliver real-time customer support, but could also provide service and maintenance before those technologies suffer an outage. For larger organisations, we see two scenarios: a “public crowd” of crowdsourced freelance-technicians and a “private crowd” of technicians within your business ecosystem such as contractors, partners, subsidiaries and corporate professionals. Imagine that: through crowd service, organisations can proactively ensure that they never face the dreaded downtime that can end up costing millions of dollars per hour.

 

The bottom line is that businesses today need to focus as much – if not more – on stellar customer service as they do on building innovative products, but finding the time and resources required to meet rising consumer demands for real-time service has become increasingly difficult.

With crowd service, organisations can streamline their field service operations to deliver service as quickly as the same day the customer requests it, which delivers benefits from both a cost savings and customer satisfaction standpoint. Clearly, this crowd service model has the potential to be highly disruptive in the field service industry, but unlike many other technology based developments that are often lazily called disruptive, crowdsourced field service isn’t simply a nebulous concept.

 

FSM software providers are not only laying the groundwork for crowd service as we speak, but have customers deploying the technology in the real world – and many in the FSM industry, including Coresystems, expect crowd service to revolutionise the way that organisations service their customers in 2017 and beyond. So, as organisations look for a solution to the field service resourcing problem created by the IoT, they should turn to the crowd.

 

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Debbie Geiger, Global VP of Marketing for Astea International looks at the growing importance of outsourcing amongst field service and why connectivity is the key to maintaining service standards right across third party providers…

 

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There is also a white paper on this topic which is available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

If you are a field service professional then you can subscribe and get the white paper sent straight to your inbox by clicking here and completing the brief application form

 

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For many field service organisations, outsourcing part of their service delivery operations has been a necessity of how they operate for a long time.  Whether it be to help meet seasonal demand or deliver service on products sold in geographies far beyond their home market, outsourcing field service operations to a specialist third party is common practice and has been for many, many years.

What has changed recently however, is that in today’s age of digitalisation, where more and more frequently the field tech call may truly be the only 1-2-1 human interaction your customer’s have with your brand, we are no longer just outsourcing repair and maintenance work, we are now outsourcing a critical customer engagement opportunity as well.

 

And in this era of digitally empowered consumers, ready to tweet, post or blog every time they have an axe to grind, you want to make pretty darn sure your third party partners are not letting you down in the CSAT stakes.

It is now absolutely critical for service organisations to increase their visibility into outsourced service processes. However, the good news is that extending your service chain no longer means losing track of how well your customers’ needs are being met.

The technology exists to provide your partners’ techs the ability to capture customer, product, equipment, and work order information.

And this holds true even when we factor in that field service companies now also have more options available when it comes to structuring their outsourcing relationships, from traditional agreements where third parties agree to complete a set number of work orders, to more integrated scenarios where the third-party provider becomes a true extension of the service organisation and its’ brand.

A Changing Mix of Outsourcing Partners

It likely comes as no surprise to you that the majority of service companies (over three quarters according to research by The Service Council) are already outsourcing at least some of their field service operations. In fact, the same research also shows that when engaged, third parties usually undertake about a third of assignments on average.

However, the general nature of outsourced service is currently changing as new models, often driven themselves by technology, have begun to emerge.

In the past service organisations would hand handed some portion of their work load across to a third-party provider, maybe a managed dealer network. However, the rapid rise of the gig economy is beginning to challenge the existing status quo.

 

Independent contractors are likely to continue to expand their presence, and some third-party providers are emerging that actually pool these contractors and manage work assignments via online portals and other similar tools, which have proven to be hugely popular to date for contractors and service organisations alike.

And with many companies facing an ageing workforce crisis this trend is only set to continue, as volumes of work increase, whilst for many, just maintaining capacity could be a very real challenge.

Basically, if your company hasn’t yet thought about how to handle the use of third-party providers and independent contractors, my advice is to go start that process right now.

Connectivity is King

Of course choosing the right partner to outsource your work to is absolutely critical to your success. Remember, you are putting the strength of your brand in these folks hands. You have to be confident that they can not just meet your customer’s expectations but exceed them, and that they can do so on each and every service call.

You must demand your partners deliver the same levels of consistent, quality service you can expect form your own team – but this can be very difficult (if not impossible) to maintain if the right controls are not put into place.

Service organisations often complain about a loss of service quality when outsourcing work, so it is critical to establish ways to track processes and controls throughout the service supply chain.

 

For both parties sake, any agreements with your third-party providers must have total accountability clearly defined and the ability to monitor and manage performance is essential for such agreements to work.

That’s why connectivity is so crucial when working with third-party providers.

You must be able to quickly communicate information electronically to your partners and receive data back in near real-time to ensure you always have the visibility needed. Of course, connectivity is also very important for providing access for the third-party provider to schedule jobs efficiently, retrieve critical customer/asset data, and effectively communicate work order information back to you.

Technology: The Key to Successful Outsourcing

The good news is that the technology is in place today from Field Service Management (FSM) solution providers like us to make the seamless transition of data from one system to another so much simpler than it would have been even just five years ago.

However, such capabilities, whilst slowly becoming more common are far from ubiquitous amongst FSM solutions and dedicated support for managing third-party maintenance teams currently remains a specialist toolset.

Therefore, it is wise to do your research to understand what solution will work best for you, and ensure that it is a stipulated part of your agreement with any third party service organisation that the tools they use to empower their engineers are in harmony with your own choices.

It’s not that hard to get working with third party service providers right in this day and age - but at the same time it is more it is critical than ever that you don’t get it wrong.

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Jam-packed with some excellent and insightful statistics pulled from a number of extensive research projects this great infographic published by ClickSoftware outlines a roadmap to improving field service engagement.

Want to know more? There is an accompanying eBook to this infographic that explores the statistics featured below and more in further detail which is available for fieldservicenews.com subscribers.

 

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Click here to subscribe to Field Service News and get the eBook "A Roadmap to Field Service Engagement" sent directly to your inbox now

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Click here to subscribe to Field Service News and get the eBook "A Roadmap to Field Service Engagement" sent directly to your inbox now

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Sara Mueller, Field Service Portfolio Director, Program Development, Worldwide Business Research reflects on her research in building the program for this year’s Field Service USA conference and explores the growing connection between technology and customer experience...

Nurturing a customer-centric culture was a common 2017 priority expressed by service executives when I began researching the Field Service Fall program at the beginning of the year.

No matter what industry or how large the organisation was that I spoke to, no matter how much they were embracing digitization or mobile technologies, putting customers first was the common theme that weaved its way through the strategic vision of service organisations.

While this is a common theme, there are many different routes being taken to accomplish the goal of building a customer-centric culture. Each year service organisations are connecting more and more of their devices with the Internet of Things (IoT).

While IoT is being used to achieve greater operational efficiency and move from reactive to predictive service, service organisations are also exploring how they can use IoT data to build customer loyalty and competitive differentiation.

 

Most importantly perhaps is that IoT allows service organisations to monitor how customers use their products. They can tell when a machine is operating and whether or not certain features are being used properly or even at all.

This creates an opportunity for service organisations to step in and train their customer on better ways to use the equipment or how to take advantage of different capabilities that ensures they take full advantage of their product.

Technicians build rapport and are more likely to be viewed as the “trusted advisor,” what so many service organisations strive for. This also creates a doorway for discussing product or service upgrades depending on how the customer is using their product.

In order to nurture a culture that puts customers first, service organisations are shifting the conversations with their customers to be about buying results, rather than buying products.

With new business models and service contracts that allow customers to have options like only paying for up-time of equipment or discounts when equipment is not functioning properly, customers have more faith in what they are buying. It aligns the goals of the service organisation with that of their customers, and builds differentiation, customer loyalty, and even greater profitably when the right model and pricing is established.

In order to most efficiently serve customers in the field, many organisations are moving to a mixed-model field force: a mix of full-time and freelance or independent contractor employees. Service leaders are deciding which type of technician is best for remote locations or key accounts, for tier one calls or escalated issues. Once that balance has been established, service organisations are providing an appropriate level of transparency to both employees and freelancers to ensure service remains consistent no matter what type of technician shows up at the customer site. Proper freelance management systems and knowledge management tools are essential to support this shifting technician staffing model.

 

At the end of the day, in order to have a customer-centric culture, service organisations need to know what their customers think of them and what they are doing right and wrong. While customer satisfaction levels have long been an indicator of service organisation performance, many organisations are moving to embrace more strongly Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs.

What good are high customer satisfaction levels if your customers end up leaving out the back door?

Once an effective NPS or other standard metric program is in place, service leaders can take the knowledge gained to modify and evolve their customer offerings to line up with what their customers truly value.

Finally, perhaps the hottest buzz word used in field service today is the “uberizing” of service in order to put the customer first. Companies are continuing to monitor trailblazers like Amazon and Uber to put customer needs at the center of their operations. They are building or investing in telematics that can shorten the expected service delivery time window and offer features like a text message that lets the customer know when the technician is on his or her way or running late.

 

While this is a simple gesture, it’s been creating phenomenal results in customer satisfaction. Organisations are also creating processes and trainings that ensure employees have the authority and empowerment necessary to take the extra step to rectify a customer crisis that will result in raving fans.

As service organisations, customers have always been the reason for business. But by leveraging new technologies, committing to growth, and aligning business goals with that of their customers, service organisations will achieve the customer centricity goal driving their business this year.

 

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by:  Coresystems
Title: Understanding Crowd Service Solutions: The Evolution Of Field Service

 

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Synopsis:

Companies looking to stay ahead of the curve and adapt to the rapid advancement of digitalization in their respective industries have long been concerned with Field Service Management (FSM).

They have reimagined their business philosophies around the conviction that customer satisfaction is a major priority and that new innovations are also shifting customer demands. Innovative CEOs and service executives know that FSM software alone will not be enough to meet real-time service expectations and needs.

They are looking to something with the groundbreaking potential to revolutionise the services industry and customer experience. They are turning to crowd service solutions. What promises does crowd service offer the field services industry?

How can you use them to improve brand loyalty? Why will they be the only way forward in the age of IoT?

This white paper outlines the premise that the only way forward is to combine field service management with crowd service technology

Overview:

The white paper explores three key areas in establishing the case for a new crowd sourced approach to field service that leverages the growing 'gig-economy' in order to meet growing customer demands whilst reducing operational costs for field service organisations.

The Service Executive Bible: What Matters Most

It is only logical that service executives would be primarily concerned with optimising the customer experience.

In fact, a study conducted to determine key issues facing service executives in comparison to other business executives highlighted how much CSOs value customer satisfaction over other KPIs.

However, with the manpower currently available to them, CSOs are running up against a brick wall. In order to continue achieving their aim of consistent customer satisfaction improvement rates, they need a bigger team of technicians and experts who can keep up with the new pace being set by the latest innovations in technology. The trend is heading towards crowd services.

It will soon be the only way to meet the demands of a growing workload.

The Evolution Of Field Service

Just as the rise of machines gave rise to more advanced and capable machines, so to have field services evolved over the years. What used to be an analog process of collecting and sharing information about customers and devices, has now become automated, and in some cases completely digitalized.

This has in large part been the response to the need for more streamlined and efficient processes. FSM software ensures that everyone is on the same page: the company, the technicians, the customers.

The white paper explores the development of FSM in depth focussing on:

• The Way It Used To Be: The Analog Approach
• Today’s Standard: Field Service Management In The 21st Century
• Where We Are Headed: Crowd Service And Predictive Maintenance

Crowd Service Technology

A crowd service is a pool of skilled, freelance service technicians who are available to respond to service calls when needed. These crowd service technicians possess the necessary IT know-how to address various technical issues. Thanks to field service management software, they also have access to internal company manuals, tutorials and videos as well as to customer and device/machine specifics for getting the job done quickly and effectively.

 

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The topic of knowledge transfer and knowledge capture has been increasingly prominent within the field service sector, so the Field Service USA presentation on the topic by Greg Parker, building services portfolio director for Trane, is set to offer some well-timed guidance on best practice in this area this week at Field Service USA.

Kris Oldland spoke to him ahead of the event to get his thoughts on the topic.

“When we talk about knowledge transfer, we’re talking about how we bring information from where it is in one spot to where it needs to be,” Parker begins as we open the discussion.

“Not only that, it’s about can you get it there effectively and efficiently,” he continues. “I would say it’s like knowledge-on-demand.”

“As a technician in particular, many times you may be in a situation where you need to open your laptop or even look inside a manual and dig for information. Of course, the more seasoned, experienced techs are knowledgeable through years of experience, but those who don’t know everything – due to poor training or applying that information incorrectly – need to reference manuals for correct information.”

“So this knowledge or information-on-demand becomes ever more important as time goes along and the technique as to how we transfer this knowledge becomes even more important,” Parker adds.

Of course, with many companies facing a major crisis in replacing their ageing workforce has the importance of knowledge transfer programs grown from nice to have to critical?

 

“The short answer is yes,” Parker comments. “For some companies – depending on the environment and their customers and expectations – it could be essential today, for other companies it could be still just beneficial. At some point I’m sure we could all agree that whether it’s five years, ten years or even fifteen years down the road, it is going to become essential for everyone.”

Given the importance of knowledge transfer in terms of helping companies manage the transition from a workforce of baby boomers to millennials, is it important that these knowledge transfer programs embrace social media? Or is it more important that companies get into the mind-set and understanding that the way people absorb knowledge has changed when developing? Is it about embracing the technology, the culture or do the two just go hand in hand?

“People receive and process information differently today than they did five years ago and certainly different to how they did 20 years ago,” Parker comments. “I think the changing culture is part of it, but I also think technologies that allow people to receive and process technology will continue to evolve.”

“First there was Quattro Pro and Excel, then the Internet, now social media comes along and has continued to evolve to where we are today. What we are finding is a lot of different types of applications that someone, likely a millennial, is going to be using. For example, not everyone is using just Facebook or Twitter, they are using several different means of communication to get the information they need, from the daily news to how to fix their washer and drier.”

“If the question is how important is it to embrace social and mobile channels, I still believe it is important to understand what it means for you and your company. You need to ensure you are delighting your end user; the customer, then determine how you can best achieve that throughout the entire value chain,” Parker explains.

 

“You have to ask questions like ‘if my technician has informational demands would they do a better job?’ ‘Would a technician be more confident and portray better customer service because they are able to delight the customer?’ Keep in mind most times a technician is the face to the customer and the most trusted advisor.”

“Considering that, the next question is ‘how do we do that, and is embracing social and mobile a way to do that?’”

“What we learned eight or nine years ago, was technicians wanted to be able to communicate via social and mobile channels. Our approach was to foster and enable it. Recently, we took it to the next level where technicians could not only find the information that they needed, but they could comment and share as well.”

“We had to think about what were the pros and cons of this, and have we developed into a culture who is a more willing to share information now than several years ago?”

“The answer is yes, we are more liberal in the information we share and ultimately we are more transparent, but we want to be sure we can enable our workforce in the proper way to delight our customers.”

Having gone through the process himself, what exactly does Parker believe success looks like in terms of the implementation of knowledge transfer?

“I think success should be measured with a number of probes and not just one thing,” he begins.

“For us, how we look at this is both quantitative and qualitative. From a quantitative perspective we look at things such as how much information has been shared with the new tool, and can measure that far more than we ever could before,” Parker explained. “We will also look at a macro level to see if our customer service and customer satisfaction scores are improving.”

 

“From a quantitative perspective, we have seen a shift from technicians solely calling into the technical support line for help, to now leveraging the new social platforms which are faster, more validated and accurate.”

“However, it is not all about the metrics,” added Parker. “We wanted feedback from the technicians themselves to find out how well the new platforms were working, we used those testimonials to improve the organisation and determined what types of best practices were being shared using the knowledge transfer and social platform.”

So what advice does Parker have for companies looking to emulate the success Trane has had with their knowledge transfer programs?

“Look internally to your company, understand how your current communication process is working for your customers and what are their needs and wants,” Parker replied. “Are you meeting those needs as well as you want to or should be?”

“Every company has a different culture and different processes. You have to truly understand how your existing process is working, where you want it to be and then design a road map to get you there.”

 

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Ron Bucher, Director Worldwide Customer Support, AccuVein has been managing customer support for over 30 years in a wide variety of hi-tech companies in organisations both with and without field service and as such has an extensive and broad experience – so his forthcoming presentation at Field Service USA speaking on the challenge of separating product sales and post sales service is a session set to be full of deep insight.

Looking ahead of the conference Kris Oldland spoke with him about the challenges he will be addressing…

“What I have observed over the years is that for a lot of companies in any high-tech sector there is a certain amount of post sales account management required as all products have problems.” Bucher begins as we discuss why he has chosen to focus on the importance of ensuring product sales representatives don’t get absorbed into the post sales support process.

“In many companies the product sales representatives can get very consumed in managing post sales product issues and I believe almost all companies hire sales people to sell product and not to act as customer support managers.”

“So there is a hidden cost to every sales organisation if the service organisation is not managing all of those post-sales product support issues,” he explains.

Of course this issue, which is indeed a prevalent one, not only impacts the sales division’s efficiency but also can somewhat counter-intuitively negatively impact on the service department as well.

“Sales people tend not to be that experienced or effective in managing post-sales product support issues in a way that is optimal for the company – if they don’t understand the service process or the product, they can actually make the situation worse when they are involved in this process,” Bucher continues.

“The theme here really is if you can improve your customer support organisation  so that sales people don’t have to get involved in post-sales product support issues it is a win-win for the sales organisation, the service organisation and the company.”

One school of thought is that extended warranties and service contracts should be sold at that point of sale with the product as a solution, so once that is all in place it is easier for the post-sales customer service teams and the account management teams to make sure that everything does run smoothly for the customer. This is an approach that Bucher firmly supports.

“The best contribution any product sales rep can make to ensuring their customers are happy and ensuring their customers get the best post-sales support is to sell them a service agreement up front with the product,” he explains.

 

“Customers who have service support agreements are happier customers,” he adds.

“The reason is that when they do have problems it’s much less hassle for them. If a product is out of warranty, virtually all product companies will charge very high prices to fix an out of warranty product and the service level will be akin to ‘we will get to it when we can.’”

“It’s a world of difference to a customer, if they have that service agreement or   if they don’t. Customers don’t expect any product to be perfect, they expect every  product to fail at some time. What they really get disappointed at is how the problem is handled once the product has failed.”

“It is very easy for a customer up front to say ‘oh I don’t need a service agreement we’ll take our chances’ but that is the customer shooting themselves in the foot. A really good sales rep will explain to their customer what their experience will look like after the warranty expires if they don’t buy a service agreement and what their experience will be if they do buy a service agreement.”

“Customers buy a service agreement to eliminate and prevent pain.  It is not just an insurance policy – it is a higher level of service that you will get,” he concludes.

However, perhaps one significant barrier to adopting an approach that marries product and service sales is ingrained in the mind sets of many product sales reps.

Whilst, as Bucher explains customers do expect a device to fail, could it be that in building up the value of their product many product sales people just don’t want to admit that this is the case?

In focussing on talking up the reliability of a device as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or differentiator against the competition, do some product sales reps lead themselves up a blind alley from which they can’t back down at the last minute and say … but when it does actually break we have a service package…  is a reluctance by product sales reps to acknowledge that the device they are selling can fail part of the problem?

“They don’t want the customer thinking anything negative about the product while they are waiting for the customer to send them a PO for a purchase,” Bucher agrees.

“One way around that is to sell them the product and then come back to them again within 90 days to sell them a service agreement. A lot of high-tech companies will consider that to be a service agreement sold at the time of product sales if it‘s within 90 days of the product sale. So the sales rep still gets the commission as long as it’s within that period.”

 

However, an alternative approach is for product and service should be sold by separate teams, which Bucher sees as the optimum approach.

“Selling service is very different to selling product, as one of my colleagues used to say selling service is like selling the invisible,” he begins.

“The most successful model that I’ve personally had experience with is where the product sales and service sales are owned by separate teams. We hired an experienced commission sales rep, who was dedicated to telesales for service sales only and he worked with the individual territory reps who sold the product and that was by far the most successful model I’ve ever seen.”

“You do need someone selling service that a) enjoys commission sales and b) really does understand the service proposition and 80 to 90% of product sales people don’t really have the time to understand the value proposition of a service agreement and if you don’t understand it you can’t sell it.”

Although, whilst organisations can take steps to separate the sales and support functions, it is another challenge to get customers to follow suit.

One of the challenges which leads to sales reps being dragged into the support process, is that a good sales rep will take pride in building his relationships and won’t want post-sales product issues to put those relationships at risk. This can often result with the sales rep being positioned as the go to guy for the customer.

But if the service support structure isn’t strong enough that can lead to the sales rep having their focus directed in an unproductive place.

“You can’t blame the sales rep for getting involved if the service organisation is not strong enough to solve these problems on their own,” Bucher comments.

“I walked into a situation like at that at one point in my career where the top sales guy was spending 80% of his time managing post-sales product issues when I came in.”

“I started in a company where the company really understood the value in post-sales product support and really invested heavily in it. The sales reps never had to be involved after the product sale, and that was the school that I learned in and I took that learning to practically every company afterwards.”

 

“Sales people really don’t want to manage post-sales issues but if they feel like that are forced to they’ll do it because they have relationships with these customers, sometimes long lasting personal relationships and they’re going to do what they’ve got to do to make sure the customer is happy, so this is a two way street between service and sales.”

“My message to service managers is ‘if you think sales people aren’t very good at managing post sales product issues and sometimes make things worse, it is incumbent on you to make your service organisation strong enough so they don’t have to get involved.”

“The key take-away here is that your company could sell a lot more product if the sales reps are not involved in post sales service issues. And that’s a take-away not just for service managers but also for CEOs. Sadly, a lot of CEOs are spending sales resources on post-sales product support when they don’t even know it,” Bucher asserts.

However, whilst the issue is a considerable challenge, it can be overcome insists Bucher.

“It really is possible to run your customer support organisation in a manner where the customer would rather come to your group rather than the product sales guy - it takes a lot of work, first of all you’ve got to recognise the value of doing it,” he explains.

“You can’t just hire technicians. You’ve got to hire people who are not only good at fixing the product but are even better at fixing the customers. You’ve got to have people who have exceptional communication skills, they have to have exceptional personal relationship skills and they’ve got to be able to talk with vice presidents as well as they can technicians.”

“If you can hire those kind of people then you will be hiring people that will be doing the post-sales account management that consumes so many sales people.”

And while it sounds like a tough ask, Bucher clearly stresses that it is still possible.

“I run into customer support leaders who say you can’t find people who have all that. I’ve done it, in fact I’ve done that my whole career, I even lived that as a field service technician myself.”

“Tell me it’s difficult, I’ll agree with you, tell me it’s really difficult, I’ll agree with you, but tell me it’s impossible? I’ll show you it's not.”

 

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Ahead of giving a presentation on this topic at Field Service USA, Scott E. Day, Executive Vice President, Thyssenkrupp Elevator Corporation, gives us his insight on taking the right path on the journey to embracing digital services...

When we embark on a mission to digitalize our business processes, it’s easy to just jump in and assume that if we can get it done we will be more efficient and make more money.

While digitizing is a smart move – it is important to think about: data structure, data cost, hardware and access carefully.

The goal is to make sure your strategy is complete and ensure your customers need your services above all else. So, before jumping in to keep up with competitors, realise that data is not the only consideration.

What’s Your Business Model?

It’s important to know what your business model is and what you’re trying to accomplish with an Internet of Things (IoT) solution.

You might be seeking efficiencies, like those found by thyssenkrupp via our MAX solution (more on that later). Or you might have other ideas like Splunk’s CEO, Godfrey Sullivan did - using data to determine the likelihood of lease renewals and the health of tenant’s businesses based on the frequency of the elevator stops at each tenant’s floors.

Whatever your business model and reason for getting into IoT, this is the leading decision that drives the remaining components of the infrastructure you use.

Data

So let’s start with data. What data will your technicians consume and what data will your customers want? Many companies want all the data, which makes it easier to do analytics down the road.

However, if you are sending raw data from hundreds of thousands of complex machines, you’d better have deep pockets.

If this level of data is needed, data compression algorithms are widely available and should be considered critical in setting up schemas to get the data to the cloud and to the consumers.

Connectivity

If your project requires attaching hardware to equipment you service, it’s important to understand the full costs and trade-offs between a one-time hardware expenditure and long-term data costs.

Depending on the industry, choosing low-cost solutions like LoRa, a long range low power wireless platform, are great for low consumption applications. This is not the case for elevators, they require cellular connectivity because multiple processors are connected within a single unit each one sending massive amounts of data.

Cellular

If using cellular, consider if your customers, your call centres or your technicians will need realtime access to the state of the machine to find a balance between cost and performance. If you are sending massive amounts of data, compare the costs of 3G versus 4G/LTE services versus the time to transmit and the coverage of those technologies.

Keep in mind that 3G may appear to be cheaper, but it won’t be long before 4G/LTE services become the new norm and the piece of hardware you installed may need to be replaced or upgraded if you’ve rolled out with lower bandwidth and slower technology.

Make vs. Buy

When thinking about hardware beyond telecom, it’s important to weigh time to market against core competency.

Are you an engineering company that specialises in building microprocessor and telecom devices? And can they communicate serially and temporarily store data until the right condition is met to send it?

If not, it might be best to look for off-the-shelf hardware that will allow you to get the total solution adding value to the business and customers sooner.

Cloud Solutions and Predictive Analytics

For thyssenkrupp, this is the next frontier. We are moving our business into a more predictive, condition-based maintenance model.

This will allow our technicians to work on the right issues during every single visit to a customer’s location. This is where efficiency and customer value meet.

Fixing it right the first time, or using lifecycle models to predict and replace parts before they fail are key to a customer base that is looking for guaranteed up time and always-on performance.

Microsoft Azure, GE Predix, and IBM Watson are to name a few, and each have their niche in Industry 4.0.

Digitization to Digitalization

When planning the business benefits for IoT solutions, transparency of information is where digitization meets digitalization. As in the Splunk example, can you monetise the data?

Does making it more accessible to make your field workforce make them more efficient?

Many businesses have begun providing portals full of information to their customers. Our experience has been that many times this data sharing is overwhelming for customers who don’t necessarily have the time to read it.

To demonstrate value and monetise the solution, it’s got to be the data or services that the customer wants and will spend money for.

At thyssenkrupp, our vision is to provide technicians with access to a wide variety of information specific to the building which will help them service the elevator more effectively in turn improving the elevator experience for tenants.

This is possible, via access to live data from the elevator controller (brain) and to schematics and manuals.

At the same time, destination dispatch kiosks at every floor allow customers to not only select their desired floor, but to also see streaming services displaying things like weather, stock market and news feeds. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near Field Communication), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications make it easier to recognise people so the elevator system can place the call automatically for them.

So, what seemed like a simple case of connecting a machine to a cloud and making your technicians more efficient is really a more sustaining decision that requires a well thought out strategy.

Digitizing your current processes is the simple part, and many are doing it. The strategy needs to include how to turn digitization into digitalization through the right infrastructure.

 

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