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This great infographic from the team at Astea covers some of the key challenges and some top tips for ensuring any outsourced field service operations continue to uphold your brand standards and ensure your customer satisfaction levels remain high.

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Coen Jeukens, Chief Service Officer, D-Essence describes himself as a business leader with sales DNA and a service heart, here he outlines the knowledge he thinks every service manager should have in his tool belt when it comes to selling service both externally and internally...

In the boardroom Let us start with an example of a typical business plan review meeting:

• Exhibit A: our targets are more ambitious than our current performance.
• Exhibit B: we face increased competition, increased customer volatility and shorter product life cycles leading to declining market share and diminishing attach rates.

Now suppose the CEO invites you, the field service manager, to pitch a solution to this non-sustainable situation.

Are you prepared? Will your message and vocabulary resonate with the board members?

For as long as I can remember, field service managers bring a message of reality about healthy and sustainable profit margins - about attach rates and trusted relationships.

What do you think the sales manager brought forward as solution? A message of hope: “if we introduce a new model, add a new feature or drop the price, we will regain market share”.

When it comes to choice, a message of hope prevails over one of reality.

What makes the clock tick?

The ugly truth of corporate economics: it’s all about sales and success is measured in revenue figures.

Add to that the sales perception that after-sales does not exist without an initial sale and you know the picking order is set. Also factor in mind that most CEO’s have a sales background.

Sales targets

Sales is a big numbers game. Product hero’s playing with capital expenditures.

Going for the win is putting in a peak performance in a short period of time, balancing effort and reward. Asking sales to include Opex related  propositions in the sale does sound altruistic considering that doing so complicates, lengthens and may jeopardise the sale. What about profitability?

In the sales mind-set profitability is not a driver or performance indicator. Not because they don’t care, far from that. Because in most customer organisations the decision making unit for both Capex and Opex are different entities optimising their own silo.

Profitability, who cares? Certainly not sales.

Funnelling leads and Qualification

Sales vocabulary uses words like suspect, prospect, lead and qualification. Elias Lewis has put these words in context in 1898 when he conceived the sales funnel. This funnel is engrained in every sales process. It is in the DNA of sales people to convert leads into a sale.

One of the most important steps in the sales process is the qualification of a lead. Here sales balances effort with reward. When service starts feeding the funnel, it is crucial to know the difference between a lead in the eyes of a field service engineer and a lead according to sales.

In the eyes of sales service-leads are a big bag of small peanuts.

Converting those requires a lot of effort with small reward. For sales to follow-up on service-leads, those leads need enrichment and qualification.

What we need to grow sales? Leads, more leads and qualified leads.

Window of opportunity

Though the clock ticks sales, typical sales solutions to the corporate challenge fail to reverse declining market share or do so at the expense of profitability.

In both cases the course is not sustainable. This is good news as it provides the opening for the field service manager to come forward with his ideas.

Remember, growing sales is an operational process.

Growing your business is changing your business model.

Find the right tune

Although ideas have been voiced for many years at field service conferences, they will be new for sales once rephrased in sales vocabulary. It will become a customer touch points game with roles for hero’s and ambassadors. It is the perseverance of sales to get to a customer on board. It is the caring mindset of service to keep a customer happy. It is their joint effort to come up with new business.

Find the right mix between sales DNA and a service heart to develop new business.

How will sales react? As long as the field service manager doesn’t gloat over his profit contribution and trustworthy customer relationships … and sales can stay in the lead, then sales will go along.

Field service managers can lead by following.

 

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Who are the most influential people in the global field service sector that you need to pay attention to in 2017?

The Field Service News #FSN20 is our list of the individuals we believe will be key influencers in our industry across the next twelve months. Those included in the list have been selected by our own panel of industry insiders, who were given the simple criteria of identifying people who will have a significant impact on field service thinking.

However, more than just an annual list of 20 individuals the #FSN20 has grown since it’s launch to become a true celebration of excellence and innovation within our industry.

There are some familiar names and some new faces on this years list and as always we don’t expect everyone to agree with our selection - at it’s heart the #FSN20 was conceived as a tool to get everyone in our industry thinking about who it is that they have come across in the global field service sector that has made them think, who has made them question the accepted paradigms, who has inspired them to do just one little thing more in their own day to day role.

The #FSN20 is not just about the list our panel has put together. It is about fostering discussion that celebrates the unsung heroes of the field service sector. So look out for the online version of this list as well to take part in the debate.

But for now, ladies and gentleman and without further a do, in no particular order, we are pleased to introduce the #FSN20 of 2017...

Mark Brewer, Global Industry Director - Service Management

Brewer is a new entry to the #FSN20 having recently moved to IFS from PTC.

The message from the IFS hierarchy was loud and clear when they held their last World Conference in Gothenburg towards the end of last year. Field Service was a key priority moving forward and their new owners EQT had every intention of pushing the Swedish company to keep doing what has made them a well respected brand within manufacturing and field service management circles - but do it bigger, better and to get to there faster.

Having taken the reigns of the service management division globally Brewer is set to figure prominently in the industry across the next twelve months.

 

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Professor Tim Baines, Group Director of the Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice

Baines retains his place on this years list and is perhaps he one person that has appeared multiple times on the list whose entry becomes even more deserved each year.

Baines has been at the centre of the servitization movement for as long as anyone and although many of his peers such as Neely and Lightfoot should share equal status for being the Godfathers of Servitization, it is fair to say that Baines’ work as a leading proponent of the servitization movement is as unparalleled as it is inexhaustible. The Aston Spring Servitization Conference which is the show-piece of the Aston Centre for Research and Practice continues to grow in terms of both audience and importance each year and it’s location in Lucerne, Switzerland this year is a testament to it’s growing status on the international industrial map. Whilst Baines’ would humbly point to the great team he has working with him at Aston, his role in the global shift towards servitization simply cannot be overlooked.

 

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consultant, Strategies for GrowthSM

Another that has been ever present on the #FSN20 since it’s inception and someone who is likely to remain on the list until the day comes where he retires, which given Pollock’s passion for the industry and seemingly eternal youth may won’t be any time soon!

Pollock is not only still a key commentator and analyst within our sector whose papers and features are not only widely read but also hugely respected, but he has been a mentor for a number of key figures within the global field service industry, including a number of other #FSN20 members, and also Field Service News’ own highly respected Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland.

However, Pollock’s inclusion on the #FSN20 isn’t just based on his past merits, his organisation Strategies for GrowthSM continues to provide some of the most detailed research and insightful analysis for the field service sector that is essential reading for any field service executives that wish to stay in touch with what is driving our industry forward.

 

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Thomas Igou, Editorial Director, Copperberg

Igou has been integral to Copperberg’s continued success and growth in the European field service conference circuit, In fact with five industry focussed events now running across the continent that should be of interest to senior field service and aftermarket executives, Copperberg are firmly established central pillar within the European field service community, and Igou sits proudly at the heart of that. In his role as Editorial Director, Igou is responsible for making sure the key topics in the industry are raised and the leading thinkers within our space are given a voice.

A key influencer within our industry.

 

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Mark Holleran, COO, Xplore Technologies

Under Holleran’s leadership Xplore Technologies acquired Motion Computing and became the 2nd largest manufacturer of rugged tablets in the world.

Holleran is a man who not only truly understands the different sectors his clients operate in but also who truly appreciates the importance of understanding his customers’ work-flows and therefore their technological needs.

A perfect case in point being the inclusion of a HDMI in on their XSLATE D10 rugged tablet, which makes it a perfect device for Telco and Pay TV engineers needing to test signals - which is exactly why it is there.

We don’t expect anything other than rugged tablets to be coming out of Xplore, but we do expect them to keep delivering best-in-class products in this form factor. As Holleran says “that’s what we do and we are the worlds best at it.

 

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Dr John Erkoyuncu, Through-life Engineering Services Institute, Cranfield University

Erkoyuncu takes over from Professor Howard Lightfoot as a representative of Cranfield University in the #FSN20 this year, however it isn’t just a straight like for like swap. Whilst the two worked together at the Through Life Services Institute, Erkoyuncu’s place on this year list is based primarily around the work he is doing in both industrial maintenance simulation and also augmented reality, and as such we believe he will be a key commentator and influencer on our sector in the years to come.

 

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Jonathan Massoud, Divisional Director & Market Analyst Field Service, WBR

Massoud’s role as Divisional Director at WBR puts him in control of a number of the industry’s key events including Field Service USA which is the jewel in the crown as the key point in the USA field service calender.

In addition to Field Service USA, WBR also run a number of important industry focussed events including Field Service Medical and Field Service Europe and in his role as Divisional Director Massoud is directly involved with each of the events and responsible for delivering industry leading content to keep field service professionals up to date with the key trends with in the industry. Massoud is also responsible for overseeing WBR’s research and a respected analyst within the sector

 

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Sumair Dutta, Customer Satisfaction Officer, The Service Council

Chief Customer Officer for The Service Council™ Dutta is responsible for new member acquisition, member engagement, community expansion, as well as the development and expansion of TSC’s Smarter Services oriented research agenda and portfolio.

He is also heavily involved in The Service Council’s ability to provide service executives the ability to benchmark their operations and also provide guided insight to improve service organisation performance through dedicated research programs. Dutta also plays a key role in building out TSC’s community platform focused on becoming the single source of information and networking for service executives globally and is a prolific author on the matter of field service.

 

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Click here to see page two of the 2017 #FSN20

 

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Laraine Geddes from Kirona, experts in dynamic resource scheduling, mobile and field service technology contributes an exclusive guide to successfully managing your organisation’s field based workforce...

1. Eradicate paper based systems

Expecting field workers to use paper based records is fraught with potential disaster and inefficiency. Paper based systems often required duplication of work, with data having to be re-entered into back office systems.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Deploy mobile applications in the field so that employees only have to record information once while in the field. This improves accuracy of data and frees up more time to carry out more jobs per day. Mobile communication can also reduce inefficient back office administration tasks, or be used to record the information needed for audits.
• Use a workflow driven series of checklists and fields on the mobile device to make sure individual workers follow a standard process. This will ensure continuity of good practice across a region.
• Mobile devices are far more secure than paper. If they are lost data can be locked down through encryption, or Mobile Device Management systems.

2. Dynamic scheduling

Efficiently appointing who visits which site is simplified using dynamic scheduling rather than manual scheduling. Staff availability vs skills vs customer/site availability is difficult enough to balance, add to that factors like service levels, job location, cancellations, even traffic on the road and efficient scheduling is almost impossible.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Deploy dynamic scheduling software that can, in real-time, optimise the utilisation of workers in the field - the right person goes to the right location at the right time. This way they spend more time on site and less time waiting for the next job or, for instance, driving unnecessarily long distances to the next job
• Scheduling software can be tuned to deploy personnel based upon pre-set ‘rules’. Work with your technology vendor to utilise this feature so that services can be optimised; like prioritising workers that have visited the site or customer before, or restricting distances to be travelled by employees, or scheduling according to customer needs.
• Consider that most mobile working visits will usually need a follow up visit or another appointment made with a different worker – your scheduling software can allocate new appointments and visits – there and then3. Integrate Systems

Busy staff are often overwhelmed with the amount of departments or agencies they have to collaborate with and the number of systems that they have to provide information to.

By failing to integrate these systems, workers spend many more hours than need be, rekeying data into multiple back-office systems – duplicating effort and creating the potential for mistakes and errors.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Choose a mobile solution that can integrate and ‘communicate’ with any system. If implemented correctly this will mean that staff will only need to enter information into their mobile devices once, whereby the data then populates all relevant back-office systems automatically.
• Integrating mobile applications with scheduling systems is particularly powerful. The mobile software can updates the schedule with the emerging day information; allowing visits to be automatically redistributed between staff where visits over-run, customers are unavailable, appointments are cancelled etc.

4. Visibility of front line services

By failing to have visibility of operations in the field, organisations fail to respond to challenges as they happen and lose the opportunity to resolve them at minimum cost and disruption to the customer.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Providing mobile devices enables you to track all the factors which impact field performance like: routing of employees, time spent onsite, incomplete jobs, missed appointments, lateness etc. This data can be used to analyse operations, fine tune the scheduling engine or to demonstrate ongoing improvements in efficiency.

5.Having customer information to hand

Arriving at the customer’s location without complete historical notes puts the service provider at a disadvantage when providing its services and is disappointing for customers who expect their service provider to have comprehensive knowledge of their relationship.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• By using mobile technology the appropriate notes can be delivered to the workers’ mobile devices when they are needed. This means a professional can provide a service with the continuity the customer would expect. It also reduces the risk of them not being able to deliver that service on their first visit.
• Organisations can allow historical records to be sent to field workers for that customer, allowing them to see full details of historic work completed with any certificates, photos, contracts that are relevant. They can also see future planned work future work. This minimises the risk of duplicating work that has already been done or will be done during the course of a contract.

 

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The challenge of No Fault Found (NFF) diagnosis is possibly the most frustrating situation for both your field service engineers and customers alike. However, left unchecked NFF has the potential to have an even greater negative impact on a field service organisation. To find out more we spoke to Dr John Erkoyuncu from Cranfield University having earlier seen him give a fascinating presentation on the topic at last year’s Maximize Europe event...

No Fault Found (NFF) can be perhaps the most frustrating end result in any field service visit. The customer’s issue remains resolved, your engineer’s become frustrated at their inability to do their job and perhaps more importantly the someone has to absorb the cost of the truck-roll and the engineers time on site, despite the fact the situation is exactly the same - i.e. no one is any the wiser as to what the problem is in the first place.

 

At last year’s Maximize event hosted by ServiceMax in Amsterdam towards the end of the year, Dr John Erkoyuncu of Cranfield University gave a fantastic speech on this topic which had the majority of the audience nodding-along in both empathy as they heard him discuss the issue and in agreement as he looked at the potential size of impact NFF can have on our industry.

Field Service News were able to catch up with Erkoyuncu during the conference to find out more about his thoughts on the topic.

What is No Fault Found?

For those unfamiliar to the terminology NFF or sometimes referred to as No Trouble Found (NTF) is the phenomenon whereby an engineer is unable to diagnose why a fault that has been reported is occurring.

As Erkoyuncu explains “No Fault Found is the case where you have a fault that is reported, you go and try to do some diagnosis and you just can’t find a root cause for what the fault is.”

“As a result of this you end up in a situation where it is unclear what you should do next. You could go back and do some more diagnostic testing and try to drill down to what the cause is - but at this point you don’t know if you should be replacing the item of repairing it.”

Often this decision will be locked between the pressures of being time critical and keeping your customers happy on one side, against possibly unnecessary costs - which when stacked up could serously eat into overall profits, on the other.

In fact, NFF is one of the biggest challenges field service companies face in terms of being able to find suitable resolutions whilst being assured these decisions are made based on a standpoint of best practice and well-educated assumptions.

This issue can of course lead to understandable tensions between manufacturer, service providers and their shared customers.

“You are in a situation where you as the manufacturer or service provider can’t in fact explain to the customer what is driving their issue. This is in some ways embarrassing and of course the customer doesn’t want to be paying for a service that has not resolved his problem.” Erkoyuncu explains.

 

“So you have problems in terms of who is paying for the service and whose responsibility it is to fix it. It really is a grey area as it is uncertain as to what’s happened or not and whether that falls within the scope of a warranty.”

“It becomes a matter of trust. From the maintainers, to the solution provider to the customer everyone is facing a challenge.”

The changing ownership of NFF This of course can lead to issues in relationships, with faith being eroded amongst the various parties. This in itself has numerous costs but is it possible to identify a tangible cost of NFF?

“We did a survey with the UK No Fault Found working group and what we were trying to understand was what is the cost of no fault found and who bears this cost,” Erkoyuncu explains.

“What we found was that a large chunk of the overall cost, something like 50 to 60% is taken on by the customer. Whilst this is an average figure it just shows that typically the customer has to take on the ownership of No Fault Found.”

“The amount that the OEM and the supply chain takes on varies between 10 and 30% depending on contracts, which is then shared between the supply chain and the OEM.”

“It just shows that typically it is the customer taking on the costs and as we begin to look at outcome based contracts this simply cannot continue. More and more the OEM and the supply chain will have to start taking on the cost of No Fault Found and this is why awareness of this issue is surely going to grow.”

The actual cost of No Fault Found

Whilst there are of course some easily identifiable calculable costs that Erkoyuncu and his colleagues were able to utilise in their study, there are also numerous softer, intangible effects that service providers and OEMs must be aware of also - which can have significant negative impact on a business.

“The intangible aspects are things like reputation” explains Erkoyuncu “Companies could well lose contracts as a result of not dealing with NFF in an acceptable manner, you may lose the trust that you have built over so many years - how can you quantify that? I’m not sure and I’m not sure if anyone could even begin to quantify that.”

“But when you are estimating things like cost or even R.O.I for being proactive with no fault found we need to find some numbers against the intangible impact as well.”

 

“For example some people in the audience at today’s session [at Maximize Europe] commented that they felt the customer was really important so they just went ahead and replaced the item.”

“That is the kind of thing you are going to experience just because of that intangible factor.

You don’t know what the fault is, but you do know you don’t want to damage the relationship with the customer.”

How to avoid No Fault Found

It is evident then that NFF could have a significant growing impact for many companies, particularly as outcome based contracts become more in vogue. But is there anything that companies can be doing to help them overcome a problem that is by it’s very essence shrouded in mystery and enigma?

“I think there are multiple things related to this,”Erkoyuncu opens.

“One is about the design in particular. Are we designing systems that are fault tolerant to begin with? Is there redundancy built in? We’ve got those kind of challenges. For example, you may have a system that has NFF regularly but if that system can self-diagnose and self improve this then that NFF wouldn’t necessarily be a problem.”

 

“So one area to address is can we design systems that don’t create problems related to NFF?”

“Another area is around behaviour and people,” Erkoyuncu continues.

“Are they being trained properly? Have they got the right incentive structure? For example let’s look at a case where by a field service engineer is paid on the basis of how many times he fixes an item. If they can’t fix it and they can’t define what the problem is - they don’t get paid. So are they then likely to report on NFF properly.”

“There is a big data issue as well and there is also a major issue around whether the data that is available is comprehensive and robust enough - so, there is an additional challenge here too.”

“Therefore, understanding the trends and identifying what the root problems are is quite hard, as the information is not stored properly.”

“Reporting is absolutely a major challenge, as is diagnostic testing. Is it being undertaken properly?

Is the right tool kit being used. Those things are very important as well as you want to be able to very quickly diagnose the conditions,” he adds.

Key steps to overcoming the challenges of No Fault Found

This is obviously a highly prevalent challenge across the industry and one that as mentioned previously is only set to become magnified as business models of OEMs shift towards servitization.

However, here are some key steps that Erkoyuncu recommends that can help field service providers minimise the potential impact of NFF on their own businesses.

“I think the solution to this is a mixture of technology as well as behavioural and process oriented aspects as well,” Erkoyuncu begins.

“I don’t think there is a single solution. We need to look at things like diagnostic testing for intermittent faults. Companies like Rolls Royce and BAE have started using things like environmental chambers. What this does is allow you to simulate the various environmental conditions to allow you to see quickly what the problem is for specific components”

“So on one hand, I do think that this is one area [diagnostic testing] that can improve, but I do also think companies need to consider how their actual technicians providing the maintenance are behaving and then alongside this assess whether their that organisational culture is actually fostering the types of behaviour that they are looking to avoid.”

 

One other very practical piece of advice is to clearly identify your organisations position on NFF within SLA and Warranty contracts.

“This is absolutely and important step,” says Erkoyuncu.

“When you consider the example of FlyBe - they presented some results about the number of NFF they experienced over a set period and they highlighted that about 20% of their service calls were related to NFF.”

“Just looking at this one example you could wipe out all your profits if you ignore the NFF challenge so it should be clearly defined within contracts.”

 

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Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower discusses the growing shift towards outcome based services and explains why it is key for field service organisations...

Mobile workforce management software is today a “must have”, not a “nice to have”, part of a company’s technology stack.

Organisations managing mobile or remote workers must ensure a consistent customer experience and grow revenue while still maximising the productivity of staff. They must do this while also managing supply and fluctuating demand, meeting SLAs, controlling costs, and ensuring consistent well branded service delivery. Technology is the best tool to use to achieve those objectives.

So if we know what the company needs, what does the customer expect? We know that customers expect better ‘outcomes’ for the monies they spend on service delivery. It’s not about just appearing on time and repairing the product or equipment any more.

What are outcome based services?

Outcome-based services acknowledge customers in a much different way than traditional break fix services. Customers have wants and needs, surely, but they also now require that more tailored or improved outcomes be driven by those wants and needs. They are no longer looking at just the specific qualities of a product or service, but at the ways in which each can use your services to meet their own goals.

Business outcomes are increasingly becoming a real selling point that differentiate one company from another. Focusing your service offerings more on business outcomes edge out the competition, build customer loyalty and longevity, and improve the lifetime value of each and every customer.

Outcome based service is not a new concept. Why is it top of mind now?

The simple answer is technology. Technology facilitates offering outcome based services in a way manual processes never could. Technologies like that enable hybrid workforces, optimise by customer priority, IoT, M2M and even a truly mobile workforce management software facilitate outcome based services like no other technology which have emerged in the last few decades.

 

These can be used by field service organisations to deliver proactive services, based on data and information which improves the overall experience for the customer by helping them use the products better, or more efficiently.

Solid commercials can also be built around the offering, including providing customers more opportunity to purchase complementary things they might need.

Outcomes based service delivery takes that proactive service model, facilitated by IoT/M2M and MWFM and layers on additional services to make that customer more sticky, long term, and it can even increase revenue or profits along the way.

How does a mobile workforce organisation transition to an “outcomes-based” approach to field services delivery? 

Offering outcome based services is the next generation revenue model in field service. The field service industry has long been a hot bed of technology and process innovation, especially as metrics have shifted to a customer centric model. In that customer centric model, customer satisfaction, retention, and / or additional in-brand purchases are the outcome desired.

Even more attention is being focused on relating payment structures to outcomes and paying based on up-time, not just meeting a maintenance schedule or a break-fix SLA.

Use technology to make the shift in a cohesive way. Software can be used to identify a product which requires maintenance to prevent a future failure, or to indicate, often before the customer is aware, when a product like a boiler in a manufacturing facility is about to fail.

Field managers can plan labour capacity based on failure data and maintenance requirements more accurately to reduce time to repair, meeting or exceeding contracted response times.

 

Since service organisations can predict future failures, and schedule and optimise teams into future schedules, remote workers can be proactively, intelligently deployed for repairs, reducing schedule costs while preventing total operational standstills that impact the customer’s productivity. Imagine the benefit of preventing a total line shut down at a plant because your team was deployed prior to a total seizure of a machine.

Maintenance schedules can be also created which improve equipment ‘up time’ and even proactively address upgrade opportunities which offer additional revenue.

Mobile workers deployed with devices outfitted with real time, integrated mobile dispatching software can access information to address the immediate needs, but also to tap into additional information, such as training and product usage guides, ‘how to’ guides, that add additional benefits, providing that new outcome for each customer, resulting in not only reducing the field service organisation’s own costs, but ultimately in improved customer satisfaction, increased sales of future service and maintenance contracts, accessories or replacement products at end of life.

Outcome based services facilitated by technologies like mobile workforce management software which provide analytics, capacity planning, mobile dispatch, and optimised routing to plan staff, create maintenance plans, mobile on site process, facilitate on site collaboration and provide customers with information and data, help field based organisations reduce the complexity of operating products like industrial boilers or elevators, and help customers reduce the operational complexity of product operation, while maximise usage of the products.

Why are outcomes-based approach so important for field based organisations?

The most important benefits of offering outcomes based services are loyalty and improved future revenues, as well as reduced operating costs. Think ‘customer for life’.

Outcome based services reduce the complexity of operating products, while providing value added services for your customers which increase the usage of products. That proactive approach improves the customer experience which leads to increased customer revenue in the future.

Outcome based approaches teach the customer organisation, as well as the field service teams, to value ‘up-time’ rather than focusing on ‘downtime’ which requires repair, minimising the time an asset is down or a customer is inconvenienced.

 

The technology exists right now to move to a proactive, outcome based service model. The most successful companies are the early adopters that use their mobile workforce management solutions to deliver the technology which supports this evolution. Don’t delay -- make the leap sooner, rather than later, before your loyal customers become loyal to another organisation

 

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Jim Baston continues Charlie’s journey as the serialisation of his service oriented book beyond Great Service continues as we bring this section on “The Revelation” concludes...

 

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If you missed the earlier parts of this series you can catch up by clicking here

 

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As you may recall, Charlie comes to the realisation that the highest level of service that his company can provide is by helping the customer be better off for having hired them. That will require his field service team to be proactive in looking for and recommending products and services that will benefit the customer and help them achieve their business goals. Charlie’s plan to get his technicians to sell seems to come off of the rails by the technicians’ reluctance to act as salespeople for the company.

Fortunately for Charlie, his very able service supervisor Ken, helps him sort things out. As they sit together going over the details of their service meeting, Ken points out:

“What Angus said Charlie, was that it was not the technician’s job to ‘sell’. He didn’t say anything about the technician’s responsibility to help the customer run their facilities better. Actions speak louder than words and Angus’ actions—as you just pointed out—clearly indicate he believes that serving the customer in this way is very much a part of the technician’s role.”

“Ken, you’re going to have to slow down. I’m getting dizzy. Isn’t ‘selling’ and speaking to the customer about things they should do to run their facilities more effectively the same thing?”

“No. There is a subtle but important difference, and most people get these confused. It’s why there are very few service companies that could honestly tell you they are fully satisfied with the work being generated by the field service team.”

 

Ken continues: “Let’s say you go to the doctor with a headache and you’re prescribed a pill to relieve the pain. Have you been truly served?”

“I guess so. I wanted to get rid of my headache and the doctor gave me the medication to do that,” says Charlie.

“Hmmm. Let’s compare that to an emergency service call. The customer calls complaining of no heat. We go to the site and find a blown fuse. We replace the fuse and get the heat back on. The customer signs our work order and we leave. Is that a comparable situation?”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“Unfortunately Charlie, I don’t think that the customer (or patient in the case of the doctor) was well served. Would you not think that the doctor should at least ask a few questions to explore the possible cause of the headache?  Where does it hurt? How long have you had it? What have you taken so far to relieve the pain? That sort of thing. Would you not expect basic information to be taken, including your pulse and blood pressure, or have your ears or throat checked? If something of concern was found, would you be surprised if further tests were suggested? And, based on the results, would you consider recommendations for a particular medication or a change in diet to help you get better as a sales pitch?”

“No. Now that you mention it, I would expect those basic actions. Without them, the doctor might provide me with temporary relief but overlook  the cause, which could have a troubling impact later on. And as for the recommendation for specific medications or diet, I would see that as part of the process to help me get and feel better.”

“Right!” exclaims Ken. He stands and becomes more animated.

“Let’s go back to our fuse example. I recognise it’s not a perfect analogy, and that most technicians worth their salt would do some basic tests to determine if there is a further cause beyond simply a blown fuse. But that’s where it often ends. We solve the immediate problem and move on to the next patient—I mean customer—without doing an ‘examination’ of the customer’s condition beyond the immediate problem. As a result, we miss countless opportunities to help the customer run their facilities more effectively or, perhaps more tragically, to avoid catastrophic breakdowns.”

 

… “I don’t sell, Charlie. I simply use my expertise and experience, and ask a few questions about the situation and the customer’s goals. Then I bring to their attention the types of remedies they might consider to reduce energy, increase tenant comfort, improve operational performance and so on. The customer then makes a decision on what they want to do. I don’t try to force or convince them against their will. I simply assist them to make informed decisions which will help them operate more effectively.”

It’s now that Charlie stands up and gets animated. “So, if I understand you Ken, what you are saying is that Angus and the rest of the team don’t see themselves as salespeople flogging Novus services, but rather as recommenders of our services when they see that as solving a customer’s problems. The challenge then is to help them recognise the difference and encourage them to speak with the customer about what they feel would be in the customer’s best interest to do. Have I got that right?”

Thinking about your business:

• If you have a formal or informal expectation for your technicians to generate opportunities in the field, how do you position this activity with your field team? Is this a selling activity or a serving activity?
• Does your team fully grasp the important service they are providing?
• Do they see it as important a service as their ability to fix or maintain the equipment?

Next time we will look at some of the hurdles that Charlie will need to address if he is to be successful.

 

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Kris Oldland, talks to the ever effervescent Carsten Groth, Technology Solutions Professional with Microsoft Field Service, to discuss what field service will look like in the not so distant future...

There are some people who have a such a clear passion for what they do it is palpably infectious, you can literally see the effect they have on those around them.

I find such people are usually a joy to talk to and so when I caught up with Carsten Groth, a Technology Solution Professional working with Microsoft, for the first time in a year or so (at the industry conference Field Service Europe) it was a true joy to see that there was an almost childlike excitement in his eyes.

He had just given a presentation discussing how and what Microsoft are terming connected field service and it is clear that it is a topic that seems to truly capture Groth’s natural passion for technology and harness it into something resembling true exhilaration.

It’s what makes him such a great ambassador for his company and such an engaging speaker. However, with Microsoft’s own field service focussed offering rapidly evolving and spreading it’s technological wings he seems to have cranked the passion all the way up to 11.

“There are complicated processes that need to be rethought, it’s like working in a big think tank around where is field service heading in 2020?” Is his first response when I ask him what developments are being focussed on in Microsoft’s Field Service team.

However, Groth is quite right to be excited by the new IoT enabled world we will all soon be occupying.

We often talk about revolutions in business but truly have we truly seen a revolution in field service on a par with what the near future promises to deliver.

If we are honest our industry that hasn’t massively changed even with the rise of mobile computing. Yet, what we are now seeing is true evolution, field service 2.0.

Mobile just made field service better, faster, and more efficient. But what we are seeing now is a maelstrom of technologies coming together which will deliver genuine, industry defining transformation change. And that is a concept that Groth is fully on-board with.

 

“The way we see it and the way Microsoft has started to think of field service, is in terms of what are the new field service enablers,” he begins.

“To begin there are the classical elements, things like the dispatching and scheduling elements and then there are also some influential parts coming from the mobile side of that, turning the mobile experience into more task oriented, check list oriented and more efficient UI oriented functionalities.”

“But now we have augmented and virtual reality in the mix as well as cloud services and of course IoT and these are all enablers to all these field services as well.”

And it is these enablers that are changing every part of both service providers and their customers thinking around field service. Although the introduction of new technologies, which lead to new processes, will also bring with them new challenges as well.

“When you think about an on-site service for a washing machine, in the past it may have taken 60 minutes and as a customer I would be billed for 60 minutes worth of work,” Groth explains.

“But now I see that the field service engineer has far more capabilities enabled by technology so am I still willing to be charged for 60 minutes when he is now doing the same job within 15 in minutes. Obviously I am not”

“If I then see a field service engineer struggling with that same task which I have just looked up online, a task I now know should take less than 15 minutes. Am I going to think it is fair for his company to be charging me an hours work when he should only be spending a quarter of an hour working?”

“By having all these influential cards we see that the customer has more influence and more impact than they have ever had in the past,” Groth adds.

It is a very valid point and it is absolutely vital that field service organisations understand that whilst technology will undoubtedly revolutionise our industry for the better in the coming years, it will also create new challenges that we must be prepared to face.

So how does this not so distant future look to Groth and his colleagues at Microsoft?

“We are driving forward from the term connected field service because we are talking about connected things that have an influence on field service. We are talking about IoT but not only that - also for example, sentiments coming from omni-channels.”

“For example, in my generation if I got stuck in an elevator then the first thing I would do would be to push the assistance button. But the generation following mine may be more inclined to pull out their phone and tell the world they are stuck in an elevator made by x,y or z. They’ll probably do this even before they think of pressing the emergency button to get rescued!”

“OK, so it may be a somewhat extreme example but it is also a perfect example of negative sentiment that we can also assimilate and utilise as a tool to improve service delivery,” Groth adds.

 

Of course this type of thinking wouldn’t be at all possible without Cloud computing and the all encompassing, pervasive connectivity that it can deliver. Is this why we suddenly see Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, stepping heavily into the field service sector, once more? Is the future a world of integrated platforms with FSM systems being an integral part of a much wider operational ecosystem?

“I do think we’ll see a movement where we will see the niche players who are offering very specialised FSM software, who are focussed on specific productivity sets, having to step out of their niche,” Groth replies.

“I think they will need to move towards a broader set of thinking as they will only be able to enable the use case scenario if they take into account more things. It’s a bit like building a house.”

“If you’re designing a house as an architect you need to be way more efficient than just designing the shell of the house. You need to have all these different parameters around how are we building the house.”

“I think this is where we see the movement inside field service. It’s not only about thinking ‘I want to enable my field service engineer to do things more efficiently and more productively’. We now must think ‘I want to enable all the kind of things for on-site service as well as customer satisfaction.’”

Of course, it is impossible to discuss the future of the field service sector without touching upon the topic of servitization.

 

Does Groth see the current focus on servitization as being driven by the technology available or is the opposite true - and it is in fact a desire to servitize our businesses that is leading us to seek out technology solutions more aggressively?

“The shift to servitization is one driver for technology but I think there are a lot of other influential parts enabled by technology. It is also based in part on a generational thing. The younger generation playing around with all sorts of technologies and asking why they can’t use these in their day to day business?”

“For instance, we’ve had customers requesting to use WhatsApp for their chat mechanism for field service. We asked why do you specifically want to use WhatsApp? We do offer a solution that offers the same capabilities but it was a generational step up with this product line. They knew how to use it and were familiar with it, they didn’t need training and could just get on with it.”

Regardless of the drivers which as Groth points out are in fact numerous, the fact is that technology is playing an ever increasing role in field service management, and now more than ever before it is beginning to shape how we work and importantly also how we interact with our customers.

“As I said, there is this enablement where we get more knowledge on the side of the customer,’ he reflects.

“We need to think how does connected field service, how do vendors like Microsoft, help our customers empower their own customers.”

“This is actually what Microsoft does with our entire partner ecosystem. It’s the way we are thinking. How do we empower users, not businesses to do more and be more productive.”

“We are thinking how do we step out of the box of FSM only and we need to think about IoT from the consumer side and business side. Changing the way companies think about doing business with field service operational software.”

 

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Nick Frank, Founding Partner with Si2 Partners explains why profitable long term growth comes from having the right people in the right place at the right time and why technology although important, usually plays a secondary role...

In todays fast moving world this might be an “off- message” statement, but the truth is that it is still people who deliver profits. As a result creating ‘High Performance Teams’ or what some call the ‘Self Learning’ organisation has become a priority in staying competitive within the new digital economy.

Sustainable improvement requires a commitment to learning.

In successful organisations, this is embedded in the DNA of its people which drives themselves forward to deliver results that makes the real difference.

How does your team measure up? Perhaps a good place to start is to review how your teams manage problems and the language they use. Most technically orientated organisations pride themselves on solving problems.

Ironically, too strong an emphasis on problem solving does not necessarily drive the customer-orientated behaviours we are looking for. Problems are in fact very static, with a focus on past events.

If organisations are not careful, problems become a blame game, concentrating on why things cannot be done. ‘Yes but……’ is a phrase that become endemic within the organisations way of doing things. However, problems are also the life-blood of innovation, in that they can create a focal point for organisations to rally around.

 

The resulting solutions are often focused on customers, are dynamic in nature and focused on the future. The language of solutions concentrates on ‘Yes and…’, seeking possibilities and opportunities. It is in fact solution thinking that really drives the organisation forward in creating competitive advantage.

A self learning organisation is one that has the rigour to identify and quantify problems, yet the discipline to shift to solution thinking, develop forward momentum and achieve results.

This problem-solution-problem-solution learning loop sounds fairly straight forward, but actually requires a level of management maturity that is often surprisingly missing from many organisations.

As Winston Churchill pointed out, learning is all about engagement: “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or could not learn”

So how do we go about creating a culture of ‘self learning’, which is deeply embedded in the corporate DNA. In most businesses, focussing on two important aspects of organisations can really make a difference. The first is a strong vision of what the company is all about, why it is there, what it is trying to achieve for its customers and how.

More important than the vision statement’s words, is the way that it is communicated.

Successful communication comes from:

1. Targeting your message: For example Field Service Techs have very different drivers from their Product Sales colleagues.
2. Augmenting logical reasoning with an emotional appeal that inspires employees to do things differently.

The second aspect is Values.

A company’s values are the core of its culture. While a vision articulates a company’s purpose, values offer a set of guidelines on the behaviours and mindsets needed to achieve that vision. While many companies find their values revolve around a few simple topics (employees, clients, professionalism), the originality of those values is less important than their authenticity.

Developing a culture that is aligned to values and vision is what provides people with a purpose, and this is the key to facilitating innovation.

Organisations that successfully create a self-learning environment typically start to see:

• Problem being solved systematically
• Experimentation with new approaches to work
• Learning from other companies and a focus on customers solutions
• Greater knowledge transfer through out the organisation
• An acceptance that change is normal and to be embraced

To get the ball rolling does not necessarily require large complex change projects. For example at Amazon, every person who wants to pitch a new idea to the management, is asked to describe it as a press release written on the day that the idea is launched. This press release, together with a list of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ is what Amazon executives use to judge whether there is real value in the innovation.

This relatively simple idea forces everyone to focus on outcomes and solutions.

And if leaders ‘do what they say!’, then these practices and thinking, can become part of an organisations DNA.

 

So if you sense that your teams are struggling to execute on new opportunities that are arising in this digital age, or are becoming to focused on problems and falling into the blame game, then perhaps it is time to think about how you can evolve the dynamics of your organisation.

Using a 3rd party to help leaders gain new perspectives can be useful, because people listen more to a new voice. However, at the end of the day it is the Leadership at all levels in the organisation who by taking reasonably simple steps can set expectations, ‘Walk the Talk!’ and move the organisation on.

Nick can be contacted on nick.frank@Si2partners.com. Si2 ON-Demand is a unique advisory and support service that enables top performing leaders to solve problems and get things done, quickly, easily and cost effectively.

 

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