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With remote customer assistance, field service organisations can deliver service from anywhere, keeping both workers and customers safe writes Eric Jacobsen, VP Product Management, Salesforce...

No matter what’s happening in the world, customers still need service. Internet connections still go down, homes still need refrigerators, and washing machines still require maintenance. Customers still want fast and complete service the first time.

What has changed today is how customers feel about in-person service. Even with safety requirements for the pandemic in place, some customers are hesitant about having technicians on-site. Businesses are also concerned for employee safety and well-being.

Along with best practices, the right technology mitigates today’s safety concerns surrounding in-person service. That’s where visual remote assistance comes in to help customers get the service they need, while prioritising safety and maximising experiences for both customers and employees.

Support customer safety with remote support software

Provide visual customer assistance with remote support software to enable service or support from anywhere, anytime — without physical contact or high bandwidth connections. Remote support empowers contact centre agents and field service technicians to solve a customer’s problem through virtual real-time, guided interaction. It also allows experts to help on-site technicians resolve issues.

With advanced remote support software, an agent or technician sees a customer’s physical environment in real time through their smart device. They can guide customers using augmented reality (AR), which displays on-screen graphical information over the object that needs service. They provide targeted, step-by-step directions with annotations on their mobile screen to resolve many issues. And at the completion of the job, the service organisation has a visual record for future reference.

Depending on the service request, visual remote assistance can be used to solve customer problems on its own or in combination with in-person service as a hybrid approach.

Here are three examples of how remote support software can be used:

1. An agent resolves a customer’s issue: My washing machine sprays water all over my laundry room. I speak with a support agent, who determines there is a loose connection. The agent can guide me step-by-step on how to correct it using a visual remote assistant.
2. An expert helps an on-site technician solve a problem: A month later, my water heater starts making a funny noise. The agent can’t resolve the issue with remote assistance, so they schedule a visit. The on-site technician also can’t figure it out, so they use a visual remote assistant to get expert help to troubleshoot the issue.
3. A customer gets visual remote assistance and in-person support: In the winter, my furnace stops working. Using remote visual assistance, a technician determines two parts need to be replaced. The technician leaves the new parts outside my home and then uses a visual remote assistant to guide me through the repairs.

No matter how it’s done, using a visual remote assistant streamlines service delivery while boosting safety with access to knowledge and expertise in real time. Not having to always send an on-site technician also provides cost savings. Safe, complete, and efficient service leads to happier, loyal customers.

Boost worker safety, give back, and create employment opportunities

Addressing employee concerns about safety is equally important. This creates peace of mind and builds employee loyalty through mobile workforce engagement. In addition to keeping on-site workers safe, using a visual remote assistant also drives sustainability, creates jobs, and supports accessibility. 

Stay safely off the road and support sustainability in field service

In some cases, using a visual remote assistant reduces or eliminates on-site service visits. This limits the time mobile field service workers spend on the road where they can encounter hazards. It also helps preserve the environment and infrastructure. For example, fewer trucks rolling means less emissions and wear and tear on roads — contributing to sustainability.

Retain and attract talent through job creation

Field service technicians work in remote locations and are exposed to heavy machinery, electrical equipment, and other hazards. Unfortunately, there are experienced and knowledgeable technicians who leave field service due to physical conditions, health concerns, and travel requirements.

Visual remote assistance enables technicians to provide field service in a setting more comfortable to them — helping retain mobile workers who otherwise may have left. This provides opportunities around accessibility and equality by opening up field service jobs to people who have strong technical skills, but are unable to do the on-site work themselves.

Get started quickly with remote support software

From an implementation standpoint, remote support software is quickly integrated into your existing service console. With a simple button click, agents can easily set up a virtual assistance session with a customer within the service console. Technicians can do this from their smart devices.

In a short time, you’ll provide visual remote assistance in real time from anywhere in the world — even if you’re in a remote location during a blizzard. It is designed to scale down and work even on low variable bandwidth connections, reducing the quality of the video and downgrading it to still frames, if necessary.

For customers, it’s also easy to use. Visual remote assistance can be launched from a mobile web browser and doesn’t require an additional app or software download. Customers simply click a link in a text message to start a remote service session.

Scale service with visual remote assistance

Today’s world has changed the way we conduct business and interact with one another. With remote customer assistance, field service organizations have more flexibility to deliver service from anywhere while keeping both workers and customers safe. See how Salesforce’s Visual Remote Assistant empowers your field service team, no matter what’s happening today, tomorrow, or beyond.

This article first appeared on the Salesforce corporate blog www.salesforce.com/blog/remote-virtual-assistance-service/

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Mobile Workforce Management @ www.fieldservicenews.com/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Find out more about Salesforce Field Service @ www.salesforce.com/field-service-lightning/
• Connect with Eric Jacobsen on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/esjacob/
• Follow Salesforce on Twitter @ twitter.com/salesforce

In the final article in this series of excerpts from a brand new white paper authored by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News published in partnership with PTC, we ask if the window for opportunity to gain competitive advantage by implementing remote services is closing every day... 

 

There will be a limited window of opportunity to gain a competitive advantage as the industry transitions to remote service as a prominent mechanism of service delivery...

Across this series, we have explored several different facets of the emerging conversation around remote service delivery. As we referenced in the introduction to this paper, this is a conversation that has been developing for many years, yet as a direct result of the pandemic, it is a conversation many field service organizations are desperately trying to get up to speed on as quickly as possible.

The unprecedented year we have just been through has in many ways had something of a democratizing effect, bringing the majority of companies onto the same page, or if not the same page, at least the same chapter of the same book. In other ways, the pandemic has had a galvanizing impact on the field service sector.

A Field Service News Research study found that prior to the pandemic, 64% of companies were already on a digital transformation roadmap. However, two-thirds of those companies stated that their digital transformation planning had been accelerated as a direct result of the pandemic. Our industry has been on its current evolutionary path for some time. However, we have suddenly taken a quantum leap forward out of necessity.

Yet, to paraphrase the old adage slightly, necessity is the mother of innovation, and for the innovative and forward-looking field service organization, there is potentially an excellent window of opportunity within the short-term to make significant competitive gains.

Firstly, there is a strong likelihood that our economy will become heavily service-centric within the next few years.  The historical data would undoubtedly appear to suggest this is likely to be the case and has proven to be so in each recession since the second world war. Indeed, in the last recession, companies that offered critical services were able to outperform the market in many indices including the S&P 500

Add to this that we were largely gravitating to a more service-centric society in general as the millennial generation becomes the key economic driving force and the prediction that our economy will remain service-centric, for the short-term at least, appears to be a reasonable assertion.

 

"For those who move fast, there will undoubtedly be a period of opportunity to establish a competitive advantage in this period..."

 

Similarly, as we have seen across this paper, the data supports the theory that there is currently an emerging best-in-class category when it comes to remote service delivery. 

Currently, there is a clear opportunity for an organization to join the ranks of those leading the way in this area by investing in the type of technology stacks we explored earlier. However, it should also be noted that as we are seeing an unparalleled acceleration of digital transformation, it is likely that the gap that has emerged in 2020 between leading-edge adopters and the rest of the pack, will be dramatically reduced in 2021.

For those who move fast, there will undoubtedly be a period of opportunity to establish a competitive advantage in this period.

As we outlined earlier in this paper there is a clear correlation between service excellence and bottom line results. For those that move too slow, they may find themselves facing a significant competitive disadvantage, and the whole game is being played on fast-forward currently. The stakes here are raised even further when we consider that the introduction of remote service is not just the introduction of a new service delivery mechanism.

As discussed across this paper, many field service companies are likely to see the fallout of the pandemic as an opportunity to clarify and redesign their service offering to better align to the value proposition they put to the customer. Weaving remote service delivery across their whole service strategy, as opposed placing it adjacent to existing service portfolios that rapidly became antiquated overnight in 2020. 

In the short term, this could lead to greater profit margins, as there is a direct correlation between better-perceived service and a willingness to pay more. 

As leading Customer Service Strategist Shep Hyken outlined in an article on Forbes “68% of customers would pay more to the company that provides great service. 33% percent would pay 1-9% more. Twenty-seven percent would pay 10-20% more and, 8% would be willing to pay over 20% more if the service was great.”

However, perhaps the more pressing concern for those companies left playing catch up is the increasing shift towards servitization. Field Service News Research revealed that in 2020 two-thirds of service companies are now offering at least some form of servitized or advanced service offering.

One of the long-acknowledged benefits of servitization is the engendering of deeper customer loyalty, as service providers become embedded within their customers’ workflows, in essence becoming a critical cog within their production wheel. Could the gains made by service organizations now

potentially see them leverage competitive advantage today, while building a platform for sustained success tomorrow? If this is the case, the further a company falls behind their peers, the harder it will be for them to catch up.

And the market sentiment within our sector is positive, which would suggest many companies will be adopting a more aggressive position in the next 12 months. According to Field Service News Research, despite all of the hardships of 2020, over three-quarters of field service companies envision growth, rather than consolidation in the coming 12 months.

So, for those field service companies who are agile, forward-thinking and growth-focused, now could be a unique opportunity to not only invest in digital transformation but to do so in a strategic manner that will allow them to be well-positioned in the emerging new normal, where remote service delivery will be a crucial battleground.

For those that, fall too far behind, the recovery may never come at all.

The question I put to you as a service leader, is whether your organisation is ready to redefine your service delivery and where will remote sit within that?

 

Further Reading:

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. After explaining the steps to define the service, in this fifth blog he looks at how to ensure the efficient engagement of the field service team.

In my previous blog, we considered the actions necessary to clearly define the service of our technicians making proactive recommendations. Now that we’ve defined the service we’re offering, it’s time to ensure that we have the support structures in place to ensure the efficient engagement of our field service team. There are a number of things to address here, so let’s consider three critical ones, processes, tools and training.

Processes

This is one that often gets overlooked, but we ignore it at our peril. Without a clear process, opportunities can fall through the cracks. When opportunities are not followed up in a timely fashion, this can cause embarrassment for the technician and send a clear signal that we’re not that serious about this new service of making recommendations. Some examples:

• How are opportunities captured?
• Who’s responsible for following up with the customer?
• What’s the tech’s involvement once the opportunity is identified?
• By whom and how is the technician kept informed of the status of an inquiry?
• Once a quote is issued, who is responsible for tracking outstanding quotations and inquiring into dormant ones?

Tools

What tools can be employed to help the field service team improve their efficiency? For example, what can be done to allow technicians to issue quotes in the field? How can opportunity status be relayed to the technicians so it’s readily available in a timely manner if needed? How can you alert technicians of outstanding opportunities so that they can follow up directly with the customer on their next maintenance visit?

Training

Most techs I know are comfortable engaging the customer in technical conversations, but fewer feel as comfortable talking about commercial issues. A tech that’s not comfortable discussing new opportunities with customers may avoid doing so. It’s important, therefore, that our technicians learn and gain comfort in conducting a conversation with the customer about products and services that will benefit them. A good training program and practice role plays can have a significant impact here.

Product and service training should also be considered. Often technicians have limited knowledge about their company’s capabilities beyond their own areas of expertise. If our techs don’t know about ALL of our products and services how will they identify an opportunity? And even if they have a general understanding of what we do, if they don’t have a conversational knowledge of a product or service they’ll likely avoid the conversation.

What hurdles stand in the way of fully engaging your field service technicians in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off?

How do your current processes and systems facilitate or detract from the implementation of your strategy to engage the techs in looking for opportunities to help your customers achieve their business goals?

Next time we will consider the interdependencies that we will rely on when making and delivering on our recommendations.

Reflection

Make a list of all the actions you can take to support your technicians’ efforts in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off. As you draft this list, think about each action’s impact on the following:

• How does this make the service easier for the technician?
• How does this minimize the amount of time required by the technician?
• How does this help improve the techs’ comfort level in completing this service?
• How does this help keep the technician informed?
• How does this prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks?
• How does this help ensure that every technician provides a comparable level of service?

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

In the fourth article in a series of excerpts from a brand new white paper authored by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News published in partnership with PTC, we now look at some of the core technologies that are required for effective remote service...

 

Remote-service is not dependent on any one given technology but rather a technology stack. Here we offer a brief glimpse into what that stack comprises of.

So far in this series, we have put forward the case for remote service delivery being viewed much more holistically as part of a broader service portfolio than it being seen as an alternative to traditional methods of service delivery.

We have asserted that in terms of service being a key differentiator between competitors, we must consider that how we deliver service remotely will become increasingly important as the adoption of such approaches matures.

We have also looked at how this could be applied across multiple different service strategy approaches from transactional service approaches to outcome-based-service models.

Having outlined the above, let us now take a look at some of the core technologies that must be incorporated alongside an existing field service management (FSM) system to introduce remote service capabilities that can give you a competitive edge against your peers and help drive efficiency within your service operation.

 

The Fundamentals of Field Service Management (FSM) Technology

Before we move onto the new technologies that should be added to your current systems, first let us look at some of the core foundational tools that should be in place for standard field service operations.

It is likely that your organisation will have most of these tools in place. Still, it is important to understand the bedrock of an FSM system whether it be a stack of complementary best-in-class solutions or a dedicated platform before we begin to look at the additional elements required for effective remote-service delivery.

The core solutions that any service operation requires for effective service delivery include:

• FSM/Workforce Management Solution
• Scheduling
• Dedicated parts/inventory management solution
• Mobile capabilities to put the above in the hands of the engineer

Depending on the solution you already have in place to manage your mobile workforce it may be that you currently have one solution that meets all of the above requirements or it may be a selection of separate connected components.

However, what we are looking at here is the technology to empower field service management companies to achieve the long-standing mantra of every field service operation of getting the right person, who has the right skills, with the right skills, and the right parts to the right place at the right time.

As all field service management professionals will attest, field service operations are complex with many moving parts, so you will likely already be very familiar with general FSM technology.

 

Additional technologies that empower effective remote service delivery

When we begin to look at each of the specific technologies listed below, there are enough discussion points on each of the technologies to merit a dedicated paper per technology.

However, that is not the intention or purpose of this paper. Our intention is to provide you with a broader understanding of the questions you need to ask about your own operations as you prepare to move forward into the post-pandemic environment.

Similarly, it may be that not every technology in the list below is required in every use case. In some cases, other additional technologies may also need to be added into the mix. Every company is unique, and every approach may differ slightly. However, the following is certainly a good springboard to start your own exploration into the solutions that your organisation may need to invest in.

 

Internet of Things:

One of the most critical elements of remote service delivery is remotely monitoring assets in the field. To do this you will need to get access to equipment, get it connected, and then gain access to equipment data – generally, this connectivity is what is known as IoT or the Internet of Things.

The first step in this process is to identify what data will impact your long-term service goals, which is why it is essential to have a firm definition of your service value proposition as we discussed in an earlier segment of this paper.

Once these data sources are identified, the next step is to establish the connections to devices or assets in your fleet that holds them.

These connections may include a combination of wired, wireless, cellular, or indirect connections via gateway devices or control systems. It is important to bear in mind that any IoT platform should have multiple methods to join these connections.

While the type of data collected will vary depending on the use case, some commonly tracked data sources include energy usage, machine settings, hours of operation, or temperatures fed back to the business to gain service intelligence. For newer smart equipment, field service organisations can gain further insight by capturing error codes or alerts, log files, software versions, and configurations.

This data alone can play a massive role in improving service efficiency both by helping field service organisations pro actively identify faults as well as offering crucial insight that can speed up triage of issues ensuring if an engineer does need to visit the site, they are only doing so

• a) when absolutely necessary and
• b) they are arriving on-site aware of the issue and with the right parts and tools to ensure a first-time fix.

However, communication between the asset and back-office must be bi-directional when it comes to the remote resolution of a problem. 

 

Artificial Intelligence Diagnostic Tools:

Having too much data though can be an issue, particularly in the field service sector where an organisation will often have hundreds of thousands of data sources across an install base. Data ends up in vast data lakes, and the problems of a data lake is that there is always the risk of drowning in a data deluge. A step in the right direction is a data warehouse. Still, to continue the metaphor, the problem with ‘things in warehouses’, is unless there is an intelligent indexing system things can get invariably dusty and forgotten.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to effectively utilising data is that all too often companies become overwhelmed by irrelevant information. It can even be that they are simply receiving too much data, too quickly.

To put the amount of data generated into context a modern aircraft flying from London to New York generates the same amount of data as 78 years’ worth of mp3s played back-to-back. That is a lot of albums!

It simply isn’t possible or feasible for a human to sift through such vast amounts of data. An average piece of equipment on the IoT provides data from multiple sensors that may take readings every millisecond. Multiply this across an entire install base and we can soon see the volume of data even a small organisation might face coming in.

Even when we are only tracking the data related to core KPIs, it is easy to see how such vast volumes of data can overwhelm an organisation.

This is where Artificial Intelligence becomes critical.

By introducing AI to filter the data using rules designed to surface the right information an organisation needs to service the equipment they have in the field, companies can take a raw commodity (data) and turn it into something valuable (insight). Such tools also allow us to interpret the data to seek out anomalies and areas where the data falls outside of acceptable parameters that could indicate an imminent fault ahead of failure.

When we then begin to take this equipment data and integrate it with other data sources such as CRM, service records, weather data, configurations, customer data, geospatial information, or additional information we can then aggregate, contextualise, and analyse the whole data set utilising AI to create valuable service intelligence that we can action.

With bi-directional communication with the asset in the field, such a wealth of data can indicate whether a solution can be fixed remotely or whether an on-site intervention is required and even how far away the asset is from failure. This level of insight can be critical for capacity planning of on-site engineers, which would be under more significant pressure in a hybrid service portfolio such as we have discussed in earlier segments of this paper. 

 

Robotic Process Automation:

So far we have looked at IoT as the key to getting data from assets in the field and then outlined why AI is crucial to bring value to that data by surfacing the relevant information and thus generating insight.

However, while insight is more valuable than data, it is action that is where both the customer and field service organisation find true value. While that action could and often is triggered manually, for example by a dispatch team with AI-powered, data-driven dashboards to help them make intelligent and informed decisions, the next step is to introduce automation into the action taking process. This is done by introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

We mentioned earlier that by outlining parameters that specific data must stay within we can use AI to highlight when an asset is potentially set to fail. RPA allows the system itself to go one step further and identify the action that needs to be undertaken and either trigger that action directly or push it forward for a human’s attention at the end of the change.

By introducing RPAs, we can further drive efficiency when it comes to resolving our customers problems.

When we look at remote service delivery,  RPA could, upon diagnosis of a forthcoming failure, proactively run a check to ensure all firmware on the asset is updated. It could run a self-healing patch, connect directly with the customer with a request for further information or guidance on self-maintenance, automatically dispatch the required part to the customer or schedule an engineer to dial in remotely to run further analysis or offer remote advice to the customer directly.

All of this could be automated via RPA, driven by AI and fed by IoT data, and it can all be achieved remotely.

 

Augmented Reality

This brings us to the final element of the remote service technology stack, Augmented Reality (AR). Ultimately, AR is the endpoint, yet is also perhaps the tool that dominates the headlines the most as it is the most visible.

However, as with all of the other elements mentioned in this section of the white paper, AR is keenly linked to the broader technology stack and is an integral part of the mix of remote service delivery.

Ultimately, AR is the interface of the future. Many studies have shown that visual communication is far more effective than verbal communication. By allowing annotations and overlaid visuals, AR is the most effective means of visual communication available.

Whether it be guiding a less qualified engineer on-site with a challenging fix, a third-party worker in a blended workforce model or the customer themselves as they undertake self-help, AR remains simply the single most effective means of transmitting subject matter expertise and knowledge quickly and effectively to the site via a remote expert.

 

Further Reading: