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In the penultimate feature from our exclusive serialisation of Jim Baston’s excellent industry focused book Beyond Great Service, we begin to see how our protagonist Charlie and his teams journey towards better understanding the balance of building revenue streams from the service department has begun to formulate into a clear and workable strategic approach...

You can catch up with earlier features from this series by clicking here

Based on the feedback from several customers, Charlie is ready to roll out the strategy of engaging his technicians in proactive business development.

He calls the initiative Intelligent Service. We join Charlie as he presents the concept details to his team.

The key components and actions/comments are summarized in the table below:

Charlie reminds the team that the focus is not to sell but to serve. He clarifies that serving means taking a proactive approach to speaking with the customer about the actions they can take to run their facilities more effectively.

Only if the technician feels there is a valid need that could be addressed by a particular service offered by Novus, should the tech promote that service.Only if the technician feels there is a valid need that could be addressed by a particular service offered by Novus, should the tech promote that service.

Charlie emphasizes that in no way do they want the techs to talk up Novus’ services just for the sake of sales.

Charlie is about to move on to the next slide showing the implementation steps and associated time frames when Peter stands up. Peter is a quiet, thoughtful technician and rarely speaks at the service meetings. When he does, he usually has something valuable to say. This was not to be an exception.

“Charlie, with all due respect,” opens Peter, as he pauses and looks down at the floor, “this is a good approach and I am all for the initiative. Frankly, it makes perfect sense to me. In fact, I think we all do this to some degree now...” Peter paused again, and Charlie waited in anticipation.

“But, if we do all the things that you point out here, we won’t have any time to do productive work. We’ll be spending all our time gabbing with the customer and I don’t think they’re going to like that, and neither will Novus.”

Charlie smiled. It was a good point and he was glad it came up, especially by someone as respected as Peter. It probably means that a number of techs feel the same way and it is important to clear the air on this.

“Thanks for that, Peter. You bring up a good point. I don’t think that this will have much of an impact on non-productive time if it has any at all. At the kick-off meeting, we will explain the program and ask the customer if they’re interested in participating. I expect that in most cases they will say yes, and by doing so, they will be giving us permission to discuss opportunities with them.

Also, as techs, you’re only going to be discussing items you feel are in their best interest, taking into consideration your experience and knowledge of the customer’s needs, so the time factor should be quite minimal.”

“Yeah, but what about this mid-year walkthrough stuff, and the time looking for opportunities. Won’t they take a lot of time?”

“It will take a bit of time,” conceded Charlie. “During the walkthrough, you can make the most of it by asking questions to get an even clearer idea of their needs and goals, along with pointing out areas where improvements can be made. I think it’s time well spent and I’m sure the customer will agree.”

Look and listen for evidence of problems as you walk to and from the work area. Be prepared to ask questions of the customers and their staff as you go about your normal routines“Remember too, that we will have already discussed the idea with the customer and gotten their buy-in at the kick-off meeting. As far as looking for opportunities, we only ask you to do that as you are doing your normal job.

Keep your eyes open for things that may not be right.”

“Look and listen for evidence of problems as you walk to and from the work area. Be prepared to ask questions of the customers and their staff as you go about your normal routines. Let’s see how things go. I suspect that the return on this effort will far exceed the time invested. Does that address your concerns, Peter?”

Thinking about your business:

• Is your business development strategy positioned as an integral part of the service you provide?
• Have you created a performance “dashboard” to monitor your progress?
• Do you have a plan in place to teach, coach and reinforce the skills development of your field team?

Next time Charlie reflects on the progress he has seen since implementing the Intelligent Service strategy.

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Resource Type: White Paper
Published by: Astea
Title: Forging a service and sales partnership
Download: Click here to download the white paper
By downloading you agree to the T&Cs listed available here

Synopsis:

The wall between sales and service activities is crumbling within many companies. Once largely viewed as a cost centre, the role of the service organisation has steadily evolved as companies recognize its potential as a source of new revenues and a valuable tool in strengthening customer loyalty.

However, there is often a disconnect between the service and sales organisations. Service technicians often serve as the face of the company, spending much of their time directly interacting with customers. They are potentially a valuable source of new sales leads, able to spot opportunities for new product sales or competitive product replacements, offer service contracts to clients, and even cross-sell/up-sell products or services. Most companies are not fully taking advantage of this potential sales leads stream

This white paper outlines the potential sources of new revenue enabled by better integrating service and sales activities, discuss the challenges of realising this revenue, and provides information on the tools, software,
and strategies that top-performing companies utilise to grow that revenue.

Overview:

The ability to leverage information coming from the field service organisation to drive sales opportunities with new and existing customers will be a critical competitive differentiator moving forward. Companies that leave their sales and service organisations technologically or operationally separated could be leaving substantial revenue on the table.

 

However, according to The Service Council, of the 55% of companies that are not utilising their service teams for sales, most report that this is because the technicians lack training, lack the skill set or incentives to sell, or the companies prefer that they don’t sell at all.  Service organisations also may lack the tools to turn those leads into revenue. The Service Council reports that 17% of service organisations still rely on paper, while another 19% don’t have any tools with which to capture leads.

Two types of service revenue

There are two ways that service creates new revenue. One is through direct sales of service offerings  from existing service contracts, non-contract service, new contract sales, and parts sales. The second is by generating direct revenue via warranty sales and other value-added services.

Breaking down barriers

Many of the chief obstacles to meeting new service revenue objectives are both structural and technological. Many companies are not currently structured properly to foster better collaboration between service and sales.

Technology can also play a role. The Service Council says 53% of companies lack real-time visibility into service performance and potential revenue opportunities: traditional paper-based service management processes make it very difficult to communicate potential sales leads and new opportunities back to the sales teams.[quote float="right"]Many companies are not currently structured properly to foster better collaboration between service and sales.

Service technicians often lack the tools to identify and document these opportunities, or to act on them while they are in front of the customers.

 

Keys to better service/sales collaboration

Linking sales and service requires a mix of operational changes and technology.[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. The ability to accept payment in the field greatly expands the sales potential for the service force.
2. Companies that do leverage the service teams to generate new sales leads typically have dedicated teams focused on service sales, and create sales quotas for the service organisations.
3. Top performers also train service agents on lead identification and sales management
4. The profile of service technicians is changing: technicians are hired also on their sales skills and experience. Some companies are hiring agents with more sales experience, and then investing their training budget on service/technical skills rather than the other way around.
5.  Should the service team should be selling directly or simply gathering leads? The decision will depend your company’s business, culture, and the type of service agents you currently employ.
6. How do your customers view your service team?  If the service technicians are simply seen as people who arrive, fix problems, and leave, then introducing a sales function may not yield the best results. If the agents are already serving as trusted advisors to the customers, however, they may receive more positive reception to sales activities.
7. Evaluating the skill sets of the service force is also important. Can your technicians sell? Are they interested in doing so? What tools, technology, and infrastructure need to be in place that will help them sell effectively? Asking your technicians to sell without giving them the tools to do the job correctly will not yield new revenues.
8. Don’t let the sales strategy compromise the work your service team is performing. It may still be more appropriate to send leads to a dedicated sales team for follow-up.

In order to leverage the service organisation to increase revenue effectively, companies will need to foster collaborative environments that will encourage the service teams to generate leads for the existing sales forces. That can be done by providing technicians with mobile technology that allows them to quickly and easily capture and communicate those leads, developing incentive programs that reward lead generation, and creating business process flows that ensure the leads will be followed up on quickly.

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Click here to download the white paper

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Bill Pollock, President and Principal Consulting Analyst with Strategies for GrowthSM takes an alternative look at ensuring your mobile workforce is well resourced throughout all seasons...

“The world of work has changed,” according to Jeffrey Leventhal, CEO and co-founder of Work Market, a leading platform and marketplace for finding and managing freelance labor. And this may be especially true for the services industry, where simply doing things the same way they’ve always been done just doesn’t cut it anymore.

However, Leventhal also warns that, “finding the right talent is one of the primary challenges in building an on-demand workforce. Especially for companies who use freelancers at scale, it’s imperative to find a reliable place where you can routinely tap into top-tier freelancers.” For the services industry, top tier typically means highly trained – and in many cases, certified – field technicians that may be confidently dispatched shortly after being recruited and vetted by the organisation. Oh, yeah – and they must also be conveniently located proximate to a wide distribution of customer sites.

How can this be done? And what are the potential pitfalls of not having a well thought out plan for action, or not employing the proper tools to support an expanding market demand? Well, … unfortunately, there are many potential stumbling blocks – unless the plan is built on a foundation structured upon an effective onsite freelancer platform.

According to Diego Lomanto, vice president of marketing for Work Market, “there are six tools, or processes, that a services organisation requires in order to effectively manage its field technician freelancers. They are find, verify, engage, manage, pay and rate.” Each of these tools may be described as follows:

Find

Identifying and finding the right freelancers for the job at hand represents the best place to start. For many businesses, it is relatively easy to screen lists of potential freelancers in easily defined industry segments, such as accountants, home healthcare aides, plumbers and electricians, etc., by relying on any one of a number of widely used list sources such as Craigslist, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), LinkedIn or Google, etc. However, in the services community, most of these list sources will often come up short.

However, an onsite freelancer platform, such as that offered by Work Market, can handle things much more efficiently by providing a tool that:

• Allows the user to build assignments quickly, based on previous work,
• Identifies candidates that best meet the required skill sets, and
• Provides a mechanism for generating and tracking community ratings for each selected candidate (i.e., to assure a consistent level of freelancer quality)

Verify

The verification of the required skill sets represents another major obstacle for most services organisations in terms of their ability to check out the candidate’s background and capabilities, as they relate specifically to field service. In other words, do they have the right stuff – stuff meaning skills, experience and certifications, among others?

The use of an effective onsite freelancer platform takes nearly all of the burden out of the verification process by allowing the user to:

• Verify the candidate’s credentials via an integrated verification process; and
• Identify limit functions which, in turn, will automatically off-board the independent contractor when compliance thresholds are reached, or if certain details change, (i.e., such as expiring insurance coverage or certifications, etc.).

Engage

The engagement process is typically where too many organisation begin the process, as it is typically far less painstaking for some to start with the recruitment of “warm bodies”, rather than mounting a concerted effort upfront to find the most qualified candidates – and be able to verify that they are, in fact, eminently qualified for the job.

This is where an onsite freelancer platform provides, perhaps, one of its greatest value propositions to its users, by allowing them to:

• Organise their field technician workforce into groups for easy assignment en masse; and
• Eliminate the need for having to deal with only one contractor at a time, or conversely, having to rely on group e-mails that make it impossible to manage responses quickly or effectively.

Manage

Managing the freelancer field force should require the greatest levels of attention and oversight by the organisation; however, many managers find themselves too overwhelmed and/or understaffed to effectively handle the situation. Nonetheless, this is often the single process that ultimately defines the direction – and the success – of the organisation in terms of its ability to send the best qualified people to each site, and track their performance and progress over time. Many services organisations utilise fully functioning mobile applications to communicate with their mobile field force in real time – but this may not be enough!

By utilising an onsite freelancer platform, users benefit from a variety of tools that allow for:

• All field communications and management tools to be resident in a single system
• The use of geo-location tools to identify the exact locations of their freelance contractors in real time, and
• The ability of workers to upload and complete all tasks directly through their mobile devices.

Pay

Paying the organisation’s mobile field force freelancers should be one of the easiest jobs to do – but any HR or accounts payable professional will likely tell you different. What should typically only involve the tracking of hours, and cutting checks to the appropriate individuals is generally anything but easy – and PayPal simply doesn’t cut it!

What can make this process as easy as it gets is the ability of the onsite freelancer platform to empower the organisation to:

• Allow for Application Programming Interface (API) integration into existing payment platforms so they can continue to manage their respective accounting processes all in one place, and on a business-as-usual basis; and
• Create a robust mechanism for reporting key financial and compliance data to HR, Accounting – and the CFO – as necessary.

Rate

However, the series of processes does not end once the freelancer is paid, and the transaction is reported. In fact, the process is never-ending – and cyclical – in that the performance of each and every freelancer is rated, tracked and ranked to identify top talent for future projects, and measure the performance of the onsite freelancer model as a whole, over time. It can also be well argued that the organisation will likely have greater confidence in the ratings provided directly by their customers (and/or, their territory managers) rather than by an outside third party, such as Angie’s List or the Better Business Bureau (BBB), etc.

Therefore, the principal benefits of an onsite freelancer platform are that it provides users with:

• An online capability for rating, and viewing ratings, on a much broader scale, and
• The ability to determine the “height of the bar” with regard to the desired, or expected, quality of the worker’s performance.

Coordinating all of these individual tools into a single set of processes may be daunting for many organisations – but not so much when they have the power of an effective onsite freelancer platform such as that offered by Work Market, at their disposal. It is difficult enough to run a services organisation (or any business, for that matter) in general – but it is far more difficult to attempt to do so without the support of the proper technology, tools and processes.

[To download a complimentary whitepaper on “Finding & Managing Onsite Freelancers” for businesses and field service organisations click here]