The service sector will weather the Corona Virus storm but our customers needs will have changed so how do you operate in a post-pandemic environment? Bill Pollock talks us through the process.
For most services organisations, 2020 started out looking every bit the same as 2019 ended – full of uncertainty in an unpredictable economy, coupled with an increasingly demanding and volatile geo-political business model. Then, the world as we knew it changed dramatically – seemingly overnight – by the impact of the Coronavirus and subsequent global economic disruption. 

However, despite all of the uncertainty and volatility, it is important to remember what we all do for a living – that is, we serve our customers by making their jobs – and their lives – easier to deal with on a day-to-day basis. This is what services organisations do, and that model has not changed over the past several decades. 

What does this mean?

Time for the Field Service Sector to Stand Tall

It means that we, as an industry, still need to provide our services to our customers – but, now, even better, quicker and more efficiently than ever before. The marketplace has no tolerance for anything less than superior service and support, and if your services organisation does not already provide it, they’ll find another organisation that does! 

Everyday, businesses of all types are forced to wrestle with quickly-moving economic downturns and upheavals, staff reductions, fluctuating stock prices, an unstable global market economy, and all of the business and personal challenges that result from their ongoing attempt to make everything work together in harmony. What better can we do as an industry than to provide our products, services, and support to our customers in a fashion so well-designed and executed that we actually make their lives easier just by doing so? 

No more artificial "bundles" of services offerings or “lemon-freshened” software packages; no more late response times or missed deliveries; no more sub-par service performance; no more surprises; and no more excuses! Today’s business environment demands that services organisations get their respective acts together, manage their service delivery processes better, and provide a full complement of the types of services and support that are meaningful to customers. 

This is even more critical as ever before, as lives are literally at stake! 

But, how do we do this? There are many ways – but it will take a lot of work, and your organisation may not be able to do it all by itself.

An External Review of Your Customer's Field Service Needs:

First, you will need to take a hard look externally at exactly what your customers (and prospects) require from your organisation, addressing such questions as: 

• What are our customers' specific product, service, and support needs and requirements? How do their needs differ in the immediate-, short-, mid- and longer-term? 
• Does our organization's current service and support portfolio match our customers' needs? All of their needs? Their real needs? Their immediate needs? 
• Where are there gaps between our present offerings, and our customers' future needs? 
• What additional value-add, premium, and/or professional services do our customers require – but cannot get from their current vendors? (Even from us!) 

• How are the changes our customers' organisations will be going through change their needs for service and support in the future? And, to what degree? 
• What vendor options and alternatives do users presently have? What newer options and alternatives will they be looking for tomorrow? 
• Where do we stand with respect to the competition? What will it take for us to “make the cut” from a prospect's "long list" to its "short list"? How compelling are our demos? Do they reflect the proper level of criticality in today’s chaotic environment? 
• When the dust settles, where do we want our organisation to be positioned? Does the marketplace look to us as being a progressive and responsive solution provider? Or, are we perceived more as a once-progressive vendor that has become out-of-touch, or “dusty”? 

An Internal Review of your Field Service Capabilities:

Second, you will also need to take an equally hard look internally to determine whether your organisation's infrastructure, operations and processes are sufficiently in place to attain your – and your customers' –overall service delivery performance goals, addressing such questions as: 

• Are we organised effectively to deliver the right products, services, and support; with the right features; to the right customer segments; at the right time? 
• Is our organisational structure effective in managing all facets of the business? What do we need to do to make it stronger? 
• Do we have the right processes in place to deliver everything we promise? How can we best measure whether they are really working? 

• Are our customer support personnel adequately trained – and empowered – to support our customer base? Can they provide "knock your socks off" service? 
• Do we provide our sales, service, and tech support personnel with all of the tools they require to get their jobs done? What more do they need to become more effective? 
• Do we have all of the Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) systems in place that are needed to run our business? Where are there gaps? What “new” technologies do we need to incorporate into our existing services operations? Augmented Reality (AR)/Merged Reality (MR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Remote Expertise, etc.? 
• Are we focused enough on the customer? Is our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach good enough – and is it working? Are we as responsive during the current pandemic crisis as we need to be? Do our customers think so? 
• Are we tracking and reporting the right things? Do our managers have all of the data and information they need to make effective decisions? 

• Do we have a formal plan for growing our services and support capabilities along with the changing needs of our customers? How agile is our operational structure? 
• Do we have our internal act together? How can we ensure that everything we do yields the desired outcome? 

These are certainly turbulent times, and the market has never been more serious about its choices – nor more educated in its ability to distinguish between the leaders and the "wannabes" or followers. More users are getting more information – faster – about your organisation – and its competitors – than ever before. And, they’re acting quickly upon the information they receive! If your message is not adequately articulated – and communicated – to the appropriate marketplace, you could end up “dead in the water” before you know it – even if your products and services are actually better than the competition's!

The market is looking for your message, and the worst thing that can happen to your organisation is letting your competition communicate it to them first – ahead of, and instead of,you! 

Look around, and you will no longer see any underachievers or “dead wood” competing in the marketplace. They’re all out of business, or about to disappear – one way or the other. What’s left – or what will be left, once the dust settles – are solely going to be the true performers – the services organisations that both “get it” – and “do it”. Be one of the organisations that "gets it" – and goes after it!

Don't follow your competitors – follow the needs and requirements of your customers! And make sure that you utilize all of the external and internal resources that are available to you! 

Further Reading:

• Read more of Bill's features written exclusively for field service news @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/bill-pollock
• Follows Bill's blog and his analyst work @ https://pollockonservice.com/