In this new article for Field Service News, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses the importance of setting realistic and achievable expectations when rolling out new services.

In 1988 Michael R. Mantell wrote a book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff.” Now we know that Mantell was wrong when it comes to Field Service.

Here is the real story! In the coming months and years, it is likely that your organization will be implementing a steady stream of changes to the way you do business. Some of these changes that are on most service leader’s minds are:

• Touchless service
• Blended workforce
• New business models – XaaS, IoT
• Circular economy
• Digital transformation
• Servitization
• Predictive maintenance
• Artificial intelligence

SOME USEFUL DEFINITIONS AND OTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Before we jump into the details, it is necessary to understand an idea and three definitions.

The ideas expressed in this article originated in “How small service failures drive customer defection: Introducing the concept of microfailures” by Sean Sands, Colin Campbell, Lois Shedd, Carla Ferraro, and Alexis Mavrommati.

Service failure – any service that fails to meet a customer’s expectation. They come in two varieties – macrofailure and microfailure. Because services quality is influenced by individual’s emotions, the following definitions are imprecise and may leave you a little uncomfortable. Don’t worry!

Macrofailure – Sands et al define a macrofailure as a “negative service encounters in which customer expectations go unmet by a wide margin.”

Since each of us will react differently to any specific outcome, the best guidance we can provide is to quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward in a 1964 decision about whether a movie was pornographic:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

Until you get customer feedback that a particular transaction did not meet their expectation, you or someone who works with you must be the internal judge as you design services and set the expectations you will share with your customers.

FIRST AN EXAMPLE OF A MICROFAILURE AND A MACROFAILURE

An example of a service technician going to a customer whose product equipment has failed and the production line had to be totally shut down.

A macrofailure - When technical support decided that a service technician had to be dispatched, the support person said “Joe Brown has just finished up his job and will be at your facility within 30 minutes.” Unfortunately, the dispatcher did not tell Joe that the whole factory was shut down, so Joe stopped for lunch. He arrived 45 minutes late. The plant manager was really mad and after Joe departed, she called the SVP Field Service and totally blasted him.

A microfailure – Another day, the field technician showed up within the promised window and immediately got to work. One of his repair steps was to reboot a controller. This step usually takes 8 to 10 minutes. During that time, he called the office to update his status, but the customer only saw Joe standing about 20 feet from the equipment talking on his mobile phone. She didn’t say anything to Joe, so he never had the opportunity to explain that the repair was still going on while he was on the phone and that he was watching the controller and ended the call as soon as the reboot was complete.

WHY ARE MICROFAILURES IMPORTANT?

When a customer experiences a macrofailure, their usual reaction is to complain to the company. And service departments are exceptionally good at quickly and efficiently solving big problems and communicating their results back to the customer. If done well, most customer’s either stay as loyal as they were before the incident or actually increase their loyalty! After all, the customer now knows how their service provider will act in a messy situation and the customer comes away with increased peace-of-mind.

But when a microfailure occurs, the customers usually suffer in silence. Usually because they are embarrassed to make a big deal over a minor problem and they don’t want to create a reputation of being a complainer. But there is another set of factors that come into play:

1. We remember negative situations and forget positive ones

2. The negative situations grow in our minds and the ill-will accumulates

When it comes time to renew their contract, the customer who has experiences a small number of microfailures blows them up in their mind and finally unloads on the service seller. Typical outcomes are:

• The salesperson is depressed or demotivated
• The customer declines to renew their contract
• The customer demands a discount before renewing
• The customer shares their frustration with other customers or prospects
• The service organization does not have an opportunity to make things right before the become highly visible at an inopportune time

HOW TO PREVENT MICROFAILURES FROM GROWING INTO A MAJOR ISSUE:

Strategy	Tactics
Detect microfailures	·      Encourage customer complaints ·      Reassure customers that you hear them and the concerns        are valid ·      Train staff on how to deal with complaints ·      Track complaints
Repair microfailures	·      Offer a small gesture & nonmonetary compensation ·      Train staff about how all failures are important ·      Empower the team to solve the problems in real-time ·      Make sure there are no repercussions for the customer
Prevent microfailures	·      Try and predict when a microfailure is likely to occur ·      Enhance your continuous improvement efforts ·      Consider under promising so you can over deliver ·      Cocreate services experience with your customers

 

A final comment

In the July-August 1990 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Christopher W.L. Hart, James Heskett, and W. Earl Stasser, Jr. published the classic article “The Profitable Art of Service Recovery.”

The second paragraph of the article states:

“While companies may not be able to prevent all problems, they can learn to recover from them. A good recovery can turn angry, frustrated customers into loyal ones. It can, in fact, create more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.”

This is true for both macrofailures and microfailures. If you treat both of them the same way then you can’t go wrong.

---

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this fourth blog he looks at identifying specifically what actions we need to take in order to define the service.

In my last blog, we identified the following list of possible steps we can take to ensure that our field service team is successful in generating new business opportunities:

1. Define the service
2. Support the initiative
3. Get buy-in from supporting divisions
4. Talk the walk
5. Tell our customers
6. Maintain focus

In this blog, we will look at the first step on our list – Define the service – and identify specifically what actions we need to take in order to do this.

Consider one of the maintenance services that you offer to your customers. Imagine for the moment that you left the details of what the service entails to each individual field service tech. What do you think would happen? One tech includes an oil change with every service. Another changes the oil every two services and a third does not change the oil at all. One tech makes certain adjustments and another doesn’t make any. In other words the service work completed (and therefore the service levels) varies depending on the tech that went to do the work.

Now think about how your customers will view your service offering. Will they be happy that the level of service provided would be determined by the person you send? Will they have confidence that they’re receiving “excellent” service? Will you keep them as a customer for long? Somehow, I doubt it.

So, if making proactive recommendations to customers is a service, then it’s important that we define what that service is, just as we would any other service that we provide. How are the proactive efforts of your field service team defined?

It’s best to start with defining specifically what we are doing. What is the service we are providing through the proactive efforts of the field service team? Why is this a service at all? What is the benefit for the customer?

Next consider what specifically we want the field team to do. Are there definite actions that we want them to take that will help them uncover opportunities to help? Are there certain questions that they should ask the customer? Are there any environmental factors that they should be on the lookout for?, etc.

What do we want them to do if they see an opportunity to help? Do we want them to bring it to the attention of the customer or simply record it on the work order summary for someone else to follow up? Will this expectation change depending on the size and scope of the opportunity? If they do bring it to the attention of the customer and the customer would like to explore the opportunity further, how is the opportunity captured so that nothing falls through the cracks?

And, remember to define the components of the service in terms of what the customer can expect. Can we be more specific about what the customer will receive? For example, our service might include an annual review of our performance with the customer. At the beginning of a contract, it could include a formal meeting where the key customer operational goals are identified and evaluate how we can contribute to these. Future meetings might involve reviewing the results of the proactive efforts of the field team over the past period, revisiting open recommendations and re-establishing operational goals for the coming year.

Reflection

Think about the product promotion efforts of your field service team. What can the customer expect when they sign up for this service? How will you describe it on your website?

Consider:

• Why is what you are asking your technicians to do a service (and not a sale)?
• Why are the field service team’s actions of benefit to your customers?
• What specific steps should all your field service technicians take to uncover and capture opportunities? For example:
  • Should they make a special effort to visit with the customer before the service begins? After the service is completed?
  • What questions should they ask?
  • Are there specific things that the technician should look for or listen for that might provide them clues for opportunities to help?
• When an opportunity is found, what specifically do you want the technician to do with the lead?
• How and where do you want the technician to record the opportunity?

 

---

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

Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates, interviewed Mr Robert Smith MBA, Psychotherapist and Specialist in Clinical Psychology within Organisations on how we can look after service engineers and technicians' wellbeing during these challenging times.

In the somewhat crazy times that we are all living in, did you know that losing your sense of humour could well be an early sign of stress!

There are hundreds of thousands of service engineers and technicians supported by their colleagues, management and supply chain who continue to maintain, support the fabric of the critical infrastructure in our world. Behind every laboratory, hospital and utility are our dependable service hero’s. Yet are we doing enough preventive maintenance support to look after these professional’s wellbeing? Mental health problems, in particular stress, are affecting many service leaders. For some leaders, it becomes a critical illness. Field Service News investigates this topic.

My name is Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates. I have been asked by Field Service News to talk to Mr Robert Smith MBA, Psychotherapist and Specialist in Clinical Psychology within Organisations. I have known Robert Smith for several years. It was thirty plus years ago we first met at a communications training event, “Meet the Press”. Robert was my coach and mentor, I owe him for teaching me the art of communication, influencing and persuasion. What follows is our conversation on a topic that I think is impacting many service leaders today.

---

Mark Homer: Mr Robert Smith, can I ask you to introduce yourself to our readers?

Robert Smith: Hello from snowy Scotland, and I'm Robert Smith. As Mark has already said, I've been in the people development business for most of my career. I started off working with professionals and then developing managers and leaders, but it's always been about people. I was kind of taken as being an organisation psychologist meaning everybody thought I knew about clinical psychology, which I do now. A regular scenario for me, was people coming up to me on courses and saying, “Robert, you know about people. Can I have a private word with you I need some advice.” If I could use a professional expression, I was quite worried I might (suggested ‘screw people up’) somebody up in the process of answering because messing around with people's brains when you don't know anything about it can be dangerous. So, I started formal education and training, developing my career within the Mental Health spectrum. I have had a brilliant and fascinating time working in hundreds of countries mentoring thousands of professionals. Over the years I have worked with many engineers and people in the service and IT industries. Our discussion topic today is extremely relevant.

---

 

Mark Homer: The majority of Field Service News readers are in the service sector. Many are delivering services and managing corporate service organisations with hundreds of field technicians and engineers maintaining critical equipment. In the present Covid crisis, engineers and technicians are maintaining critical equipment in hospitals and laboratories. They have all got the normal working day pressures plus the new additional and extra complications that COVID has introduced. The topic of our conversation today is corporate mental health. I'm keen to understand from your perspective if you have seen an upturn in referrals and to ask what your advice would be to field service leaders at present?

Robert Smith:  My interest has been over the last few years to focus on Corporate Mental Health because it is becoming critical for every organisation. A report produced by Deloitte and Mind (the mental health charity) that was commissioned by the UK Government studies mental health and the corporate world. It was published in 2019 and covered the period between 2016 and 2019. The loss to the corporate world, because of poor mental health, not serious mental health, increased by 16%. It was recognised as a real problem before COVID came in. The amount of money they estimate that was lost to corporations in 2019 was forty-five billion pounds. This is an astonishing figure. It varies in the different industries on how much is lost, but typically due to poor mental health, in the services sector it is probably the equivalent to two thousand pounds (£2,000) per person. You can do the math yourself to work out how much that would cost your organisation. The amount of money that has been measured as lost is huge. Now that was in 2019. This is 2021. I can't imagine what the numbers are going to be for last year. There's another number I need to tell you about. The World Health Organisation predicted in 2019 that the leading disease burden globally in 2030 will be depression. This is frightening. If you look at the numbers of suicides in the UK, in the last three months this has gone up by 25%. There is enormous pressure on people, but people tend to sweep it under the carpet and ignore mental health problems. I saw on the news the other night that National Health were saying that they don’t have the mental health facilities to support their staff. I think that the onus has got to come onto organisations to look after their staff. Now what we're after is improving mental well-being and mental resilience, so that people can do their job, be successful and keep the company's operations running smoothly and growing.

---

 

Mark Homer: Service leaders are very much used to running a deskless workforce; lots of engineers and technicians are on the road. In the current crisis, many back-office and supporting allied functions that were traditionally office-based are now working from home. Numerous organisations are running 24x7 operations. We are hearing of increasing break-fix work and Preventative Maintenance backlog of work because a lot of routine work in the early stages of the Covid crisis was deferred. A traditionally difficult job now also has the added mix of this deferment work. Add the new Brexit paperwork, which is in some cases complicating or delaying some supply chains. Then the added pressure of people falling ill, isolating or safeguarding. What signs should a service leader, service manager and colleagues who are supporting each other lookout for? What are the typical symptoms you should be aware of and what would your advice be?

Robert Smith: Let me just pick up what you're saying there. What's happened to the engineering world has happened in the mental health world as well. Because what has happened is that people have spent a lot of time fixing things, but not maintaining them. You need to maintain things to be able to make sure that you don't have to get into the serious end of things. I've spoken to many engineers about what the pressures are and one of the great pressures, and one of the reasons that their levels of stress have gone up, is that they're not doing the job that they've signed up to do but they're doing Red Alert work. Red Alert work included emergency and stand-by work and critical cover. It's causing a lot of problems for people because if you're on Red Alert all the time you are ready to fight the good fight at any time, and that drains your energy level dead.

The whole process is very similar to an engine of sorts. The human condition (our engine), it is about making sure that you maintain things because if you don't maintain things, then what happens is, things go wrong. You need to do something to keep it at the positive end of mental health.

Now, what do you need to look for. As I am sure you already know, engineers have got a good sense of humour. One of the quickest ways to identify that engineers are under stress is that their sense of humour has gone out of the window. I think this is true of most people, but service engineers usually have a very good wry sense of humour. Being able to notice that this is going or is lost in an engineer is a big sign that they are struggling.

 

"80% of the workforce turn up with their arms and their legs. 15% turn up with their arms and their legs and their brain. Only 5% turned up with their legs, arms, brain and heart..."

 

For a service manager, one of the first things to recognise is start with self.

Self-First, because there is a new thing that seems to come up, which is a bit of a strange thing which is called imposter syndrome. It's like you're under a great deal of pressure because you don't think you've got the skills or the capabilities that everybody else thinks you have. You are under personal stress because you feel as though you're inadequate. Yet you have to keep up a brave front and one of the quickest ways you know about there being a potential issue is that as a manager and a leader, you get disturbed sleep. That you wake up in the middle of the night, and you haven't left work, it's still going on.

The other thing that you could recognise maybe in yourself, and in staff as well, is called presenteeism, which is about being at work and working longer hours, but not actually being productive. The London Business School did a survey on it. They stated that about 80% of the workforce turn up with their arms and their legs. 15% turn up with their arms and their legs and their brain. Only 5% turned up with their legs, arms, brain and heart. What does that mean well? Imagine being in a warehouse and there's a box in the middle of a warehouse. 80% of the staff would just walk around the box. 15% would actually probably pick the box up and do something with it. However, only 5% would probably think “Why is this box here? What is going on?” and solve the mystery of the box being in the middle of the warehouse. So, what is happening is that people are turning up to work but not really being present. They are there in body but not necessarily in mind and spirit. This a growing problem in the workforce. One good way of identifying that someone is under a lot of stress is if they are spending too long at work. Does that make sense?

---

 

Mark Homer: Yes, because if someone is not present in mind it will take them longer to complete a task and be efficient at work. The result of this will be someone having to increase the workday to complete their daily tasks. I know a lot of people articulate that they're worried about something, for example you can sometimes spot people repeating themselves in the context of worrying. I like the point you're making about waking up early in the morning. How can we help worriers? How can we recognise people that are under stress?

Robert Smith: It is a vicious circle. So, you're spending longer at work. You're going home but you are worried or thinking about work, meaning you're not actually leaving work. Plus, you are not sleeping well because you are stressed. Therefore, what happens is you come in tired. The next day you are not being effective and efficient meaning you worry causing the cycle to repeat.

We need to do something to train people to be able to sharpen their focus and their concentration so that they can get things done. Interestingly enough there's been some fabulous discoveries in neuroscience in recent years, the way that the nerves work for the fight and flight process, you can train people to use that. There are methods that you can use. That's part of what we do in our training is we teach people how to adapt your nervous system, in a way to be positive rather than negative because 95% of our behaviour is driven unconsciously, we don't think about it. Consider the way we breathe we do not think about it. For example, your heartbeats you don’t think about making sure your heart is beating or controlling the beats. If I raise my arm. I don't have to think about it, it just does it. If I had to do it consciously, that would be one large task having to think about all the muscles in the arm to make the arm raise. I have no idea how many muscles are even in an arm! It is important to recognise that most of our behaviour is driven by the unconscious, which most of the time is great because we don't have to think about it. When you are stressed, then your body automatically reacts in a certain way. The unconscious mind is making your body believed that a Sabre-toothed tiger is chasing you. However, there isn’t but that’s what your body thinks. How do you then calm that down, so that you can be running the bus rather than the bus running you? How can we control our bodies reaction? We've got to kick into action the 5% of the conscious mind that we can use to control the unconscious mind, which is running the rest of the body and telling you it's stressful. It all very interesting.

---

 

Mark Homer: Would you say that there's typically not a huge amount of leadership management training in this area. For example, a lack of training on active listening skills, or the ability to develop techniques to ask good questions to discover the state of an employee’s mental health?

Robert Smith: Brilliant question. Let’s consider the communication. So, in rough figures about 55% of communication is the visual part. We've gone into doing more zoom meetings these days, which of course, doesn't actually give you visual because we only see head and shoulders. 38% is the qualities of the voice. Finally, you've got the words that people are using. When somebody video phones in to talk to you, you're missing half of the communication. So, the manager has to listen for what is different. For many years, whenever I phoned this one person I coached and I said, “how are you today?” he would always reply saying he was fine. I would say, sometimes “No you're not”. He asked me how I knew that he wasn’t fine. I said well just listening to your tone of voice I can tell you are not okay. It doesn't take a great deal of training to be able to understand the difference in people's voice tone. Now that starts another conversation, which comes back to answering your question. For managers, when they listen to somebody and say ‘how has it been today or this week’ they need to pick up the tone of the employee. If the engineer’s tone is low or down, then the manager can say “You're saying that you are fine and, is that true? What's really going on?”. The fact that you've taken the trouble to notice that they're not their normal chirpy self, then they will react to this. They might share their problems or stresses or worries with you. You are not just walking through the process of saying hello, how are you because we do that all the time - don’t we? it's just the social norm, but to take that further and listen with care and ask, genuinely what's going on because “you don't sound as though you're fine”. Now you'll find that people will react to that.

---

 

Mark Homer: If I'm running a service organisation I might have potentially up to 1000 people in my organisation, is there anything as a service leader that I can start addressing now? Or can I introduce some form of training or regular check-ins?

Robert Smith: Okay, so the quick answer is you get us to come in and we'll spend time with you, and we'll design something because we don't do stuff that is off the shelf or the same for everybody because different organisations have different requirements. But there are things that you can do that are relatively simple and will help people. There needs to be a campaign of being able ‘self-maintenance’. The truth is you have got to take ownership of your mental health, that needs to be modelled from the top, that people have seen that they're doing things. So, there may become a need to have some sort of dialogue from the top through an organisation of what things can you do, I mean, simple things like having a walk somewhere during the day. If you have a brisk walk for 20 minutes, three times a week, enough to make your heart go a little bit faster not too fast, that has a profound positive effect on your mental health, because that stimulates the mirror neurons in the brain. One of the most effective, if not the most effective, way of changing your emotional state is breathing. When you're stressed, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up, you get clammy hands, and you can start getting a bit shaky. Your breathing changes and becomes quicker. Now what you need to do is deliberately use your conscious ability to change your breathing. By changing your breathing, you can control the nervous system and calm it down. The mind and body, which are interlinked, can be forced to calm down. Would you like to know how to do that?

Mark Homer: Yes, this sounds like an amazing technique.

Robert Smith: This technique does need discipline but it's something that can be done. If you think about it. For example, I've just got out of an irritating service customer (client) and I've got back in my van and I'm feeling frustrated. However, I cannot be frustrated or aggravated because I have got the drive off for next appointment. Yet, all you need to do is just two minutes and you can calm down.

 

"Meditation is another very good technique and the science on this is magnificent. Now meditation it can be done, relatively simply without travelling to the top of a faraway mountain..."

 

So, you'll breathe in one long breath in, for just hold it and then two more. Now let it out slowly while counting to six, but let it go out. Let it all the way out of the body. It is important to make sure you really empty your diaphragm . Now if you do that breathing exercise for two minutes that will bring down your stress levels. Now there are lots of techniques like this that you can master to make sure you are constantly maintaining your mental well-being. You can't get anybody else to do it.

Beginning with breathing exercise is a good way to start. Meditation is another very good technique and the science on this is magnificent. Now meditation it can be done, relatively simply without travelling to the top of a faraway mountain. We teach techniques from QiGong which of course is for the martial arts and is what you do before the battle. This is 3000 years old – this technique has got a very good track record! Before you go to battle you need to have a clear mind. It takes about 10 minutes to do, but you have guided meditations now. I would be very happy to share one of those with you and your readers. If your readers would like to send it in their email, we'll send it to them. They can share it amongst the staff, and it is a profoundly powerful way of becoming centred and back in your self again.

---

 

Mark Homer: How would a corporate programme work?

Robert Smith: There are relatively short workshops that are spread over a few months. There are exercises both physical and mental because, you know, we're working as the mind and body. As I said that you know the process the neuro process that makes you stress can be reversed to make you relax, and we can teach you how to do that. We can teach how to control impulse mobile telephone activity. We each spend four hours according to Google, four hours a day on social media and email communications. Therefore, we teach you to control and have better control of your impulse, and how to use selective attention so you can deliberately have selective attention on things and lengthen the overall period of attention.

---

 

Mark Homer: These workshops sound like a great way for service engineers to manage their stress. Robert, how would people get in touch with you?

Robert Smith: The best place to go is our web site [details are below for both contact and to obtain a meditation relaxation audio]

Mark Homer: Robert Smith, thank you very much been an absolute pleasure. The full interview has been recorded including links to other resources and can be found on the Field Service News Portal. I for one will be practising my breathing techniques and downloading the relaxation audio. I found the statistics that Robert shared quite shocking. I know for many; Mental Health is something we may take for granted but as I get older the more I come across friends and colleagues who talk about the impact mental health is having on their lives or family. I would recommend adding mental health in the context of health and welfare as a discussion item on your next service team meeting and actively listen to all the responses. Please do also try the beathing exercise before you turn the page.

---

 

Robert Smith – Personal bio & contact details:

Corporate Mental Health Consultant

Robert has had an extraordinary career having received an MBA he went on to become a UKCP registered Psychotherapist adding Post Graduate Certificates in CBT and SFT and a Clinical Psychology Diploma. He is also a Master Trainer of NLP and Coaching. This powerful mix of business acumen and depth of psychology knowledge enabled him to design and deliver some of the most innovative Talent Development Programs in the world. So far, he has worked with people from 100+ countries, many different organisations and multi cultures. In some of those cultures Mental Resilience was necessary not only for work life but to stay alive. Robert and his team will stretch you, open your mind and transform you. All done in a no-nonsense practical way with even a dash of fun. But Robert will for sure, if you’re ready, prepare you for a new world.

Contact: info@lesleymackayassociates.com

Robert Smith LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-smith-6b94359/

• UKCP United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
• CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• SFT Solution Focused Therapy
• NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming

Or contact:

Mark Homer, Managing Partner, Field Service Associates Limited, www.fsal.co.uk

---

Further Reading:

• Read more about Managing the Mobile Workforce @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about Staff Wellbeing @ www.fieldservicenews.com/staff-wellbeing
• Learn more about Field Service Associates Limited @ www.fsal.co.uk
• Read more articled by Mark Homer on Field Service News  @ www.fieldservicenews.com/mark+homer
• Connect with Mark Homer on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/mark-homer/
• Connect with Robert Smith on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/robert-smith/

Dr. Chris Raddats, Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Director of Research at the University of Liverpoool, highlights the importance of having a strong corporate brand in B2B manufacturers and offers companies the opportunity to better understand the unique drivers of their brand strengths by taking part in an exclusive study.

Having a strong corporate brand in business-to-business (B2B) markets is an important factor in creating differentiation and driving performance. It is, however, less clear what factors create such a brand for traditionally-product dominant companies (manufacturers) from the customer perspective.

The quality of the manufacturer’s products is important but so too are brand familiarity, customer relationships, delivery performance, prices, and services among other factors. Indeed, services are increasingly important for many manufacturers in creating differentiation and competitive advantage. It is not easy to quantify the relative importance of specific drivers in creating a strong brand, although having this knowledge would help manufacturers to develop and invest in the most important ones.

 

A FREE-OF-CHARGE OPPORTUNITY TO UNDERSTAND THE DRIVERS OF YOUR COMPANY'S BRAND

Using a survey and through undertaking statistical analysis, we have developed an approach that can isolate the specific drivers of a strong B2B manufacturer brand. The survey was developed after an extensive programme of interviews with company managers and is run using a manufacturer’s customers as the sample. It has already been used by one manufacturer for whom we received 173 customer responses.

For this manufacturer, services are a relatively small part of its turnover. The results show that there are three significant drivers of its brand: 1st - 'cost of sales services' (e.g., reliable delivery and short lead times); 2nd - 'brand familiarity'; 3rd - 'product support and operational services' (e.g., training, support, project management). Thus, the importance of services and brand familiarity is key for this manufacturer.

Moreover, when considering the factors that drive overall customer satisfaction with the manufacturer, we identified two factors that were significant drivers: 1st – ‘brand loyalty’ and 2nd 'cost of sales services'. We can, therefore, clearly see the high importance of the brand as well as services such as product delivery.

We aim to run the survey again with another B2B manufacturer in a different sector. To this end, we are seeking a manufacturer for whom services are an important part of turnover (c. 20+%). So, if your company would like to better understand the unique drivers of your brand strength, we can provide you with the online survey instrument to run with your customers and then analyse the data for you using statistical analysis.

We will provide you with a report based on the results. This work is free-of-charge and all we ask is to use the data for anonymised academic publications and managerial articles in, for example, Field Service News. Your company name will never be disclosed.

The study is being run by three academics, Dr. Chris Raddats (click through to see my LinkedIn profile) and Dr. Rachel Ashman at the University of Liverpool and, Professor Stuart Roper at the University of Huddersfield. We have a wealth of experience working with companies to deliver valuable insight and if you are interested in the study and would like further information, please contact me at chrisr@liv.ac.uk.

---

Further Reading:

• Contact Dr. Chris Raddats for more information on the study @ chrisr@liv.ac.uk
• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more articles by Dr. Chris Raddats on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/chris-raddats
• Connect with Dr. Chris Raddats on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/chrisraddats/

In this new article, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, discusses how service leaders should make decisions based on data and research, rather than opinions...

According to Clayton Christenson, the late Harvard University Professor and strategy expert, “To find the biggest opportunities in the world, seek out the world’s biggest problems.” This is wonderful advice if your goal is to win a Nobel Peace Prize, but what if you are a senior executive in a business trying to survive? What to do? Substitute “Your Market” for “World.”

“To find the biggest opportunities in your market, seek out your market’s biggest problems.”

This is true if you are responsible for growing your company or your service business. The problems are the same but the resources available to help solve the problem at the business level are much greater than the resources at your disposal in the service business. This resource limitation frequently causes service leaders to make their plans based on opinions, not actual research. The outcomes are usually disappointing. The formal name of the solution process is Evidence Based Problem Solving.

THE BUDGET

Annually, most service leaders are asked to prepare a budget including a revenue and profit projection. These two commitments are then rolled into the next higher level’s budget. At that time, either the budget is accepted or more likely, the higher-level executives will come back with a comment like “We need an additional 10% on both revenue and profit” or “How much more can you deliver next year?” The only way to answer these questions is by having actual evidence to back up your projections. And when you finally settle on the new budget, you will first have to convince your team that you knew what you were doing when you submitted the budget and second, that you have an actual plan on how to deliver on your projection.

The implementation of your decision will require some service marketing. For example:

• Evaluate the profitability of all your services
• Create and price new services
• Update and reprice existing services
• Grow the number of people purchasing your services
• Align your branding with the corporate image
• Other things that effect your customers

EVIDENCE BASED PROBLEM SOLVING

This simple drawing shows the four steps that IMPORTANT customer impacting service decisions should follow to minimize the likelihood of having the outcome fail to meet expectations:

When trying to solve your important problems, following these four steps will not guarantee success, but not following these steps make it highly likely that you will miss the real opportunity.

Step 1: Brainstorm to define growth objectives

Defining your growth objectives seems easy – just accept your boss’ target. But doing this will be a big mistake because:

• The target may be unreachable within the time or operating budget set.
• The target may be to low and achieving it would leave money on the table.
• Your original proposal may have been spot on, but you were not able to defend it because it had been a guess and not backed by facts.
• Over time, every business tends to become less effective. You should use this opportunity to evaluate all your assumptions and make appropriate changes.
• Your operating environment may have changed. You need to update your plans to account for current situations.
• It is likely that your business experienced significant staff changes because of COVID-19. Some people retired, some may have been made redundant, others joined but were not fully on-boarded into the organization. They may not be the right people for the long-term or they may have undiscovered skills which will influence your plans.

The first thing you must do is identify any and all useful data. Some of it will come from your financial, CRM, and service management systems. Other data will come from external sources like industry projections, management articles and books, webinars, and discussions with thought leaders in your network.

Data collection should be an ongoing activity. Data from internal systems are usually reviewed daily, weekly, or monthly and reviewed to identify areas that are doing well or need help. The external data is a different story. The members of the service management team at all levels should be assigned one or more sources to follow and create and circulate summaries of useful content. Some of these summaries may result in group discussions and actions leading to operational or strategic changes. Be sure to give full credit to the people participating in these activities and take their actions into consideration when evaluating promotion candidates.

In the “crazy busy” world of field services, the organization can benefit from a periodic ½ day to multiple day meeting to just go off the grid and focus on continuous improvement. This is a fantastic way to prepare up-and-comers for future positions while getting their unique insights on your business.

There are two desired outcomes from this brainstorming - actions:

1. A set of growth targets for the coming year or two that everyone believes is attainable with a little stretch.
2. A list of potential ways to achieve these targets.

At the end of step 1, you will have gone from data to insight to action!

Step 2: Internal audit to find growth capabilities

Remember that step 1 was all about brainstorming to identify your 1 to 3-year targets and to create a list of potential ways to achieve these targets. In step 2, we begin to expand our list of potential services we created in step 1, understand the resources we have available to grow the business, and identify some of the underutilized resources in the organization.

There are two desired outcomes from this stage:

1. A prioritized list of all the possible ways the organization can grow revenue and profit. This list must include:
   1. A brief description of the offer
   2. Your best quantified guess (a range) of the contribution to achieving your target
   3. The advantages and disadvantages of each from both the customer’s and business perspective
   4. The key resources which will significantly increase over current conditions
   5. The resources that will be needed and are not currently available at all
   6. The resources which currently are used and will no longer be needed at all
2. A list of the underutilized resources in the organization including people, parts, equipment, space, etc. These will be candidates for redeployment or removal as the organization changes.

At this point, no decisions have been made about the way forward. You only have a list of potential offers and constraints. You still must interact with customers and find out how likely they are to purchase them if made available.

Step 2 can be done using internal resources only although a facilitator (either internal or external to your company) may be helpful if your team hasn’t done many of these activities.

Step 3 - Market research to discover growth opportunities

Step 3 will have the most impact on your evaluation since this is when your customers get to tell you what they want and don’t want and how much they are willing to pay for any novel offers you are thinking about. They will tell you their biggest problems, how much they are willing to pay you to solve them, and if they have enough confidence in your business to trust you and buy your new services.

This step is best done by an outside resource who understands the service business and will not bias or spin any findings or opinions. You need honest insights if your decisions are to turn into positive outcomes.

These are the steps most likely to be used to arrive at an understanding of what your customers want and need and are willing to pay for:

• Segment products and services in your normal way and then decide on which segment(s) to concentrate on initially. This could be product, geography, application, type of user, etc.
• Prepare to interview at least 15 customers in each segment.
• Develop questionnaire including the importance of every proposed offering or modification and other relevant information about how the customer feels about their relationship with your service business.
• Randomly select enough contacts to ensure being able to complete the agreed number of interviews.
• Telephonically interview the agree number of customers in each segment.
• Prepare recommendations and findings:
  • Importance of each proposed offering or modification
  • Contract elements for one or more levels or types of contract
  • Value proposition(s)
  • Acceptable price range
  • Recommendations for initial and long-term metric deployment
  • Ideas for a sales strategy
  • Other information learned from discussions

A project like this for one product and one segment in one geographical area can easily yield 2500 unique data points plus numerous comments. Compare this to the opinions of one or a few internal people and you see why this article is titled “Make Decisions Based on Data, Not Opinions.” And why your plans and commitments will carry enough weight that it will be difficult for anyone to challenge your decisions.

Step 4 - Service marketing to commercialize best opportunities

Recently I was thinking about the differences between a product and a service. One of the differences that nobody mentions is “There is no Kickstarter for services." I know that Kickstarter is for startup companies and rarely B2B, but the point is that companies can Beta test hardware products (including software), but how do we try out our services on our captive audience? The only way is through Step 3.

After we review the recommendations from the interviews, we are ready to choose one or more new offerings. Now we have to GTM (Go To Market). Here are the steps in their approximate order:

• Get buy-in from the C-suite. Sales, Marketing, and Finance are probably the most important support you will need although HR and Manufacturing may have a strong say depending on what you propose.
• Training will be critical to the success of your plans. People you must train include:
  • Your team.
  • Marketing to modify the standard quote forms and update the website to include your new stuff. You may need some dedicated advertising and an appearance at your industries upcoming real or virtual trade shows. This is your opportunity to boost your sales so do not look at this as a chore.
  • Sales needs training on how to sell what you will offer and probably would like a slide deck to use when presenting the service package to a new prospect.
  • In Finance, the Accounts Receivables team should receive an introduction to your new services so they can talk knowledgeably while collecting overdue payments.
  • If some of your service is delivered by the channel, then they the same training as the Sales team.
  • Customer experience, wherever they report, should be asked to do follow-up surveys or interviews on some of the early users of your new services.
• You can now start selling your new products. And make sure the CX group is surveying all early customers. Any negative feedback must be promptly followed-up by a senior service executive. And lessons learned should be quickly incorporated in your offerings and messaging.
• Repeat.

CONCLUSION

This whole effort deserves the same attention as the launch of a new physical product. If you have done everything well, the impact will certainly be the same in both cases. After all, new services are new products. Give then the same chance of succeeding as the product side of the business does.

---

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this third blog he looks at defining the steps to ensure that the proactive efforts of your field service team will be successful.

In my last blog, I spoke about how the success of our field team’s business development efforts will be dependent upon whether they accept that their proactive efforts are part of their service role and whether the customer sees value in their recommendations. We can do this when we take a service perspective. How? Treat revenue generation as the valuable service that it is and engage our technicians in the proactive promotion of our services in a manner that we would be proud to tell our customers about. Then, support our techs’ efforts as we would any other service that we offer.

Let’s look at this a little more closely. Imagine you are about to add a new service to your portfolio and you want to take steps to ensure it’s successful. For the purpose of this exercise, we’ll call the new service “Super Service”. The service you are about to add has the following characteristics:

• It complements existing services (does not replace any of the services you are currently providing)
• It’s a new concept – the customer needs to be educated on the value
• Some new knowledge and skills are required but your existing technicians can perform the service – no additional staffing required
• Existing tools and test equipment can be used – no significant capital equipment needed
• It has the potential to be highly profitable – efficiency in delivery is critical
• You must rely on another division within your organization to deliver a small part of the service
• Super Service has the potential to be a game changer

The question is: What specific steps will you take to ensure the success of this new service?

Take a few minutes to write down what steps you’ll take to launch this service successfully. Don’t worry about completeness of this list for now. We’ll come back to this list later. We only want you to start generating ideas about the steps you would include.

To successfully launch this new service, here is a list of possible steps we could take:

1. Define the service
2. Support the initiative
3. Get buy-in from supporting divisions
4. Talk the walk
5. Tell our customers
6. Maintain focus

How does this list compare to yours? Chances are there are a lot of similarities

Now, look at the description of Super Service once more. Notice that the Super Service described also applies to the actions of business promotion by our field service team. Through their recommendations for example, the their efforts can complement our existing services. Their actions will require explanation to our customers so that they understand the motive behind, and the value in, their efforts. Although some new knowledge and skills may be needed by the techs, no additional staffing will be required. In addition, there will be no need for any significant capital increases and the results of their efforts can be highly profitable. Finally, our field team’s promotion of products and services can be a game changer if we can help our customers see how they’ll be better off for those recommendations.

So, we can supercharge our techs’ revenue generation by treating their efforts as the valuable service that they are. This means identifying those things that we must do well in order to successfully encourage and support their efforts.

Our next step is to determine and apply the specific actions we’ll take. Using the list above, my next blog will look at some examples of actions we can take. Please note that the actions that we identify may not necessarily be the actions that you, in your specific situation will take. It’s the approach that is important here, so simply apply the same approach used here to your list.

Reflection

Go back the list of steps that you have created that will ensure that the proactive efforts of your field service team will be successful. Is the list complete? What’s missing? Rework the list until you assured that those steps cover all that is necessary for your success.

 

---

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