ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘management’ CATEGORY

Smaller UK contact centres need to “evolve or fail”, according to one of the sector’s leading players. Manchester-based allldaypa, the leading contact centre for the SME industry, reports that businesses face a ‘perfect storm’ of market conditions that will cause the profit margins of smaller operators to be wiped out.

Reuben Singh, CEO of alldayPA and VC investments company Isher Capital warns that the industry will see costs rise by over £440 million when the minimum wage rise takes effect from 1st April this year.

Commenting further Singh says: “I support the increase in the minimum wage. Failing to prepare for it, however, means smaller UK-based call centres are now sleepwalking to disaster by not considering these additional costs, alongside the need to invest to modernize and evolve to future-proof their businesses.

Contact centres are being challenged to form new strategies to meet the evolving requirements of customers or face losing out to either off-shore or larger firms.Contact centres are being challenged to form new strategies to meet the evolving requirements of customers or face losing out to either off-shore or larger firms.

“The phone remains the most important communication tools for businesses, the rise of digital has only heightened the need for a professional, personal and proactive communication, which is so crucial for business partnerships. The digital age has meant the opportunities for strong growth in this industry lie in multi-channel services, incorporating functions such as web chat and social media interactions into already existing strategies. The budget needed for this modernisation and training to deliver these offerings to customers is significant.

“With depleting margins already hitting the smaller call centres, they are going to fall even further behind.”

For this reason, alldayPA backed by Isher Capital is seeking to make acquisitions, having assembled a fund around £20m to buy regional contact centres or related businesses, to drive managerial and back office efficiencies using its tried and tested operating strategy.

The group is aiming to drive revenue from nearly £30m to £100m. Created by a network of eight to 10 contact centres spread nationwide; safeguarding jobs and growing the headcount of the current portfolio of companies from 500 to 2,000.

Commenting on the plan, Singh says: “The aim of each acquisition will be to preserve local jobs, building a nationwide network of contact centres with the back-up and resources or a major player.  We will create the right blend of local identity with our best practice systems and training.”

With 4% of UK workers employed in the call centre industry. This storm is putting one million UK jobs in jeopardy “Our plans in the marketplace are fluid and we have not implemented any specific timelines for making the acquisitions. My family and I have been investing and running call centres for nearly 20 years, we believe in maintaining our family values as we continue to grow our family business nationwide.”

With 4% of UK workers employed in the call centre industry. This storm is putting one million UK jobs in jeopardy.  This is particularly acute for Scotland and the North East of England where as much as 6% of the working population relies on the sector.

Despite these pressures, Singh believes that there is a strong demand for more regional contact centres, making it critical that they overcome the need for lower margins and higher investments.

Singh says: “Local regional suppliers allow businesses to oversee operations and ensure customer service standards are being maintained throughout, increasing the connection and empathy they have with customers.”

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Will self-service for customers be the answer to the dwindling number of available field service technicians? Prudence Kolong, Editorial Director, Copperberg, joins the ranks of Field Service News associate columnists and in her first feature tackles this important topic.

Join Copperberg and Field Service News in Warwick, UK for the Field Service Summit in April and in Amsterdam, Netherlands in May for the Field Service Forum.

A recent survey by the Service Council showed that 70% of global manufacturing companies with small to large service operations are increasingly concerned with the lack of prospects to replace their retiring workforce.

However, less than half have implemented human capital management strategies capable of addressing talent shortage and competence development. It does not help either that scores of new STEM graduates and millennials, who in a perfect world should be lining up to join the ranks of highly skilled service teams within seemingly economically stable firms, see manufacturing jobs as old fashioned and dated and therefore not appealing.

On the technology front, deep shifts in customer demands drive innovation at a riveting speed. Many service organisations now look into technology as a potential avenue to circumvent the lack of prospects to renew their existing human resources.

On the technology front, deep shifts in customer demands drive innovation at a riveting speed. Since Industrial IoT and digitalisation have stopped being buzzwords meant for technologists, they have quietly slipped into the day-to-day dealings of service directors. The future landscape of field service operations for traditional or advanced manufacturing products will integrate a wide range of technological advancements.

The use of robots, artificial intelligence or automated supports on the production line is not new. However, their utilisation to enhance service lifecycle performance constitutes a new set of challenges for which very few are equipped.

Market leaders are now prototyping innovative solutions, with pilot projects, to engage clients and benefit from value-added technologies ranging from Industrial artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, robotics processes and big data.

An abundance of opportunities opens with IoT, including hyper-personalised data mining solutions that enable targeted customer response with mission-critical predictive maintenance, optimised time management and strategic deployment of multi-skilled fleets.

The question that remains open is how can an industry slated to generate up to 4,45 billion dollars by 2020, thrive without sufficient manpower? Can it rely solely on progress in technology?To ensure that the right people maintain the effectiveness of their enhanced service ecosystems, smart service directors engage in constant skillset assessment, retraining, reallocation and reassignment. However, the question that remains open is how can an industry slated to generate up to 4,45 billion dollars by 2020, thrive without sufficient manpower? Can it rely solely on progress in technology?

The race for market share has service directors drastically redefining their KPIs, readjusting their resource strategies and the means to achieve them.

Furthermore, a new trend is sweeping the industry: crowdsourced field service. In this instance, the very concept of field service management is revolutionised. Fleet ownership, task scheduling, work order management and SLA’s compliance are no longer the sole prerogative of the product manufacturer and its service department.

In layman terms, the “Uber” business model has come and conquered the field service arena; now anyone can order and/or deliver turnkey maintenance operations and end-to-end field service.  At the onset, uberized field service seems like a palliative solution to workforce shortage, a momentary placebo that may serve its short-term purpose. So how about a realistic solution that identifies the root cause, and just like preventative maintenance addresses issues before they occur.

Gartner predicts that within the coming 5 years, 10% of emergency field service work will be managed by artificial intelligence, implying less use or need of manpower on the horizons.  Nonetheless, service organisations need to invest in out of the box approaches to talent acquisition with hybrid skillsets and become more proactive in handling their single most important asset: people.

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A new study from IDC and LogMeIn has revealed that fast and effective support will be a competitive differentiator for companies looking to win-over digitally transformed customers and employees.

According to the study “Support Services as a Competitive Differentiator”, nearly 67% of consumers said that customer satisfaction was more important than price when doing business with a company, yet nearly 30% of companies still say that reducing the cost of support is more important than customer satisfaction.  With the rules of customer and employee engagement changing, this disconnect is setting companies up for a negative long-term impact.

Increasing Customer Expectations

Today’s connected world demands that support and service teams take a greater role in driving customer engagement and loyalty.  Digitalization, including the adoption of mainstream social platforms and the use of online forums, is acting as an accelerator on this shift.  This is turning customer support improvement into an urgent imperative and making business practices increasingly transparent.

According to the study, customers rank better communication and fast problem resolution among their top priorities for customer support.  While an overwhelming 89% of respondents believe that having a support agent they can communicate with is the most important aspect of a support experience, companies are challenged to meet this goal due to the various nuances of each user and individual devices.  In fact, almost one-third of respondents said that support took a long time to resolve their issue while 24% said the problem was never resolved.  With 64%, of consumers reporting that good support experience result in advocacy and additional purchases from the company and 60% reporting that they share bad experiences as well, residual impacts of customer support satisfaction have impacts far beyond a single engagement.

“Today’s digital disruption signals the need for a fresh support strategy.  Service teams are being called upon to fulfil a greater purpose and are in a prime position to create success stories that can lead to better brand awareness, improve sales conversions, and ultimately, repeat business,” said Jennifer Cooke, Research Director, IDC.  “As the research shows, the degree to which support is effective is now a competitive differentiator and companies need to approach it in a more proactive and predictive way or risk damaging relationships with customers, employees and partners.”

Expectations for Internal IT Are Also on the Rise

Negative support experience has a widespread impact on a company beyond just lost customers and revenue.  Internal IT teams are under similar pressures from their end-users.   In nearly all the topics surveyed, employee experiences and expectations of their internal IT teams matched those consumers have of customer support underscoring the importance of efficient support across the board.  In addition, faulty internal IT support is costing companies in productivity of employees.  When users don't receive effective support, 52% said that they waste time because they can't perform their jobs. In addition to not doing their jobs, 45% of the time they pull another colleague away from their own jobs and ask for help. The net impact is a dramatic decrease in productivity.

Developing an Effective Support Strategy

Companies are facing a variety of hurdles when it comes to developing a modern and effective support strategy.  These challenges range from decreasing or stagnant budgets for support tools (41%) and lack of executive support (20%) to inability to scale with current tools and technologies (42%). Even for those that have made some changes to their internal processes or invested in technologies (50% of respondents), only 25% have been able to drive strong relationships due to the lack of adaptability and intelligence capabilities.

The survey did find that technologies like remote support are helping alleviate some of the pain customers associate with support today.  Nearly 75% of organisations reported using remote support solutions within their environment and 85% of end users saying these technologies helped resolve their issues more quickly than other methods of support.  As companies look to continue to mature their support organisations, they will need to look adopt these technologies as well as ones that will enable emerging artificial intelligence and automation to help meet the needs of changing users, devices and geographic locations.

“Customer service inextricably linked with the overall success of a company,” said Dave Campbell, Vice President, Customer Engagement and Support at LogMeIn.  “This becomes even more apparent when discussing customer support specifically.  In today’s competitive landscape, support organisations are being viewed two ways – as a competitive advantage or a detriment to success.  As a result, finding the right balance of people, process and technology will be key for companies to mature their support strategy to a point where it will create long term loyalty, customer advocacy, and business growth.”

Methodology

In August 2017, IDC conducted two surveys to better understand how existing support technologies were meeting the needs of a changing user base. One survey focused on the end-user experience, and the other survey examined enterprise and service provider support programs and the tools they used, with the goal of assessing the current state of support, identifying areas of success, and uncovering areas that needed improvement. The 1,400 survey respondents were from a broad mix of industries, company sizes, professional roles, and geographic regions.

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Annick Perry, Senior Project Manager, Noventum gives us some insight into the findings of a recent research project that Noventum and Aston Universities Advanced Services Group have undertaken to look at Advanced Services Trend within Manufacturing...

In a joint research study with the Advanced Services Group, a centre of excellence at Aston Business School, Noventum explored how five societal ‘Megatrends' bring opportunities for business growth for manufacturing companies through advanced IoT enabled services.

The five societal megatrends we explored in this research are:

1. Value change: The increasing importance of transparency, diversity, individualisation and freedom of choice, as well as demand for meaning and connectedness.
2. Green and resource scarcity: The increasing consciousness of manufacturers when providing products and services to fulfil human development and at the same time take care of the natural system.
3. Health and Aging: An ageing society and the increasing importance of healthy living and lifestyle.
4. Globalisation and the need for community: The increasing emphasis on communities, localities, etc. to foster identity in light of a globalised world.
5. Inequality and Social Exclusion: The increasing market share of poor customers, means reducing the complexity and cost of a good and its production. Designing products for emerging countries may also call for an increase in durability and when selling the products, reliance on unconventional distribution channels. Globalisation and rising incomes in emerging countries may also drive frugal innovation, which implies that services and products need not be of inferior quality but must be provided cheaply[/ordered_list]

In this article, the focus is on just one of the Mega Trends ‘Value Change’ which provided some interesting insights on how this will impact the manufacturing industry.

Customers’ perceptions of value are changing

Consumer habits are changing, we are becoming more tech-savvy, and less connected to ownership of products and, in favour of experiences delivered by service providers operating new business models, like Airbnb. Expectations of a personalized experience are higher, which means companies must respond to customers’ needs faster and in a unique way. This change is passed on by B2C customers towards their B2B suppliers and partners. For manufacturers, this means staying alert and being proactive. As Anders Mossberg of Scania Trucks stated in our study, “Talk to your customers’ customers because they are the ones that will drive the trends in the future.”

Customers want to Buy Everything as a Service

Manufacturers are recognising the need to find new ways of offering value to customers. Their offerings are changing from a product focus to a service focus, which emphasises providing the customer with the capability to achieve their business goals, instead of emphasising product features. They are now competing through a combination of products and services, enabled by technology, tailored to meet the customer’s needs. Rolls-Royce, for example, sells hours of flight time for its jet engines rather than the more traditional purchase of the engine. These are more sophisticated, higher-value contracts, based on outcomes. They are also higher risk for the manufacturer but with higher potential to create a competitive advantage.

New technologies enable to respond to changing needs

New developments in technology are enabling the value chain to be redesigned. Embedded sensors and processors in assets and devices are increasingly capable of transmitting data to control centres to signal the need for repair or refurbishment. Research participants cited the introduction of driverless vehicles, some of whom mentioned that this is already a reality in some situations, and will increasingly be the case in the future. It will provide the opportunity for companies to take leadership and redesign the value chain to increase efficiency and added value. New configurations of networks allow companies to redefine their role in the value chain.

A transformation is needed

Delivering such advanced service requires fundamental changes in the manufacturer’s operations, relationships, organisational structures and potentially a change in their culture. Denis Bouteille of Fives addressed this in our study by saying, “Talking to the customer, we need people who can really develop the empathy, the listening and the deep understanding.”

Conclusions of the research on societal ‘Megatrends’

This exploratory research concludes that societal megatrends can drive opportunities for manufacturers to compete and grow through advanced services. To realise those opportunities, it’s important that companies exploit the implications of new trends together with their customers and explore what the impact of societal trends might be for future needs. The megatrends explored in this research show a significant potential for companies to develop advanced services and strengthen the competitive position of companies. However, some key factors need to be taken into mind when manufacturing companies take the decision to invest in developing advanced services.

1. Before companies can start developing advanced IoT enabled services…..

• Top management needs to support the development of advanced services and provide clear leadership to staff in the mindset appropriate to the development of the new capabilities[/unordered_list]

2. Stay close to your customers to identify opportunities for advanced IoT enabled services by understanding how value perception and needs are impacted by societal trends

• Understand your companies role in tackling global social and environmental challenges
• Explore the opportunities of the ‘circular economy’
• Recognise the impact of IoT on your customer's value chain

3. When you are developing the business models around advanced services make sure that:

• The tacit knowledge of the very experienced but ageing workforce is transferred into technical solutions to deliver advanced services
• Your company thinks global, but acts local and delivers a superior customer experience

Want to know more? Download an executive summary of this research and learn how the other societal trends can bring business opportunities. @ http://fs-ne.ws/dOId30iepLh

Field Service Technician enablement is both an important topic but also a frequently rolled out buzz-phrase that we hear within our industry. Marne Martin, CEO of ServicePower digs deeper into the topic and helps us cut through the hyperbole to understand the key facts within this topic...

Technicians today are not the technicians of the past. Their expectations are continuously evolving based on the ability to consume information and communicate instantaneously from their connected devices among themselves, with assets, the back office and the end consumer.

ServicePower’s mission is to drive an excellent service experience and grow the value of every consumer relationship. To do that, we must focus on the technician.

Much time the past five years was spent talking about IOT. Less was focused on what a connected world means for the technician, and what is needed to work smarter. We know productivity, first-time fix and proactive maintenance is the holy grail of profitability for service organizations and customer experience. The technician is the key to both.

Consumer expectation of a seamless, digital experience has impacted the industry greatly as have technology trends, yet a true focus on technician enablement is still spotty.Consumer expectation of a seamless, digital experience has impacted the industry greatly as have technology trends, yet a true focus on technician enablement is still spotty. Our “best-in-class” customers bring technicians into the process related to user experience, and how data and workflow changes enable experienced technicians to be hyper-productive and how novice technicians become fully functional, faster. Likewise, the businesses which service a wide variety of equipment, work, or parts need technology that has best-in-class capabilities around artificial intelligence, data model flexibility, IOT, diagnostics, and robust, flexible mobile applications. They likewise need a consumer or dealer portal to collect and send technicians key information such as customer, product or service history, service contract or service level agreements.

Service technicians have become the “single point of failure” in the customer interaction because typical technology driven from the CRM and ERP ill-prepares them with a lack of information. Sales and financial systems provide customer and billing information but do not enable a game-changing service experience that improves brand, market share or revenue.

We endeavour to enable technicians to perform more efficiently with fewer points of friction in their daily activities. Consider the following.

Evolving Labor Supply

All technicians want to be successful on the job. The emerging millennial workforce uses technology every day. We must use veterans’ skills and talents while utilizing millennials to drive technology adoption. Functionality exposed to technicians is important. However, flexible date models, customer, product, and diagnostic information, available before and during a job, is equally important. First-time fixes don’t happen by accident.

Enable Technicians with Technology

Field service management technology is itself evolving, through artificial intelligence, but also more versatile data models that can use IOT or predictive information to update work orders, create differentiated service workflows, or deploy updatable forms in real-time, based on diagnostics. Asset data, IOT diagnostics and service history deliver service insights digitally, on-site. The best vendors and newest product releases do more with technology to achieve and exceed traditional metrics.

Intelligent portals

Intelligent portals are game-changing. They can do more than simply enable a service or technician location. Portals can digitally deliver appointment offers, which in the past, only the call centre would have had the insights to do. They can facilitate better service by allowing customers to upload connected smart sensor data, fault codes, photographs or videos of failed products, and interact with triage and field technicians. Portals better inform customers and prepare technicians to resolve issues in a single truck roll.

The latest mapping and location technologies provide consumers improved visibility of appointments, near-by technicians with schedule availability, and technician arrival estimates. Portals delight the customer and improve call centre efficiency by digitally handling booking, confirming and rescheduling appointments automatically.

Portals can even use AI, asset and service history to intelligently offer customers new products, accessories and services, without ever interacting with a call centre, snail mail or email, and before the technician arrives.

Mobile technology

Mobile technology has come a long way in recent years. While scheduling optimized technicians and parts together, status, and capturing payment are still a challenge for some organizations, overall, field service companies can now also use mobile technology to provide better, more personalized service in the field to every customer.

Effective mobile solutions deliver relevant customer, asset, parts, and diagnostic information in real-timeMobile applications provide entitlement, customer availability, asset information and technician location, real-time inventory, payments, and timesheet capability, as well as work order and technician status updates. Leading solutions were built with 100% configurability and flexible data models, which provide the opportunity to customize service events, improve first-time fix rates and improve customer satisfaction. Effective mobile solutions deliver relevant customer, asset, parts, and diagnostic information in real-time, as well as provide task lists, pricing and payments, and survey delivery for a faster, smarter, more satisfying experience.

Mobile technology is the best way to enable technicians to deliver the best experience.

Siri, Echo, Alexa and Cortana Aren’t Enough

Digital assistants are cool, but how can we make them more helpful? Displaying navigation, making calls or texts is handy. Digital assistants integrated with data hubs can deliver useful customer, asset, and predictive intelligence to technicians which require it to improve service delivery. `

Digital assistants become more powerful when integrated with AI, machine learning algorithms, asset and service history, predictive and repair information, providing an entirely different kind of assistance to field technicians.

AI can analyze data to derive cognitive insights and deliver it through digital assistants, resulting in the holy grail of better tech enablement, customer experience, and financial performance of the service organization or brand.

Technician Enablement Means Transforming Field Service Experiences with Technology

Friendly, competent technicians enabled with game-changing technology are the future. Sales secure customers, but your service technology retains them, increases your share of their wallets and grows your brand.

Don’t just give face value to technician enablement, own it, and make it a priority. Your brand and your customers will thank you.

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Having recently started a new role working with his Vice President, Whitney Reynolds, focusing on Customer Experience Matt Boretti, Director, Strategic Programs, Teleflex, was a prime candidate to take part in the day-long stream on the topic at the forthcoming Field Service Medical conference held this year in La Holla, California.

We spoke exclusively with Boretti ahead of the event to find out more about what he would be covering off in his presentation and why CX has become such an important area both in his organisation Teleflex and also within the broader medical sector.

"The customer experience group is a relatively new initiative in our organisation" begins Boretti.

"We've done extremely well financially across the last number of years, which has been primarily fuelled by a growth strategy that has been based on acquisition. As I'm reading and learning more around customer experience, I've come to understand that it is not unusual for companies that are in a heavy acquisition mode tend to not have the ASCI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) scores, so we were probably not unusual in that regard."

"Our President of the Americas, Jay White,  recognised this and I believe he was hearing from a number of our customer's if I didn't have to buy from Teleflex I wouldn't - I think that was a pivotal moment for him where he realised we need to do something different. In other words, what got us to this point where we are at now, is not going to get us towards where we want to go next."

With White identifying the importance of service to his organisation's aspirations, he pushed the topic and gained buy-in from his fellow senior execs with the result being Boretti and Reynolds heading up the newly formed Customer Experience group back in August last year.

As one would expect just six months in it has been a phenomenally busy period for the two, but perhaps crucially they have gone into the task with a solid understanding of what needs to be achieved and a well thought out roadmap of how they are going to get there.

"When we initially took this on we realised that we're not experts in this!" Boretti admits humbly. "So the first thing we did was we started to read a lot, and we also identified some organisations that had helped companies like us with similar projects such as this - which is change management at the core."

"We whittled a list of ten initial companies down to three who came to us to present their ideas. Then we finally chose a company called Strativity, who had worked with companies like Delta and Mercedes Benz, and they've established a straightforward process that was easy to understand so we could visualise how we should fit into that."

Alignment:

"The first step of the process for us was alignment, and in many ways, Jay [White] had already started that process via some of the socialisations he had done with the leadership group. However, there was still a lot of details to be established, so I think they were onboard, but they didn't exactly what they were signing up for. Therefore our first objective was to get everyone up to speed on what we would be undertaking here."

With this objective set, the first move was to hold a management alignment meeting to make sure all essential personnel were on the same page. However, it soon became apparent to Boretti that the path they were heading on wasn't going to be one of simple linear progression.

"What really struck me in that first meeting was that alignment is not just a phase that we will move out of. We will probably move from alignment into discovery, then back to alignment then into design and then back to alignment and so on. It really does need to be a journey of continuous improvement and refinement."

Communication

Of course, while as Boretti asserts alignment needs to be a continuously reviewed aspect that is returned to and evaluated through any process that will fundamentally shift a corporate culture, such as bringing customer experience to the fore, another vitally constant aspect that needs a concerted focus is on communication.

"We started doing a lot of communication from very early on," explains Boretti. "People would ask me what I was doing exactly, and I would say there are three things that we are doing. Great things are happening in the organisation that Whitney [Reynolds] and I had nothing to do with that were improving the customer experience, so the first thing we are doing is highlighting those great things and making sure people are aware of the good things that are already happening in the organisation."

"The second aspect was that we started to understand in the different functional areas of the business units where we wanted to make improvements for the customer experience but that were not easy and had obstacles in place - whether they be processes, people or systems. We wanted to gain an understanding of those which would be important to our group and help remove some of those obstacles so we could accelerate some of those."

"Then the last piece was the transformation itself. We knew that we had to change the mindset and to some extent our culture regarding how we view our customers and how we view ourselves servicing those customers - ultimately that is what we see as the long-term aim for the CX group."

Fortune favours the brave

For even the most seasoned service and change management professionals identifying the core areas of focus, building out a strategy and then beginning to implement that plan would be viewed as a reasonable return for an initial six months of hard work. However, Reynolds realised that they had the wind in their sails and in October tasked Boretti with holding a Customer Experience Week in December.

It was a bold move, for while it presented an opportunity to really drive home the awareness the for how the company was evolving concerning its customer focus, it would mean a lot of hard work to bring it together within less than two months. If the delivery of such an event is executed well, it can potentially have an adverse effect amongst the workforce. It was a definite sign of trust in Boretti and the CX group as well as the viability of what they were trying to achieve.

Fortunately, that faith was repaid, and they not only pulled it off but in doing so have been really able to accelerate their program so far. So what exactly did they include in their inaugural Customer Experience Week?

"There were three parts to customer experience week," explains Boretti. "Firstly we introduced an off the shelf training package from Miller-Heimann called Building Customer Loyalty where so we brought some of our trainers together who run leadership training internally and then trained the trainers, based on that course."

"We also brought in our customers into give presentations as well. It was interesting because when I first suggested this, a few people asked 'can we do that?' But this was a customer experience week so for me; it was essential that the customers were involved."

"With the customer presentations, we basically asked them to tell us three things when they came in. We wanted them to tell us what they expect from a medical device company, how they viewed our partnership and to tell us what we were doing well and then to tell us where we were falling short, what do we need to do differently, what do we need to do better."

"The final thing that we did was what we called departmental sharing. The thinking is that we everyone in the organisation either directly impacts the customer experience or enable the customer experience. We gave everyone a passport, and they were asked to go around the office, and they would get a sticker on the passport, and they would put the passport in Dropbox when they were done to enter a draw."

"Out of around 550 people within the office we had about 250 that participated in that event and another 200 involved in the training and about 150 that attended the customer presentation - so we really did manage to touch all of the office, and the reception was really positive."

Next step on the journey

So with a whirlwind six months plus and a highly successful Customer Experience week behind them already what is the next step on the change management journey for Boretti and his CX group within Teleflex?

"The real benefit for us from undertaking the CX Week is that we're now going to be producing a Customer Experience guide which we will be looking at in the June/July timeframe. What the event allowed us to do was identify what worked well, what didn't work well and what would we do differently."

"So we really have a strong baseline now for when we launch at full throttle in mid this year. Also, to come back to the point about alignment being a content area of focus for us, it helped us in terms of making sure the whole team could have some visibility into exactly what we are doing and why."

In many senses what the team at Teleflex are trying to achieve is not necessarily something new, customer-centricity and adopting an outside-in perspective of the business is a fundamental concept amongst companies with high CSAT scores. However, as Boretti raised above it is also an area that many companies, especially those that have grown through acquisition and therefore have multiple cultures embedded within them, struggle to master.

From speaking with Boretti though it certainly seems that Teleflex is adopting a sensible approach to establishing a central culture that has Customer Experience at its heart - something that will stand them in good stead for many years to come.

Want to know more? Why not join Matt and as well as the Field Service News team in La Jolla for field service medical in Feb 26th to 28th. Field Service News subscribers have an exclusive 25% discount for this event and if you are a field service practitioner then you may qualify for a complimentary industry subscription
Click here to apply for your subscription now and if you are successful a discount code will be sent to you via email within the hour!

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UK based non-profit knowledge sharing group the Service Community which Field Service News is proud to partner with has recently announced one of the most diverse events they have organised in the last couple of years.

The next Service Community event will be hosted by the Cambridge Service Alliance at the Institute for Manufacturing (a division of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering) on the 19th April 2018.

Being at one of the world’s leading service research organisations means that we hope to mix the very best in thought leadership, with practical hands-on experiences of transforming service businesses. Each discussion will be approximately 40 mins enabling you to discuss real issues with real people.  We are also very lucky to have a The Digital Manufacturing Tour, where you will have a chance to hear about the research initiatives that the IfM are undertaking on digitalisation in manufacturing.

In addition to a speaker from the CSA, we have leaders from MARS, Oracle and Fujifilm joining us to discuss and share experiences on how they have tackled some of their key service business challenges.

How to register

You can reserve your place by sending an email to info@service-community.uk. We will then contact you to confirm registration and will send out the joining instructions nearer to the event.

Please feel free to forward this information to colleagues who you think would be interested. We look forward to seeing you in April

Agenda for the 19th April 2018

12.00 - 13.00: Meet at the Institute of Manufacturing at Cambridge University
13.00: Nick Frank: Welcome

The Impact of Big Data and Machine Learning technologies on developing Customer Experience in manufacturing companies Dr Mohamed Zaki: Deputy Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance will introduce the work the Cambridge Service Alliance does and share recent research he has undertaken into Customer Experience development

Leading Service to a Trusted Advisor Culture:  Ashley Weller: UK Service Director at Mars drinks will share his own journey in driving sustainable cultural change

The Digital Manufacturing Tour

Coffee & Networking break

Real World Challenges of implementing Augmented Reality in Field Service Adil Kabel: Technical Support Manager, at Fuji Film responsible for EMEA 2nd line support for Wide Format Digital Printers will share his experiences of running two pilot projects in the Field Service organisation looking at 'glasses' and handheld augmented reality apps

Benefits and Challenges of Self Service models - Stephen Darkes Snr Process Analyst: Global Systems Remote Support at Oracle: Steve will give us some insights into the different Self-Service support models that Oracle have introduced to enhance customer satisfaction and make their business more cost-effective.  He will cover a range of models, from the use of community forums for Diagnosis and Resolution to the development of Customer Replaceable Units for hardware.  He will share his experiences of the range of benefits that self-service brings, as well as the challenges of implementation.  Many businesses can make their customer support more effective through self-service business models.

17.00 Networking Drinks

Reserve your place by sending an email to info@service-community.uk. We will then contact you to confirm registration and will send out the joining instructions nearer to the event.

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Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum interviews Seva Gavrilov, Market Unit Director, Russian of Volvo Penta

Volvo Penta is a global, world-leading supplier of engines and complete power solutions for marine and industrial applications. Their comprehensive, reliable solutions have helped customers all over the world increase productivity and performance – in every detail. By continuously improving their offer, through innovative, sustainable power solutions and the strengths and expertise of the entire Volvo Group, they have redefined premium for the modern market, operating entirely through their independent dealership network.

Seva Gavrilov joined Volvo Penta 22 years ago and took over leadership of the Russian business in 2007. He has always had a passion for nautical engineering, having graduated from the Marine Technology University in St Petersberg as a Naval engineer but also as a visionary with a head for business. Now, he is leading Volvo Penta through a programme of initiatives that are giving their dealerships a competitive edge, more momentum and increasing the company’s market share.

moreMomentum believes, as a result of our research, that successful long-term managers and companies have established ‘Momentum’, starting with 4 Winning Habits – Direction, Dialogue, Decision-making and Discovery. In this series of Momentum Case Studies, Jan van Veen, co-founder of moreMomentum, interviews proven managers across the globe who are successfully implementing the 4 Winning Habits to lead innovative, energised and engaged teams.

Challenges facing Volvo Penta Services in Russia

In the early 2010’s Volvo Penta decided its route to increased growth was through the large corporate fleet owners such as the shipping and oil companies who controlled significant purchasing budgets. A major obstacle to this goal however was the dealer network that had created Volvo Penta’s success to date. At that time, the dealers saw each other as competitors and lacked trust. When it comes to corporate customers, many dealers are smaller local companies which do not have the resources, skills or confidence to respond to large-scale bids and service contracts. They lacked expertise in areas such as advanced corporate financing, project management, HR, etc. On the other hand, the larger dealers needed access to local markets for customer relationships, delivery and customer service. Seva needed a new approach to dealerships.

The Strategy

An obvious solution would have been to consolidate the dealers into a smaller number of large companies that could cope with the large deals, but in a large country like Russia that was impractical – they needed to keep access to small local areas. Instead, Seva created a strategy that would do two things: reverse the company’s focus so it put customers/fleet owners first and also encourage collaboration between the dealers instead of competition. All this could only be achieved by influence, to change how the dealers worked with each other, so a new environment of trust and co-operation could be built. The strategy was planned out over several years and introduced step-by-step so as not to scare people, but take them along on the journey.

Here we will show how Volvo Penta in Russia demonstrated each of the 4 Winning Habits in the implementation of its plan, creating momentum for long-term sustainable success. The strategy shows that momentum can start in highly competitive environments or even in other companies, elsewhere in the value chain, when the 4 Winning Habits are employed.

Direction – the common cause that everyone can get behind

Seva needed the dealers in the network to see the value in each other instead of just competition. Each had different strengths and skills that could be of use to the rest and enable them to reach and respond to more varied customers. This goal of collaboration was the direction driving the programme, although the dealers didn’t necessarily know it in the beginning. They soon realised however that along with collaboration come happier customers and a reduction in stress levels.

Dialogue – open discussion at and between all levels to encourage new ideas

The Volvo Penta annual dealer conference had always focussed mainly on reporting and products, so it was attended by dealers’ more junior managers. Starting in 2012 however, the agenda was changed to focus more on communication. It started with simple steps such as roundtable discussions that let the dealers identify common opportunities and solve common problems by themselves instead of with Volvo Penta’s intervention. Whereas before they would often blame each other, open discussion now started even on contentious subjects such as price wars. In the second year, Seva provoked discussions to create a realisation that collaboration was possible and even desirable. He made them think for themselves how it could work and what the benefits would be, and they produced 30 benefits of sharing resources (e.g. specialised mechanics, financial experts, parts, knowledge, etc).

The focus of the conference shifted to strategy, and with added training on subjects such as finance, communications, leadership and finding solutions from conflicts, it attracted more senior delegates as it was seen as a decision-making forum. From the third year, the dealers created their own agenda which has gone on to strengthen trust and collaboration.

It shows that once people start to talk they also start to trust and then solve issues which were critical but difficult to solve before - Seva Gavrilov, Volvo Penta

To support the new collaborative approach, Seva improved the bonus scheme to reward dealers who contributed to the success of the group. Now, only 30% of bonuses are sales driven, the rest being based on competencies, skills and as a reward for sharing resources. There is even an extra bonus that dealers can award to each other as thanks for assistance. Since bonus levels also define the next year’s discount they are extremely valuable and sought after.

Decision-making – local decision-making empowerment

As a result of the new open environment, the dealers have taken it upon themselves to support each other. The smaller dealers, that used to rely on discounting, are now being ‘lifted up’ and actively supported by the larger ones. They’re not only a source of leads but can keep local customer relationships going and provide local provisioning in regions that would otherwise be too costly. Dealers are now regularly sharing mechanics, knowledge, financial expertise, etc.

In order to reinforce the new culture, the top six dealers voluntarily withdrew themselves from the annual ‘Best Dealer’ competition for four years, making the rest more motivated to win. Now, the competition is much tougher and the winners are more representative of the whole dealer network.

In addition, the four largest dealers joined forces to mutually fund and develop new management reporting software, connected to the accounting systems, to measure daily performance against targets. It provides a report on sales, customer satisfaction, parts, etc. Soon it will be rolled out across the entire dealer network, meaning common standards and quality for the big fleet customers.

If Volvo Penta had developed the software it would have been more expensive and created resistance. Because they did it themselves they made it in the way they wanted and paid for it themselves. I expect the roll-out to be quicker than if Volvo Penta had done it - Seva Gavrilov, Volvo Penta

Discovery – Looking for new external trends, opportunities and threats

The conversation with customers has changed. Dealers are less and less seeing themselves as just parts suppliers and breakage fixers. They are looking for other values such as budgeting, parts supply forecast, telematics and other service solutions.

Having in mind shared resources, dealers now know they can provide better service to customers than before. This also opens up opportunities which dealers were not able to afford before such as better payment terms to customers, quicker service, etc. Some dealers have also started to open branches in remote areas as they see them as opportunities rather than cost.

Next Steps

The next step in the programme is to develop higher levels of customer service, to create such a good feeling about the brand that the people in customers and dealers feel proud to use Volvo Penta products. Their relationships will grow into trusted partnerships where the smallest to largest customers can be open to changing market conditions and challenges they see approaching.

The group HQ in Gothenburg, Sweden has been watching Seva’s programme carefully and has already implemented some similar ideas internationally. Since the company is in a transition period from being largely product and dealer focussed to Customer focused,  Russia’s key message is to enforce the shift to end-user benefits. Improvements in change processes, complaint handling and collaboration between groups such as sales and service can make huge improvements.

Beyond that, Seva wants the dealers to think about why they are in business in the first place. He wants them to make so much money that they spend more on their life, to make a better world for themselves and the people around them. - Seva Gavrilov, Volvo Penta

It’s important to make the connection between profits and common social values and that will be the subject of the next conference. Money and profits are only the intermediate result, there are more objectives behind it.

What will they do with their profit? What is the bigger game? What is their direction?

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The digital revolution in the field service sector is continuing to move forward at pace, Michael Blumberg, Principal Consultant, Blumberg Advisory Group helps us keep track...

It seems that there is no escaping the Digital Transformation Revolution in Field Service at this moment. A splendid example of this is the Servitization of Manufacturing. Servitization is about the journey a company goes through as it transforms from a product-centric company where service is an afterthought or a necessary evil to one that generates a sizable portion of revenue from services; where service is the business.  The ultimate example is a Product as a Service business.

This is sort of the razor and razor blade scenario where the manufacturer gives away the razor in exchange for the recurring revenue stream that comes from purchasing the razor blades.  Instead of razor blades, it services or more specifically, outcome-based services.  For example, paying for the usage or result (e.g., outcome) produced by a product instead of buying the actual product.   To deliver on the promise, the provider of this outcome most implement a broad array of digital technologies to ensure the equipment is up and running whenever the customer needs to access it.  Downtime is problematic so you need to have technologies like IoT, AI, AR, etc. to ensure this high uptime.

In parallel to the servitization trend is the general ethos that businesses need to disrupt or be disruptedIn parallel to the servitization trend is the general ethos that businesses need to disrupt or be disrupted.  Uber has become the poster child for disruption.  This has lead many Field Service Organizations, software vendors, and technology providers to promote the concept of “Uberization” within field service.

Let’s put the term Uberization into context, when I hear the term Uberization, I think of providing customers with real-time, on-demand, always on, always connected solution.  Other terms that people associate with Uberization are agility and frictionless.  Agility is the ability to scale quickly, frictionless is where touch points that would delay the time it takes to complete a transaction are eliminated.  We might also think of a solution that incorporates aspects of the sharing economy or gig economy.

The Field Service Industry is far from being a laggard when it comes to Uberization.  Examples of how Field Service Organizations (FSOs) are achieving this outcome include but are not limited to:

• Utilizing IoT to monitor equipment performance and send notifications and alerts about the condition and performance of the machine
• Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to interpret these notifications, identify and diagnose problems, and take corrective actions
• Transmitting dispatch orders, triggered by IoT alerts, electronically to an ERP or CRM system and using Dynamic Scheduling software functionality to assign the right person for the job based on the needs of the job
• Turning to a freelance management system platform to source and dispatch freelance technicians on-demand to scale to capacity during peak periods
• Using Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, or Mixed Reality to provide less experienced field engineers with expertise they need to resolve technical problems they haven’t encountered before
• Relying on Big Data and analytics to optimize resource planning and allocation issues.[/unordered_list]

If FSOs are going to remain relevant and create value for their customers, their leaders must adapt and grow within the context of the trends identified above.   This motivation is required now more than ever.  Technological development and new business models are coming at such as rapid pace that leaders can afford to rest on their laurels or past successes of their company.  Past success does not guarantee future results!

In this digital age, companies must be faster, stronger and better than their competitorsIn this digital age, companies must be faster, stronger and better than their competitors.  A 5-year strategy is typically out of date within 18 months or less.  To survive and thrive in 2018, Field Service Leaders must have a crystal-clear vision about the outcomes they’d like to achieve within their organizations. They must pursue these outcomes with laser-like focus and adopt a sense of urgency about achieving these results.

Accountability to the mission is critical as is a mindset of certainty and a spirit of resourcefulness.

Quite often, the greatest of strategies and best of intentions are not pursued because of a lack of certainty or a perceived lack of resources.  The truth is that those who overcome enormous challenges and achieve phenomenal results have done so because of their determination (i.e., certainty) and their resourcefulness.   Cultivate these traits and the possibilities are endless.

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