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Kris Oldland, talks to Lucio Golinelli, Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia about the digital transformation they are undertaking and how it is helping to drive new profits....

There were a number of interesting case studies presented at the recent Maximize Europe event held by ServiceMax from companies across many different industry verticals.

However, one that really caught the eye was that of Sky Italia who worked closely with the field service management provider as part of an ambitious company wide digital transformation program.

As Europe’s largest Pay-TV company with dominant presence in the Pay TV sector across five European countries (UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Austria) Sky is a household name that resonates across the continent. However, the Pay-TV vertical has become increasingly competitive over the last few years and customer experience and satisfaction are two key differentiators in the sector.

So it was perhaps no surprise that improving customer experience through digital transformation was at the heart of the organisation’s move to dramatically change their business operating systems.

Indeed, Lucio Golinelli, a Senior Director of Service & Delivery with Sky Italia who has responsibility for both field services and the supply chain explained that the key benefits his organisation sought through the digital transformation - whereby they moved away from their traditional processes of field service delivery to a more digital centric process, were equally centred around both customer experience and financial KPIs.

However, from Golinelli’s side of the business this meant working closely with ServiceMax to find a solution that worked across their whole supply chain rather than simply adopting an off the shelf solution.

The main reason for this is that when it comes to installations, Sky Italia operate within the framework of an outsourced model.

“We have a multi level approach in that we have 400 company partners, which tend to be smaller companies or ‘entrepreneurs’ rather than large organisations - who then manage for Sky approximately 2500 installers,” Golinelli explained to me as he talked me through the challenges he faced throughout the transformation process.

“For Sky Italia, installation is not a revenue stream but a cost stream,” he continued. “Because for us the installation is just an enabler to provide the services to our customers.” So whilst traditional benefits of increased installer productivity may be a side effect of the implementation this was never an end-goal for Sky Italia.

Perhaps the biggest challenge Golinelli and his team faced was how to fully integrate their own needs - as an effectively B2B organisation dealing with the partner ecosystem, and their end users - who are a B2C market. Success here however, would provide Sky Italia with granular levels of information that can allow them to discover new up-sell opportunities.

 

In order to best achieve this Sky Italia simultaneously replaced their old FSM, CRM and marketing tools bringing them all together on one new Cloud based solution and working alongside ServiceMax to find a customised solution for their FSM tools.

Currently in the process of undertaking this transformation program, digital visibility will be built across the whole chain from Sky through to their end customers. This is vital as it means they are not just changing the way they interact with their customers, but even changing the interface with which they undertake such interactions.

Of course, the main challenge for any company that outsources its service is that they essentially need at least two flavours of the same solution. From a Global operation with a nationwide presence, Golinelli’s team will need different dashboards, KPIs and control rooms to those that the majority of their partners will require.

It has taken Sky Italia working directly with ServiceMax over two years to develop a solution that works across Sky themselves, their partners and their customers but it seems that all that effort is now beginning to reap it’s rewards.

They have already launched the initial phase of the development with almost 1,000 installers already on track - and Golinelli appears immensely proud to see his team flourishing.

“There are two aims, “Golinelli explains.

“Firstly, the real benefit of improved efficiency for us is less errors,and in particular less mistakes in administration - that has now been largely overcome and is being dramatically reduced.”

Secondly, it is also important that if Sky Italia’s new processes are to succeed, that the various new tools used in isolation.

“We moved from customised platform for CRM, custom FSM software, and a customised platform for marketing to a common cloud solution shared across all divisions,” Golinelli expands.

“Now we have all of the key operations based on the same cloud platform. This is very effective as the power of this system is the real-time exchange of information, from installer to an operator in a call centre or vice versa. We can also pick up a lot of anecdotal information from the installers and then feed that back to marketing, again in real-time.”

 

It is in this last concept that Sky Italia are truly seeing the largest benefit, the shared platform gives them a much better opportunity to upsell their products.

For example let’s say an installation is being undertaken and the installer can see there is a Manchester Utd flag. In real-time he can then check if the customer has the subscription for Sky Sports and can either try to make the upsell himself or feed that information straight back to his marketing department.

Although only mid-way through the process, the results so far have been impressive to say the least. The field service division is now responsible for generating more revenue than any other part of the business having seen a rise in the percentage of revenue generated by installers leap from 11% to 21%.

For Golinelli, the significant factor in their success so far is the easy movement of data from one business unit to the next. Meanwhile, for Sky Italia, the shift to a digital workflow is already beginning to reap it’s rewards as they move field service from a cost model to a cost + revenue model whilst customer satisfaction levels increase at the same time. Perfecto!

 

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Michael Blumberg, President of Blumberg Advisory Group gives us an insiders view of how to ensure our customers understand the true value of extended warranties and service contracts...

Warranty Attachment and Renewal rates are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that measure how successful a company is in marketing and selling extended warranties and extended service programs. Ideally, a company would want to achieve attachment rate of 50% or higher and renewal rates of 75% or better. This is considered best in class performance.

Only a small percentage of companies have been able to achieve these targets.

Key findings from Blumberg Advisory Group’s recent survey on extended warranty benchmarks and best practices indicate that only 30% of companies have achieved attachment rates of 50% or more. In fact, 16.7% have achieved attachment rates of 70% or better. While the majority (59.5%) of companies experience renewal rates of 75% or more, only 22.5% have achieved renewal rates greater than 90%.

There are several best practices that companies can pursue to achieve best in class performance on KPIs related to marketing and selling extended warranties and extended service program. Most significantly, service portfolio design plays a critical role in influencing attachment and renewal rates. The truth is that customers will purchase these programs if they feel that they will effectively meet their needs. That’s’ why it is important to specify what’s included in the program from the perspective of features, resources, and coverage.

 

It important to include both basic and value-added services as part of the program. The more extensive and focused the services, the more likely the customers will be to buy. Nearly all the companies surveyed (93.2%) provide basic corrective failure as part of their program. Only 50.4% include preventative maintenance. Less than 40% offer a broader array of value added services such as calibration, inspection, recalls, and disaster recovery as part of the portfolio.

Indicating the level of service commitment, the customer can expect to receive is also important when it comes to selling extended warranty and extended service programs. Only 58.1% of companies have defined onsite response times as part of their programs, 39.3% specify parts delivery times, 29.9% and 31.6% respectively commit to the repair time and remote resolution times, and 15.0% will provide a loaner unit if repair time target is not met.

The way in which these programs are promoted can also impacts KPIs. Most companies surveyed rely on direct mail (74.8%) and brochures (68.0%) to sell extended warranty and extended service programs. Most respondents (58.5%) indicate that direct sales have been very effective when it comes to impacting attachment rates while only 26.6% believe that brochures are as effective. Interestingly, survey respondents agree that other tactics are just as effective. For example, 50% of respondents indicate that endorsements and testimonials are very effective as is reputation management (49.1%), telemarketing (32.0%) and public relations (28.9%).

 

Frequency of communication is also a critical driver when it comes to influencing attachment and renewal rates. Almost half (49%) of respondents indicate that they sell extended warranty and extended service programs any time after the original product sale which means the capture revenue at any point in time during the product’s lifecycle.

Only 28.0% notify customers 90 days or more in advance of when their programs are up for renewal and 36.0% provide more than 3 notifications that there contracts are about to expire. More importantly, most (60%) respondents upsell their programs during the warranty entitlement process.

As result, they experience incremental improvements in attachment rates; 36.5% indicate they have experienced a 10% to 25% improvement and 20.1% have experienced a 26% to 50% improvement from pursuing this tactic. In summary, the survey findings suggest that best in class companies follow a structure and disciplined approach to marketing and selling extended warranties and service programs. They do not view sales of these programs as a one-time even to be made only at the product point of sale. Indeed, they sell beyond the original point of purchase and align attachment and renewals with the customer entitlement process.

 

Furthermore, they promote their programs through a wide array of marketing communications tactics and rely on frequent and timely communication to get their message across. Most importantly, they ensure their programs are designed to meet the needs of their customer and are very specific about what the customer can expect to receive in terms of service feature, resources, and coverage.

 

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This great infographic from the team at Astea covers some of the key challenges and some top tips for ensuring any outsourced field service operations continue to uphold your brand standards and ensure your customer satisfaction levels remain high.

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Want to know more? Field service professionals can access an accompanying white paper "Outsourcing Field Service" after claiming their free subscription to Field Service News!

Click here to subscribe and get the white paper sent to your inbox now!

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Coen Jeukens, Chief Service Officer, D-Essence describes himself as a business leader with sales DNA and a service heart, here he outlines the knowledge he thinks every service manager should have in his tool belt when it comes to selling service both externally and internally...

In the boardroom Let us start with an example of a typical business plan review meeting:

• Exhibit A: our targets are more ambitious than our current performance.
• Exhibit B: we face increased competition, increased customer volatility and shorter product life cycles leading to declining market share and diminishing attach rates.

Now suppose the CEO invites you, the field service manager, to pitch a solution to this non-sustainable situation.

Are you prepared? Will your message and vocabulary resonate with the board members?

For as long as I can remember, field service managers bring a message of reality about healthy and sustainable profit margins - about attach rates and trusted relationships.

What do you think the sales manager brought forward as solution? A message of hope: “if we introduce a new model, add a new feature or drop the price, we will regain market share”.

When it comes to choice, a message of hope prevails over one of reality.

What makes the clock tick?

The ugly truth of corporate economics: it’s all about sales and success is measured in revenue figures.

Add to that the sales perception that after-sales does not exist without an initial sale and you know the picking order is set. Also factor in mind that most CEO’s have a sales background.

Sales targets

Sales is a big numbers game. Product hero’s playing with capital expenditures.

Going for the win is putting in a peak performance in a short period of time, balancing effort and reward. Asking sales to include Opex related  propositions in the sale does sound altruistic considering that doing so complicates, lengthens and may jeopardise the sale. What about profitability?

In the sales mind-set profitability is not a driver or performance indicator. Not because they don’t care, far from that. Because in most customer organisations the decision making unit for both Capex and Opex are different entities optimising their own silo.

Profitability, who cares? Certainly not sales.

Funnelling leads and Qualification

Sales vocabulary uses words like suspect, prospect, lead and qualification. Elias Lewis has put these words in context in 1898 when he conceived the sales funnel. This funnel is engrained in every sales process. It is in the DNA of sales people to convert leads into a sale.

One of the most important steps in the sales process is the qualification of a lead. Here sales balances effort with reward. When service starts feeding the funnel, it is crucial to know the difference between a lead in the eyes of a field service engineer and a lead according to sales.

In the eyes of sales service-leads are a big bag of small peanuts.

Converting those requires a lot of effort with small reward. For sales to follow-up on service-leads, those leads need enrichment and qualification.

What we need to grow sales? Leads, more leads and qualified leads.

Window of opportunity

Though the clock ticks sales, typical sales solutions to the corporate challenge fail to reverse declining market share or do so at the expense of profitability.

In both cases the course is not sustainable. This is good news as it provides the opening for the field service manager to come forward with his ideas.

Remember, growing sales is an operational process.

Growing your business is changing your business model.

Find the right tune

Although ideas have been voiced for many years at field service conferences, they will be new for sales once rephrased in sales vocabulary. It will become a customer touch points game with roles for hero’s and ambassadors. It is the perseverance of sales to get to a customer on board. It is the caring mindset of service to keep a customer happy. It is their joint effort to come up with new business.

Find the right mix between sales DNA and a service heart to develop new business.

How will sales react? As long as the field service manager doesn’t gloat over his profit contribution and trustworthy customer relationships … and sales can stay in the lead, then sales will go along.

Field service managers can lead by following.

 

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Laraine Geddes from Kirona, experts in dynamic resource scheduling, mobile and field service technology contributes an exclusive guide to successfully managing your organisation’s field based workforce...

1. Eradicate paper based systems

Expecting field workers to use paper based records is fraught with potential disaster and inefficiency. Paper based systems often required duplication of work, with data having to be re-entered into back office systems.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Deploy mobile applications in the field so that employees only have to record information once while in the field. This improves accuracy of data and frees up more time to carry out more jobs per day. Mobile communication can also reduce inefficient back office administration tasks, or be used to record the information needed for audits.
• Use a workflow driven series of checklists and fields on the mobile device to make sure individual workers follow a standard process. This will ensure continuity of good practice across a region.
• Mobile devices are far more secure than paper. If they are lost data can be locked down through encryption, or Mobile Device Management systems.

2. Dynamic scheduling

Efficiently appointing who visits which site is simplified using dynamic scheduling rather than manual scheduling. Staff availability vs skills vs customer/site availability is difficult enough to balance, add to that factors like service levels, job location, cancellations, even traffic on the road and efficient scheduling is almost impossible.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Deploy dynamic scheduling software that can, in real-time, optimise the utilisation of workers in the field - the right person goes to the right location at the right time. This way they spend more time on site and less time waiting for the next job or, for instance, driving unnecessarily long distances to the next job
• Scheduling software can be tuned to deploy personnel based upon pre-set ‘rules’. Work with your technology vendor to utilise this feature so that services can be optimised; like prioritising workers that have visited the site or customer before, or restricting distances to be travelled by employees, or scheduling according to customer needs.
• Consider that most mobile working visits will usually need a follow up visit or another appointment made with a different worker – your scheduling software can allocate new appointments and visits – there and then3. Integrate Systems

Busy staff are often overwhelmed with the amount of departments or agencies they have to collaborate with and the number of systems that they have to provide information to.

By failing to integrate these systems, workers spend many more hours than need be, rekeying data into multiple back-office systems – duplicating effort and creating the potential for mistakes and errors.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Choose a mobile solution that can integrate and ‘communicate’ with any system. If implemented correctly this will mean that staff will only need to enter information into their mobile devices once, whereby the data then populates all relevant back-office systems automatically.
• Integrating mobile applications with scheduling systems is particularly powerful. The mobile software can updates the schedule with the emerging day information; allowing visits to be automatically redistributed between staff where visits over-run, customers are unavailable, appointments are cancelled etc.

4. Visibility of front line services

By failing to have visibility of operations in the field, organisations fail to respond to challenges as they happen and lose the opportunity to resolve them at minimum cost and disruption to the customer.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• Providing mobile devices enables you to track all the factors which impact field performance like: routing of employees, time spent onsite, incomplete jobs, missed appointments, lateness etc. This data can be used to analyse operations, fine tune the scheduling engine or to demonstrate ongoing improvements in efficiency.

5.Having customer information to hand

Arriving at the customer’s location without complete historical notes puts the service provider at a disadvantage when providing its services and is disappointing for customers who expect their service provider to have comprehensive knowledge of their relationship.

KIRONA’S TIPS:

• By using mobile technology the appropriate notes can be delivered to the workers’ mobile devices when they are needed. This means a professional can provide a service with the continuity the customer would expect. It also reduces the risk of them not being able to deliver that service on their first visit.
• Organisations can allow historical records to be sent to field workers for that customer, allowing them to see full details of historic work completed with any certificates, photos, contracts that are relevant. They can also see future planned work future work. This minimises the risk of duplicating work that has already been done or will be done during the course of a contract.

 

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The challenge of No Fault Found (NFF) diagnosis is possibly the most frustrating situation for both your field service engineers and customers alike. However, left unchecked NFF has the potential to have an even greater negative impact on a field service organisation. To find out more we spoke to Dr John Erkoyuncu from Cranfield University having earlier seen him give a fascinating presentation on the topic at last year’s Maximize Europe event...

No Fault Found (NFF) can be perhaps the most frustrating end result in any field service visit. The customer’s issue remains resolved, your engineer’s become frustrated at their inability to do their job and perhaps more importantly the someone has to absorb the cost of the truck-roll and the engineers time on site, despite the fact the situation is exactly the same - i.e. no one is any the wiser as to what the problem is in the first place.

 

At last year’s Maximize event hosted by ServiceMax in Amsterdam towards the end of the year, Dr John Erkoyuncu of Cranfield University gave a fantastic speech on this topic which had the majority of the audience nodding-along in both empathy as they heard him discuss the issue and in agreement as he looked at the potential size of impact NFF can have on our industry.

Field Service News were able to catch up with Erkoyuncu during the conference to find out more about his thoughts on the topic.

What is No Fault Found?

For those unfamiliar to the terminology NFF or sometimes referred to as No Trouble Found (NTF) is the phenomenon whereby an engineer is unable to diagnose why a fault that has been reported is occurring.

As Erkoyuncu explains “No Fault Found is the case where you have a fault that is reported, you go and try to do some diagnosis and you just can’t find a root cause for what the fault is.”

“As a result of this you end up in a situation where it is unclear what you should do next. You could go back and do some more diagnostic testing and try to drill down to what the cause is - but at this point you don’t know if you should be replacing the item of repairing it.”

Often this decision will be locked between the pressures of being time critical and keeping your customers happy on one side, against possibly unnecessary costs - which when stacked up could serously eat into overall profits, on the other.

In fact, NFF is one of the biggest challenges field service companies face in terms of being able to find suitable resolutions whilst being assured these decisions are made based on a standpoint of best practice and well-educated assumptions.

This issue can of course lead to understandable tensions between manufacturer, service providers and their shared customers.

“You are in a situation where you as the manufacturer or service provider can’t in fact explain to the customer what is driving their issue. This is in some ways embarrassing and of course the customer doesn’t want to be paying for a service that has not resolved his problem.” Erkoyuncu explains.

 

“So you have problems in terms of who is paying for the service and whose responsibility it is to fix it. It really is a grey area as it is uncertain as to what’s happened or not and whether that falls within the scope of a warranty.”

“It becomes a matter of trust. From the maintainers, to the solution provider to the customer everyone is facing a challenge.”

The changing ownership of NFF This of course can lead to issues in relationships, with faith being eroded amongst the various parties. This in itself has numerous costs but is it possible to identify a tangible cost of NFF?

“We did a survey with the UK No Fault Found working group and what we were trying to understand was what is the cost of no fault found and who bears this cost,” Erkoyuncu explains.

“What we found was that a large chunk of the overall cost, something like 50 to 60% is taken on by the customer. Whilst this is an average figure it just shows that typically the customer has to take on the ownership of No Fault Found.”

“The amount that the OEM and the supply chain takes on varies between 10 and 30% depending on contracts, which is then shared between the supply chain and the OEM.”

“It just shows that typically it is the customer taking on the costs and as we begin to look at outcome based contracts this simply cannot continue. More and more the OEM and the supply chain will have to start taking on the cost of No Fault Found and this is why awareness of this issue is surely going to grow.”

The actual cost of No Fault Found

Whilst there are of course some easily identifiable calculable costs that Erkoyuncu and his colleagues were able to utilise in their study, there are also numerous softer, intangible effects that service providers and OEMs must be aware of also - which can have significant negative impact on a business.

“The intangible aspects are things like reputation” explains Erkoyuncu “Companies could well lose contracts as a result of not dealing with NFF in an acceptable manner, you may lose the trust that you have built over so many years - how can you quantify that? I’m not sure and I’m not sure if anyone could even begin to quantify that.”

“But when you are estimating things like cost or even R.O.I for being proactive with no fault found we need to find some numbers against the intangible impact as well.”

 

“For example some people in the audience at today’s session [at Maximize Europe] commented that they felt the customer was really important so they just went ahead and replaced the item.”

“That is the kind of thing you are going to experience just because of that intangible factor.

You don’t know what the fault is, but you do know you don’t want to damage the relationship with the customer.”

How to avoid No Fault Found

It is evident then that NFF could have a significant growing impact for many companies, particularly as outcome based contracts become more in vogue. But is there anything that companies can be doing to help them overcome a problem that is by it’s very essence shrouded in mystery and enigma?

“I think there are multiple things related to this,”Erkoyuncu opens.

“One is about the design in particular. Are we designing systems that are fault tolerant to begin with? Is there redundancy built in? We’ve got those kind of challenges. For example, you may have a system that has NFF regularly but if that system can self-diagnose and self improve this then that NFF wouldn’t necessarily be a problem.”

 

“So one area to address is can we design systems that don’t create problems related to NFF?”

“Another area is around behaviour and people,” Erkoyuncu continues.

“Are they being trained properly? Have they got the right incentive structure? For example let’s look at a case where by a field service engineer is paid on the basis of how many times he fixes an item. If they can’t fix it and they can’t define what the problem is - they don’t get paid. So are they then likely to report on NFF properly.”

“There is a big data issue as well and there is also a major issue around whether the data that is available is comprehensive and robust enough - so, there is an additional challenge here too.”

“Therefore, understanding the trends and identifying what the root problems are is quite hard, as the information is not stored properly.”

“Reporting is absolutely a major challenge, as is diagnostic testing. Is it being undertaken properly?

Is the right tool kit being used. Those things are very important as well as you want to be able to very quickly diagnose the conditions,” he adds.

Key steps to overcoming the challenges of No Fault Found

This is obviously a highly prevalent challenge across the industry and one that as mentioned previously is only set to become magnified as business models of OEMs shift towards servitization.

However, here are some key steps that Erkoyuncu recommends that can help field service providers minimise the potential impact of NFF on their own businesses.

“I think the solution to this is a mixture of technology as well as behavioural and process oriented aspects as well,” Erkoyuncu begins.

“I don’t think there is a single solution. We need to look at things like diagnostic testing for intermittent faults. Companies like Rolls Royce and BAE have started using things like environmental chambers. What this does is allow you to simulate the various environmental conditions to allow you to see quickly what the problem is for specific components”

“So on one hand, I do think that this is one area [diagnostic testing] that can improve, but I do also think companies need to consider how their actual technicians providing the maintenance are behaving and then alongside this assess whether their that organisational culture is actually fostering the types of behaviour that they are looking to avoid.”

 

One other very practical piece of advice is to clearly identify your organisations position on NFF within SLA and Warranty contracts.

“This is absolutely and important step,” says Erkoyuncu.

“When you consider the example of FlyBe - they presented some results about the number of NFF they experienced over a set period and they highlighted that about 20% of their service calls were related to NFF.”

“Just looking at this one example you could wipe out all your profits if you ignore the NFF challenge so it should be clearly defined within contracts.”

 

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Marne Martin, CEO, ServicePower discusses the growing shift towards outcome based services and explains why it is key for field service organisations...

Mobile workforce management software is today a “must have”, not a “nice to have”, part of a company’s technology stack.

Organisations managing mobile or remote workers must ensure a consistent customer experience and grow revenue while still maximising the productivity of staff. They must do this while also managing supply and fluctuating demand, meeting SLAs, controlling costs, and ensuring consistent well branded service delivery. Technology is the best tool to use to achieve those objectives.

So if we know what the company needs, what does the customer expect? We know that customers expect better ‘outcomes’ for the monies they spend on service delivery. It’s not about just appearing on time and repairing the product or equipment any more.

What are outcome based services?

Outcome-based services acknowledge customers in a much different way than traditional break fix services. Customers have wants and needs, surely, but they also now require that more tailored or improved outcomes be driven by those wants and needs. They are no longer looking at just the specific qualities of a product or service, but at the ways in which each can use your services to meet their own goals.

Business outcomes are increasingly becoming a real selling point that differentiate one company from another. Focusing your service offerings more on business outcomes edge out the competition, build customer loyalty and longevity, and improve the lifetime value of each and every customer.

Outcome based service is not a new concept. Why is it top of mind now?

The simple answer is technology. Technology facilitates offering outcome based services in a way manual processes never could. Technologies like that enable hybrid workforces, optimise by customer priority, IoT, M2M and even a truly mobile workforce management software facilitate outcome based services like no other technology which have emerged in the last few decades.

 

These can be used by field service organisations to deliver proactive services, based on data and information which improves the overall experience for the customer by helping them use the products better, or more efficiently.

Solid commercials can also be built around the offering, including providing customers more opportunity to purchase complementary things they might need.

Outcomes based service delivery takes that proactive service model, facilitated by IoT/M2M and MWFM and layers on additional services to make that customer more sticky, long term, and it can even increase revenue or profits along the way.

How does a mobile workforce organisation transition to an “outcomes-based” approach to field services delivery? 

Offering outcome based services is the next generation revenue model in field service. The field service industry has long been a hot bed of technology and process innovation, especially as metrics have shifted to a customer centric model. In that customer centric model, customer satisfaction, retention, and / or additional in-brand purchases are the outcome desired.

Even more attention is being focused on relating payment structures to outcomes and paying based on up-time, not just meeting a maintenance schedule or a break-fix SLA.

Use technology to make the shift in a cohesive way. Software can be used to identify a product which requires maintenance to prevent a future failure, or to indicate, often before the customer is aware, when a product like a boiler in a manufacturing facility is about to fail.

Field managers can plan labour capacity based on failure data and maintenance requirements more accurately to reduce time to repair, meeting or exceeding contracted response times.

 

Since service organisations can predict future failures, and schedule and optimise teams into future schedules, remote workers can be proactively, intelligently deployed for repairs, reducing schedule costs while preventing total operational standstills that impact the customer’s productivity. Imagine the benefit of preventing a total line shut down at a plant because your team was deployed prior to a total seizure of a machine.

Maintenance schedules can be also created which improve equipment ‘up time’ and even proactively address upgrade opportunities which offer additional revenue.

Mobile workers deployed with devices outfitted with real time, integrated mobile dispatching software can access information to address the immediate needs, but also to tap into additional information, such as training and product usage guides, ‘how to’ guides, that add additional benefits, providing that new outcome for each customer, resulting in not only reducing the field service organisation’s own costs, but ultimately in improved customer satisfaction, increased sales of future service and maintenance contracts, accessories or replacement products at end of life.

Outcome based services facilitated by technologies like mobile workforce management software which provide analytics, capacity planning, mobile dispatch, and optimised routing to plan staff, create maintenance plans, mobile on site process, facilitate on site collaboration and provide customers with information and data, help field based organisations reduce the complexity of operating products like industrial boilers or elevators, and help customers reduce the operational complexity of product operation, while maximise usage of the products.

Why are outcomes-based approach so important for field based organisations?

The most important benefits of offering outcomes based services are loyalty and improved future revenues, as well as reduced operating costs. Think ‘customer for life’.

Outcome based services reduce the complexity of operating products, while providing value added services for your customers which increase the usage of products. That proactive approach improves the customer experience which leads to increased customer revenue in the future.

Outcome based approaches teach the customer organisation, as well as the field service teams, to value ‘up-time’ rather than focusing on ‘downtime’ which requires repair, minimising the time an asset is down or a customer is inconvenienced.

 

The technology exists right now to move to a proactive, outcome based service model. The most successful companies are the early adopters that use their mobile workforce management solutions to deliver the technology which supports this evolution. Don’t delay -- make the leap sooner, rather than later, before your loyal customers become loyal to another organisation

 

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Jim Baston continues Charlie’s journey as the serialisation of his service oriented book beyond Great Service continues as we bring this section on “The Revelation” concludes...

 

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If you missed the earlier parts of this series you can catch up by clicking here

 

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As you may recall, Charlie comes to the realisation that the highest level of service that his company can provide is by helping the customer be better off for having hired them. That will require his field service team to be proactive in looking for and recommending products and services that will benefit the customer and help them achieve their business goals. Charlie’s plan to get his technicians to sell seems to come off of the rails by the technicians’ reluctance to act as salespeople for the company.

Fortunately for Charlie, his very able service supervisor Ken, helps him sort things out. As they sit together going over the details of their service meeting, Ken points out:

“What Angus said Charlie, was that it was not the technician’s job to ‘sell’. He didn’t say anything about the technician’s responsibility to help the customer run their facilities better. Actions speak louder than words and Angus’ actions—as you just pointed out—clearly indicate he believes that serving the customer in this way is very much a part of the technician’s role.”

“Ken, you’re going to have to slow down. I’m getting dizzy. Isn’t ‘selling’ and speaking to the customer about things they should do to run their facilities more effectively the same thing?”

“No. There is a subtle but important difference, and most people get these confused. It’s why there are very few service companies that could honestly tell you they are fully satisfied with the work being generated by the field service team.”

 

Ken continues: “Let’s say you go to the doctor with a headache and you’re prescribed a pill to relieve the pain. Have you been truly served?”

“I guess so. I wanted to get rid of my headache and the doctor gave me the medication to do that,” says Charlie.

“Hmmm. Let’s compare that to an emergency service call. The customer calls complaining of no heat. We go to the site and find a blown fuse. We replace the fuse and get the heat back on. The customer signs our work order and we leave. Is that a comparable situation?”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“Unfortunately Charlie, I don’t think that the customer (or patient in the case of the doctor) was well served. Would you not think that the doctor should at least ask a few questions to explore the possible cause of the headache?  Where does it hurt? How long have you had it? What have you taken so far to relieve the pain? That sort of thing. Would you not expect basic information to be taken, including your pulse and blood pressure, or have your ears or throat checked? If something of concern was found, would you be surprised if further tests were suggested? And, based on the results, would you consider recommendations for a particular medication or a change in diet to help you get better as a sales pitch?”

“No. Now that you mention it, I would expect those basic actions. Without them, the doctor might provide me with temporary relief but overlook  the cause, which could have a troubling impact later on. And as for the recommendation for specific medications or diet, I would see that as part of the process to help me get and feel better.”

“Right!” exclaims Ken. He stands and becomes more animated.

“Let’s go back to our fuse example. I recognise it’s not a perfect analogy, and that most technicians worth their salt would do some basic tests to determine if there is a further cause beyond simply a blown fuse. But that’s where it often ends. We solve the immediate problem and move on to the next patient—I mean customer—without doing an ‘examination’ of the customer’s condition beyond the immediate problem. As a result, we miss countless opportunities to help the customer run their facilities more effectively or, perhaps more tragically, to avoid catastrophic breakdowns.”

 

… “I don’t sell, Charlie. I simply use my expertise and experience, and ask a few questions about the situation and the customer’s goals. Then I bring to their attention the types of remedies they might consider to reduce energy, increase tenant comfort, improve operational performance and so on. The customer then makes a decision on what they want to do. I don’t try to force or convince them against their will. I simply assist them to make informed decisions which will help them operate more effectively.”

It’s now that Charlie stands up and gets animated. “So, if I understand you Ken, what you are saying is that Angus and the rest of the team don’t see themselves as salespeople flogging Novus services, but rather as recommenders of our services when they see that as solving a customer’s problems. The challenge then is to help them recognise the difference and encourage them to speak with the customer about what they feel would be in the customer’s best interest to do. Have I got that right?”

Thinking about your business:

• If you have a formal or informal expectation for your technicians to generate opportunities in the field, how do you position this activity with your field team? Is this a selling activity or a serving activity?
• Does your team fully grasp the important service they are providing?
• Do they see it as important a service as their ability to fix or maintain the equipment?

Next time we will look at some of the hurdles that Charlie will need to address if he is to be successful.

 

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Nick Frank, Founding Partner with Si2 Partners explains why profitable long term growth comes from having the right people in the right place at the right time and why technology although important, usually plays a secondary role...

In todays fast moving world this might be an “off- message” statement, but the truth is that it is still people who deliver profits. As a result creating ‘High Performance Teams’ or what some call the ‘Self Learning’ organisation has become a priority in staying competitive within the new digital economy.

Sustainable improvement requires a commitment to learning.

In successful organisations, this is embedded in the DNA of its people which drives themselves forward to deliver results that makes the real difference.

How does your team measure up? Perhaps a good place to start is to review how your teams manage problems and the language they use. Most technically orientated organisations pride themselves on solving problems.

Ironically, too strong an emphasis on problem solving does not necessarily drive the customer-orientated behaviours we are looking for. Problems are in fact very static, with a focus on past events.

If organisations are not careful, problems become a blame game, concentrating on why things cannot be done. ‘Yes but……’ is a phrase that become endemic within the organisations way of doing things. However, problems are also the life-blood of innovation, in that they can create a focal point for organisations to rally around.

 

The resulting solutions are often focused on customers, are dynamic in nature and focused on the future. The language of solutions concentrates on ‘Yes and…’, seeking possibilities and opportunities. It is in fact solution thinking that really drives the organisation forward in creating competitive advantage.

A self learning organisation is one that has the rigour to identify and quantify problems, yet the discipline to shift to solution thinking, develop forward momentum and achieve results.

This problem-solution-problem-solution learning loop sounds fairly straight forward, but actually requires a level of management maturity that is often surprisingly missing from many organisations.

As Winston Churchill pointed out, learning is all about engagement: “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or could not learn”

So how do we go about creating a culture of ‘self learning’, which is deeply embedded in the corporate DNA. In most businesses, focussing on two important aspects of organisations can really make a difference. The first is a strong vision of what the company is all about, why it is there, what it is trying to achieve for its customers and how.

More important than the vision statement’s words, is the way that it is communicated.

Successful communication comes from:

1. Targeting your message: For example Field Service Techs have very different drivers from their Product Sales colleagues.
2. Augmenting logical reasoning with an emotional appeal that inspires employees to do things differently.

The second aspect is Values.

A company’s values are the core of its culture. While a vision articulates a company’s purpose, values offer a set of guidelines on the behaviours and mindsets needed to achieve that vision. While many companies find their values revolve around a few simple topics (employees, clients, professionalism), the originality of those values is less important than their authenticity.

Developing a culture that is aligned to values and vision is what provides people with a purpose, and this is the key to facilitating innovation.

Organisations that successfully create a self-learning environment typically start to see:

• Problem being solved systematically
• Experimentation with new approaches to work
• Learning from other companies and a focus on customers solutions
• Greater knowledge transfer through out the organisation
• An acceptance that change is normal and to be embraced

To get the ball rolling does not necessarily require large complex change projects. For example at Amazon, every person who wants to pitch a new idea to the management, is asked to describe it as a press release written on the day that the idea is launched. This press release, together with a list of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ is what Amazon executives use to judge whether there is real value in the innovation.

This relatively simple idea forces everyone to focus on outcomes and solutions.

And if leaders ‘do what they say!’, then these practices and thinking, can become part of an organisations DNA.

 

So if you sense that your teams are struggling to execute on new opportunities that are arising in this digital age, or are becoming to focused on problems and falling into the blame game, then perhaps it is time to think about how you can evolve the dynamics of your organisation.

Using a 3rd party to help leaders gain new perspectives can be useful, because people listen more to a new voice. However, at the end of the day it is the Leadership at all levels in the organisation who by taking reasonably simple steps can set expectations, ‘Walk the Talk!’ and move the organisation on.

Nick can be contacted on nick.frank@Si2partners.com. Si2 ON-Demand is a unique advisory and support service that enables top performing leaders to solve problems and get things done, quickly, easily and cost effectively.

 

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