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Part One of an exclusive Field Service News interview with Dave Gordon, Rolls Royce.

We speak to Dave about how Rolls Royce Aerospace have revolutionised the way service in the industry operates via their 'power by the hour' approach and how Dave and his team have taken this approach from Rolls Royce's civil business and applied it to their defence business.

Want to see more? Subscribe to Field Service News by clicking this link and get access to download the full video in full.

Poor service has become a commonplace scourge within the UK with service issues costing consumers nearly £15 billion a year research shows…

In fact over two thirds of UK customers (69%) have been frustrated by poor customer service, almost a half (46%) have demanded to speak to a supervisor and just over a third (34%) have stopped using the brand altogether.

These results are part of the findings from a global report by ClickSoftware, which was designed to assess what were the key frustrations faced by consumers.

Against a backdrop of recent ongoing billing problems with energy companies, over half (52%) of UK residents found utilities companies to be the most frustrating to deal with. It was found that spending over an hour trying to resolve an issue such as billing problem or a loss of power was a regular occurrence. In fact the average time people waited for a resolution was an incredible 4.3 hours.

Communication service providers were second on the list of poor service providers with over a quarter (29%) of consumers irritated at the amount of time they wasted with them. These were followed by Central Government (18%) and banking (15%), in third and fourth place respectively.

The economic impact of this sloppy service is not just restricted to the guilty parties however. UK workers are having to take time off to attend to matters during their working hours to resolve issues. The study revealed a total loss of nearly £15 billion a year, and an individual loss of almost £500 per person.

Then there is the emotional cost. Even the famously reserved British demeanour has it’s limits and over one in 10 (13%) of Brits have been driven so mad by bad service they have admitted to losing their cool and yelling at a service representative.

Meanwhile others have gone to extreme lengths to get better or quicker service, including lying (9%), crying to the service representative (real or fake tears) (4%) or even begging (3%).

Robert Williams, Vice President of UK & Ireland of ClickSoftware reflected on the findings commenting:

“This is a timely reminder for businesses that customer service is still one of the biggest factors in attracting and retaining customers,”

 

“Bad customer service is costing business up to a third of their revenue, and the knock on effect is that people are having to take precious holiday time just to deal with things that could and should be sorted much more easily.”

Aly Pinder, Senior Research Analyst at the Aberdeen Group and Field Service News columnist also commented:

“Ultimately, satisfied customers help drive retention and profitability for service organisations. Our research found those that reached a 90%+ customer satisfaction rate achieved an annual 6.1% growth in service revenue, 3.7% growth in overall revenue, and an 89% level of customer retention”

Meanwhile a separate research project, conducted by the CCA on behalf of Customer Engagement Optimisation specialists KANA indicated that the majority of UK organisations are dramatically underestimating the link between customer service and revenue.

 The survey of UK Contact Centre Association (CCA) members included respondents from a wide and diverse blend of varying industry verticals including financial services, retail and local government. Perhaps the most striking finding of this research was that less than half (40%) of those in senior management believed that customer service was key to driving revenue. In fact a fifth of respondents felt there was little or even no focus on customer service at a senior level.

 

Other findings of the survey also showed a distinct lack of appreciation of the link between customer service and the bottom line. Again well under half (41%) paid significant attention to the level the revenue they lost as a result of poor customer service. Incredibly, one in ten companies do not measure the financial implications of poor customer service at all.

The research also highlights what call centre agents perceive as key barriers to providing a better service: outdated systems, lack of investment, agent skills gaps and a lack of understanding or support at a senior level.

Unfortunately, the contact centre is often seen as an operational expense and nothing more,” says Steven Thurlow, head of worldwide product strategy for KANA. “Often, senior management will review functional aspects, such as speed of handling times and resolution times. This approach is unlikely to drive further investment and instead maintains a focus on efficiency above all else. Fast service and good customer experiences are not always the same thing.”

However, whilst it seems that Customer Service in the UK is suffering from poor standards whilst being woefully overlooked as a key factor in ensuring and growing revenue streams, yet further study has revealed clear evidence that there is an intrinsic link between customer satisfaction and business success.

In fact research conducted by Trimble Field Service Management highlighted that 71% of field service organisations use customer satisfaction as the main metric to measure the performance of their business. A recent industry report based around research commissioned by Trimble highlighted that there was a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability.

 

So are we facing a true disconnect between the impact customer service can have on field service businesses and the attention it gets within senior management? Are these frustrations related solely to the call centre or are they reflected in the levels of service delivered on the doorstep also?

We’re currently running a short survey ourselves which aims to assess the survey standards of companies in the field. If you want to find out how your standards compare to your competitors then take two minutes to complete the survey to receive a free copy of the benchmark report based on the results when published.

Also thanks to our sponsor on this project TomTom Telematics there is also a prize draw with three £50 Amazon vouchers available.

Click here to complete the survey and enter the prize draw now.

In part one of this exclusive interview we looked at Martin Summerhayes extraordinary career to date. Now in the concluding part Fujitsu's Head of Business Development talks about what drives him forward...  

Focussing on his current role again the passion for consistently delivering and improving the service he and his team deliver to their clients is undeniable when questioned on what he takes pride in and what frustrates him on a day-to-day basis.

“The thing that makes me go home smiling at the end of the day is delivering great service to customers, and what makes me tear my hair out is the politics that you have in any organisation big or small” he comments before adding “what can make me really frustrated is speed, the inability of people and organisations to change when markets and situations change”

It is in these frustrations that another layer of what makes Summerhayes tick is perhaps revealed. Whilst he is certainly approachable, he is clearly exceptionally quick when it comes to assessing and understanding the markets he operates in and comes across as a man that perhaps has to sometimes wait for others to catch up to his way of thinking. This could require a great deal of patience, or result in a great deal of frustration. More than likely there is probably a healthy portion of both.

Indeed his standards are set exceptionally high. Looking at what defines exceptional service he explains “It is when you delight your customers. Not when you meet their expectations, not when you exceed their expectations, it’s when you delight them. When your customer becomes the best advocate there is for your business and services”

These are the standards that Summerhayes expects as a consumer and these are the standards that he demands his team at Fujitsu strive for also.

A key to such service excellence he explains is to make customer interaction as smooth and simple as possible.

 “One thing that absolutely drives me nuts” he begins “is when a company makes me as the customer deal with their own organisational complexity. One of the things we got wrong at HP was we had three divisions at one stage, a hardware division, a software division and a warranty division. We mirrored that in the way we spoke to the customer.”

 

“We copied that structure right into the IDR, if it is a hardware problem press one etc… and I still see it today in companies. Are they designing from the customer experience in or from the organisational structure out?” He asks with a hint of irritation at how so many major service organisations miss the simple premise of putting the customer at the heart of the business.

“Whether it’s retail, hospitality, the medical profession, whatever we do we put our own organisational complexity in the face of our customers. Now, if you are a great company, an exceptional company, if you are there to delight your customers, you don’t do that.” He continues.

So how do we go about building our business to delight our customers? Do we need to look at our processes, our corporate culture or the technology that we use to deliver? Is it a blend of all three to get things right?

Summerhayes explains “The premise starts with thinking of the customer at the heart of everything. It starts with that. You have then got to put in place the culture, then the supporting processes and then finally the technology”

“You can’t turn around and say the technology will solve the problem. The technology is a reflection of your key business processes, your business processes are a reflection of your organisational construct, and your organisational construct drives your culture.”

Of course the importance of getting culture right first is a conversation that has been held many times before, and something we have explored in many an article on fieldservicenews.com yet it remains something that many companies end up getting wrong, and when they do so they can end up in a viscous circle with software that is either out-dated or worse that was never fit for purpose in the first place.

“Lets go right the way back to the point here” Summerhayes states “your engineer, the way he talks, the way he acts, the way he delivers the service is all a reflection of the culture of the organisation, the business processes that he has to follow and then the IT that enables him to do his job.”

With the trusted advisor status that the field engineer has, and his position on the frontline being one of your most powerful points of customer contact it is of course essential that he is as well prepared to succeed as is possible. Especially given that his success will be a direct reflection on your brand both in the short and long term.

As Summerhayes concludes ”having the customer at the heart of what you are doing is key because at the end of the day it is a service industry, you are there to serve”

Given his track record I’d suggest that taking Martin Summerhayes’ advice on this and focussing your service business from a ‘customer in’ perspective is very much the right thing to do.

Field Service News regular Nick Frank returns to his series looking at various case studies from companies he has worked with both past and presesnt to help us better understand best practice in service. This time out Nick takes a closer look at customer satisfaction...

Do Satisfaction surveys or Net Promoter systems really tell you how your customer’s experience your company? When you are satisfied with your car, does it mean you will buy the same brand the next time round?  The reality is that tools such as these are better than no tools at all! They do bring a focus on the customer by employees. . But to really get insights in how customers currently experience your brand in terms of needs, expectation and value perception,  requires  more intimate forms of communication and most importantly a change in MIND-SET.

Industry leading companies tend to exhibit an OUTSIDE-IN approach. They actively search out their customer’s thoughts and act on them. They use more sophisticated methods to capture deeper customer insights. They are mature enough to take on-board comments, which might be negative or not fit their agenda, because listening and action are in their DNA.

The on-stage/back-stage model: 

Typically these companies recognise that customer experience is not just an outcome, but can be designed into the service delivery model. Key is identifying the key factors influencing the customer’s perception at each touch-point. The On-stage/Back-stage model is often a useful tool to do this.

These are easy ideas to accept, but a recent consulting experience really brought home to me that for many organisations it’s much harder to put into practice.

We were working with several very successful capital equipment suppliers with very similar situations:

• They want to gain deeper insights into how customers experience their service business.
• They desired to move to the next level as they moved through a period of service transformation.
• They want to go much deeper than their own Net Promoter Score / Customer Satisfaction programmes.[/unordered_list]

In one of these projects, we dealt with a division where a significant proportion of the revenue came from the consumables that supported the product. They decided to invest in a programme where they recorded their staff’s interactions at the touch-points and then interviewed various key stakeholders of their customers.

This brought some unexpected observations within the buying process. The buyers recognised and appreciated the company’s knowledge and professionalism.  But they felt frustrated that the Sales people did not bring any value to the table other than taking orders for consumables.  They actually felt let down, which significantly harmed their overall perception of the brand and encouraged them to look for new vendors.  They made explicit statement statements such as  ‘We want a leading Solution Provider and not merely a leading Product provider’.

Don't be defensive - all feedback is useful

The challenge for this organisations was to take the feedback at face value, not get defensive and take the actions needed for improvement. But this market leading organisation struggled to do this. Why?

Often organisations are structured in silo’s with very specific targets, which are not necessarily aligned with customer value. For example, sales people who meet their incentive plan from significant sales of consumables, are not enticed to walk the extra mile and deliver more value, as this could prevent them from meeting their individual targets

• A focus on short term financial targets stimulates attention on low hanging fruit which directly drives financial results
• Wanting to Stick to the product related values and competencies
• Not being able to accept another perspective on the world.

In truth it’s probably a mixture of the above. The moral of the story is that if you are not ‘truly’ open to what your customers need and say, or are not committed to acting on the feedback, you are probably stuck in an IN-SIDE OUT world. It’s hard to innovate for your customers and provide an excellent experience, when you are only focussed on internal issues such as the next quarters sales or your next product’s features.

And we know that the OUTSIDE-IN mind-set is more likely to lead to growth. Recent research shows that companies who push themselves to gain insights into customer experience from a wide number of sources, are more likely to achieve higher corporate growth. But its not surprising that those companies that make this effort have a better understanding of what is valuable to their customers and how to deliver a customer experience that will drive loyalty.

For more information on how to develop your MINDSET and Design Customer Experience into your Service Propositions, why not look at some of our courses on Service Leadership(23^rd Sept in the UK) and Service Design.

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

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

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

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

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

Find

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

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

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

Verify

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

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

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

Engage

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

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

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

Manage

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

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

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

Pay

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

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

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

Rate

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

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

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

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

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

In part one of this exclusive two part interview Field Service News Editor, Kris Oldland talks to Martin Summerhayes of Fujitsu, about his spending over two decades as a pioneer in the field service industry... 

There are a number of key people who have been there and done it in field service. Professionals who have dedicated there lives to service, who have an inherent understanding of what it means to put the customer at the heart of the business strategy, and what it takes to develop a successful service division on an enterprise scale.

And then there is Martin Summerhayes.

A day before our interview I was able to witness Martin give a presentation at the recent Service Community event. In the half hour during which he spoke he gave the impression not only of a man that had a very firm understanding of the whole picture is in terms of service delivery, but also a man who had gained that understanding by paying attention to the minutiae of every aspect of the process.

However, after speaking to him one on one at some length a day later, it was clear that we had only just scratched the surface of Summerhayes’ depth of understanding of the industry in which he operates, as well as his passion for getting it right.

In terms of his entry into the world of field service Summerhayes, like many of his peers took a fairly straightforward path into the system. Having graduated from university in London in the late 80’s he joined HP as a field engineer on a graduate scheme working in their volume repair business.  As he puts it himself “You started as a man with a van and progressed from there”

Summerhayes himself ending up doing so rapidly and was soon not just progressing at HP, but was changing the way the business operated.

 

“My boss asked me to come up with some ideas for generating service revenue” he began as I asked him to describe his path from service engineer to service manager

“I came up with what I called the ten million dollar opportunity, which was literally sold up front. We offered a multi year extended warranty on the HP printers and PCs that we were selling in the UK, this would provide HP with an incremental ten million dollars worth of revenue. It was called the HP support pack business and when I left HP was generating over a billion dollars of revenue per anum.”

And perhaps here is a glimpse at what makes Summerhayes such a fascinating subject for interview or indeed just someone to have a conversation with. Whilst announcing what was a really quite an extraordinary achievement, he makes it sound as if  it was essentially a logical development that anybody else could have made

This of course isn’t true, to create a billion dollar business in any industry takes vision by the bucket load and to do it in a fledgling IT service industry even more so, but the touch of humility he shows when outlining his achievements, and an almost a blasé outlook on such a success, hints at an impression of a man who is almost certainly quite an inspiration to both his peers and his team alike.

In total Summerhayes spent nearly 20 years working with HP, having risen up the ranks from the “Man with a Van” to being at differing points responsible for 450 engineers, developing new programmes within the company to change their processes, to being heavily involved in overseeing the merger with Compaq (which actually also included absorbing Digital Equipment Corporation and Cabletron into the HP structure as well). Eventually he was asked to move to Texas as part of a management restructure, which Summerhayes declined and the HP chapter of his career came to an end.

He then took a decidedly left-field step in his career and took up a role with the Metropolitan Police Force. Spending two years with the ‘Met’ which he describes as “a mix of secret military, local government bureaucracy gone mad and IT” where the culture was one of “meetings, about meetings about meetings” Summerhayes eventually returned to the more familiar corporate environment with Fujitsu where he has been for the past six years.

Here in his roles as Head of Strategy and Business Development he now works directly with the firms fourteen largest accounts in the UK, working with them to establish margin and service improvement opportunities. (Last year alone he was able to deliver over two million pounds of margin improvements.)

Look out for part two of this feature coming soon where we look at Summerhayes' biggest frustrations in field service today as well as what makes him go home smiling after a long day... 

Internet connectivity has become such an integral part of field service and as the Cloud becomes more prominent in the delivery of Field Service Management software having a fast reliable broadband connection at HQ is imperative. In the UK the government has acknowledged this and made a grant available for smaller and medium sized companies to improve their broadband speeds. Andrew Gedny, Managing Director of NextGen Access who are working with the Government on this project explains more…

With fast, reliable broadband internet access becoming increasingly essential for businesses throughout the country the UK Government created the Super Connected Cities Programme (SCCP). With funding of £150m, businesses in 22 cities around the country can take advantage of this scheme to upgrade their access to the internet. The fund aims to support economic growth and jobs across the UK by improving  Small and Medium sized businesses’ (SMEs) ability to access high-grade broadband.

In part this was a response to the lack of access to fast internet connectivity in many parts of the country including, surprisingly, the Tech City area of London. That part of the city, home to many companies requiring high speed data connectivity has been, surprisingly not that well served.

Working with the 21 City Councils and, through the Mayor of London’s office, all of the London Boroughs, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) will manage the distribution of this grant funding via a voucher scheme.

BDUK, part of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, was given responsibility for defining the qualifying rules and creating the application processes. Alongside companies such as NextGenAccess and the other scheme registered telecoms suppliers, BDUK is working to promote the programme and to inform SMEs about the business benefits of enhanced broadband connectivity.

How much is the Grant and what does it pay for?

Individual companies may apply for vouchers worth up to £3,000. This money can only be used to cover the costs of the improved Broadband connection, in other words just the capital and equipment costs of installing faster internet access. It cannot be used to pay for any ongoing service rental fees. The grant recipient is responsible for the VAT element of the connection charge as well as the subsequent monthly line charges levied by the telecoms provider delivering the service.

To qualify there needs to be a genuine and real change in broadband speed: this has been defined as being at least  30Mbps on a shared line or 20Mbps if a dedicated service is being provided on a dedicated basis. The other qualifying criteria is that the new speed must be at least double the previous one.

An interesting rule is that SME’s sharing a building may pool together their grant money and in doing so can collectively obtain a better level of service than they would otherwise get on their own. The only caveat to this is that the combined pool of money cannot exceed £20,000 except under exceptional circumstances. However that amount of money is usually sufficient to provide a very fast shared service.  A single company applying may be able to install a 100mbit connection but if 3, 4 or more companies applied jointly then potentially they may be able to share a 1gbit connection for the same price.

Who Can Apply for the Grant?

Applicants for the grant must be:

• a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• or a registered charity, social enterprise or sole trader.

In addition, an applicant must be located in one of the 22 participating cities, use a registered supplier and choose a high speed/ high grade connection.

The definition of a SME is defined as:

• Employing less than 249 people or volunteers
• Having a turnover of less than €50 (around £41m) and/or having a balance sheet of less than €43M (around £35.5M)
• Having received less than €200k in public grants in the last 3 years
• Not operating in sector which is excluded from the Scheme*
• Not having a parent company or linked enterprise which does not meet the eligibility criteria

The vouchers can be applied for until March 2015 but do not need to be used by then. More details on the full details of the eligibility criteria can be found at www.nextgenaccess.com/super-connected-cities

What does Superfast Broadband Deliver?

SME’s increasingly need high speed broadband connectivity to improve operational efficiency, remain competitive and maximise their addressable markets. As SMEs migrate additional services to the cloud, transfer and access more central data and collaborate with customers on projects, high speed, reliable business grade connectivity becomes a key business tool.  The SCCP vouchers are designed to ensure that SMEs can access services that will drive the digital growth of the economy.

 

Over recent months, recruitment in the field service market has boomed, with a wealth of opportunities now on offer for field service engineers, managers, representatives as well as specialist roles. John Cameron, general manager, Trimble Field Service Management (FSM) looks a little deeper into this trend...

In line with this boom, field service organisations are seeking a new type of worker, one which has the necessary technical ability to carry out skilled and complex work but which also has the interpersonal attributes to deal with, and build a relationship with, the customer.

Trimble recently released a report, ’Transforming Service Delivery 2014 – An Insight Report’, which investigates the most pressing issues affecting fleet and field service organisations today. Interestingly, the report found customer centricity to be at the heart of field service business’ strategies and highlighted an era in field service where customer satisfaction, retention and profitability are intrinsically linked. As a result, organisations are revolutionising their strategies in order to conform to growing customer expectations.

A direct impact of this has been the role of the field service worker, which has shifted from one of operational necessity to strategic importance. Why this shift? Because today’s customer values one-to-one interactions and with the field service worker often being the only contact a customer will have with a company, the quality of service and information the field worker provides can be the only way for customers to measure the integrity, credibility, effectiveness and overall brand promise of the service-based organisation.

The emergence of a ‘new’ field service worker

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service and third party expert cited in Trimble’s report, has found that having well trained and professional employees who are genuinely empowered to do their jobs is something that customers truly value.

“The biggest change we’ve seen in customer service,” Jo Causon explains, “is the move from a transactional economy to the relationship economy where value lies in one-to-one interactions and service leaders prevail in the marketplace. In a relationship economy companies that excel in customer service are increasingly able to cross into and disrupt marketplaces with a common purpose of changing the rules of engagement with the consumer and the employee, raising expectations of, and commitment to, service.”

With this shift, the skills agenda is becoming increasingly important as customers expect a greater level of engagement and real understanding of their needs. “Those organisations that concentrate on developing relationships rather than transactions will be the ones that are able to drive greater loyalty and commitment,” says Jo. “The types of new skills sets required are the ability to combine strong emotional intelligence, commercial acumen and technological awareness. All of which will be integral in an environment which is increasingly complex. There will be a growing challenge for organisations to bring together the required skills in order to deliver service experiences that are simple and intuitive and run across the organisation.”

Field service organisations therefore need to ask themselves when they are recruiting, are the individuals they are interviewing those who have not only the technical skills to do the field service role but also the  required emotional intelligence to make the connection with the customer.

 

Will Sambrook managing director of The Akenham Partnership and an additional expert cited in Trimble’s report, says of field service organisations, “I think a lot of organisations are often guilty of wanting people, especially young people, to arrive at the workplace ‘ready’ for the work and the culture and it’s not as simple as that.

“Businesses need to do more to engage with the colleges and schools showing students what they can expect from an organisation like theirs. What they can do in terms of getting themselves ready, demonstrate where their career can go in their industry.”[quote float="right"]Aberdeen found best-in-class companies were 35% more likely to use workforce management solutions such as performance management tools to optimise resources and workforce management processes.

 

But it is not just new starters in a company that need to be considered.  It is essential that any changes being implemented to an organisation, whether it is rolling out new technology or processes or ways of working, are communicated thoroughly to the existing workforce. Engagement is essential for a successful outcome. Employees need to be fully prepared so that a culture can be fostered in which they understand the changes, why they are needed and how to embrace them.

Will Sambrook adds, “Board engagement is absolutely essential. But it is important that Boards do not believe they have to be all-seeing, all-doing or all-acting. Their role is much more about creating the line of sight, from the Board strategy to what’s happening in the organisation; the processes, the people, their engagement with the customer – everything is aligned.”

Retaining top performers

In terms of field service workers it is not just about focussing on those being recruited or going through change but also managing those in the business and doing the job every day. Best-in-class organisations understand the ramifications of having an undertrained, underqualified workforce. When a company sends a field service worker on a service call, the worker needs to resolve the issue the first time. According to Aberdeen, however, 26% of cases are not resolved on the first visit, requiring additional follow up visits. While this is not all down to skillset, it nonetheless erodes customer confidence and can reflect the need for worker training.

One way managers of field based workforces can manage performance is through the use of workforce management solutions which provide capabilities to evaluate field worker performance and determine who delivers the best results. Once managers identify best-in-class workers they should do what they can to retain them. Aberdeen found best-in-class companies were 35% more likely to use workforce management solutions such as performance management tools to optimise resources and workforce management processes.

For more information on the transforming landscape of customer service and associated change and skills gap download Trimble’s latest industry report, ‘Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report’ via the following link: www.trimble.com/fsm/insightreport

The Service Community’s Special Event attracted nearly 60 service professionals who were clearly up to the challenge of debating key service challenges whilst paying tribute to the legacy of Steve Downton, founder of the Community who lost his battle with cancer in January this year.

The generous host for the event was Unisys, coordinated by Alistair Martin, who ensured guests were treated to first class refreshments and facilities at the Customer Services Centre in Milton Keynes

Clara Downton, Steve’s second eldest daughter opened the session with a touching message from the Downton family reflecting on the spirit of the occasion and how proud Steve would have been to see the passion that was on show. Steve’s widow Kate, was guest of honour and engaged with old friends and new community members throughout the event.

The agenda had been deliberately paced to pack in many presentations and practitioner case studies to showcase the Community at its best. We were not disappointed.

“Transforming for Tomorrow” kicked off the presentations in earnest. Pitney Bowes’ Field Service Management Andy Beer and Mark King shared a fascinating case study of how they deployed a service application to avoid meaningless data and to provide real-time information to ensure that their field service team were truly optimised.

To follow this punchy opening, would take something special, luckily Mark Rawding of Coca Cola Enterprises was ready for the challenge. Mark’s insight into deploying technology for customer satisfaction, dovetailed perfectly with the Pitney Bowes’ experience. The key messages of Mark’s success were appropriate for a mobile application; focus on device selection and engage more with the customer. Both these opening presentations generated great interest from the audience, with pertinent questions and full engagement a true indicator that the sessions had nit the mark.

The Service Community welcomed Martin Gilday to the stage. Martin, SVP at Elekta (manufacturers of medical equipment) recounted his memories of Steve as he blended the importance of effective knowledge management at Elekta with personal experiences from his long services career. The content and relaxed delivery kept the audience captivated and carried us effortlessly to the halfway mark. The networking opportunity of the Community is a key feature that Steve understood to be one of the value-added benefits of the organisation; this was underscored by the lively discussions and interactions that ensued throughout the break.

 

The penultimate presentation got underway, Martin Summerhayes picked up without missing a beat, deliberating about the reality of field service practices, describing what is known at Fujitsu as the ‘infinity loop’ of the service cycle. His interactive style ensured that Martin gained optimal feedback as he demonstrated why he has been invited to speak on several occasions at the Service Community events.

Incredibly after what was aptly described as a ‘marathon sprint’ the final presentation was underway. Graeme Coyne of Siemens hit a chord as he described the challenges of inspiring the next generation of Service Engineers and producing a powerful service operation. The audience responded energetically, asking hard hitting questions about how to relate to young people in a way to attract them into the service industry. It was a lively conclusion to the formal presentations and generated relevant content for a future meeting.

This packed Special Event easily delivered on its objectives, whilst the energy and involvement of the guests certainly demonstrated that active participation is the only type that matters. Chris Farnath of Allocate Software chaired the event and wrapped the formal session. As indicated ahead of the event, he then invited interested guests to debate the future direction of the Service Community. As a testimony to the success of the proceedings, nearly three quarters of the guests remained for the break-out session, where it became very clear, very quickly that the Service Community had relevance, longevity and a unique position to offer service professionals.

The content of the meetings is the life-blood of The Community, followed closely by the generosity of participants to offer facilities and key skills such as PR, marketing promotion or other services that will keep The Service Community alive. To this point, the next event is scheduled for September – date to be confirmed.