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Aly Pinder, research analyst and mobile workforce specialist with the Aberdeen Group joins Field Service News with a new monthly column. In this first feature he looks at how companies can stand out in 'the age of the customer'

How would you rate your organisation’s ability to deliver great service?

Now, how would your customers rate your service?

I think both questions can lead to valuable insights into how the service organisation needs to evolve in 2014. But the customer’s take on your service is becoming more important than ever. Aberdeen’s recent research on the State of Service Management: Roadmap to a Profitable 2014 (March 2014) highlighted the top pressure facing organisations is increased competition both in products and services (52% of respondents, n = 170). No longer can service and manufacturing organisations rest on their laurels that the customer will not find someone else who can provide similar if not more value. For this reason, it is imperative that organisations re-train their focus on improving the service experience and providing value to the customer relationship.

In order to achieve this heightened level of service to the customer, a few lessons should be learned from top performers recently sampled from Aberdeen’s research. These best practices are just a starting point, but should be followed to ensure competition doesn’t eat away at your profits or customer base -

Craft a culture of service.

Exceptional service can only be achieved if the entire organisation is on board to deliver value to the customer. Often times we view service as a “problem” for field service or the contact centre. This is not a winning approach. The field service team is often the function which is in closest proximity to the customer, but each team within the organisation can have a positive impact on the relationship. For example, engineering has the opportunity to make products that are easier for customers to use and doesn’t break as frequently, marketing has the ability to highlight products or services that most align with customer needs, and operations can make service delivery more efficient by removing clutter from the service chain.

Learn from your customers.

Customers are more than just a means to more revenue. Customers show a window into the future of innovation and viability for the organisation. Top performers in Aberdeen’s research were 50% more likely than peers to proactively capture customer feedback in regard to product and service performance (66% vs. 44%, respectively). Organisations that do not listen to customers’ needs will miss out on finding that next great product or service. Furthermore, customers have more clout than ever, so neglecting them will not only impact one sale it may also negatively influence their connected ecosystem of current and future sales.

Design products for improved service.

Continuous improvement is a topic often denoted to manufacturing or operations. However, I propose that all organisations and functional areas should strive to continuously improve the offerings for their customers. The best performing organisations in Aberdeen’s sample were twice as likely to design products for improved serviceability (56% vs. 28%, respectively). These firms relayed customer and usage data from the field to engineering and design teams to enhance future products. An emerging concept for service organisations is “ease of doing business” for the customer, designing products for serviceability is the next frontier of this concept.

Find out what motivates your great service team.

Does your organisation know what motivates its field service teams? Not many organisations do. We just assume that an hourly wage is all it takes to have a technician who is excited to provide exceptional service. And this may be true at times, but organisations need to provide customers with even more valuable experiences. Thus firms must take a look at the employee’s motivation to create a link. Organisations are missing opportunities to identify gaps in service because technicians are not engaged to go beyond just turning the wrench to see the customer’s true needs.

Field service excellence is no longer a simple proposition of meeting a schedule. Top performers are looking to the service organisation to provide enhanced value to customers and become a willing partner for innovation.

 

The question of how to grow profitably is high on the strategic agenda of most companies, yet only few are able to realise it. In today’s world, many businesses are struggling to maintain their existing revenue and profit margins, let alone achieve ambitious growth rates. But there are also many exceptions!

Given that significant variations appear in the growth strategies companies choose and the role services play within this strategy, Noventum set out to answer the following two questions:

1. What are today and tomorrow’s key drivers for profitable growth?

2. What role do services play in respect to growth?

The research comprised of in-depth interviews and a survey conducted amongst board members, service managers and directors, primarily from B2B product-orientated companies across a wide distribution of industry sectors and company turnovers.

It was quite clear that companies exhibiting higher growth rates saw ‘services’ as one of their strategic solutions to achieving growth and not as a challenge in its own right.

We found that these companies tended to exhibit 4 key capabilities:

1. Deployed a wide portfolio of growth strategies

In order to outperform competitors on revenue growth and margins, companies should pursue a broad portfolio of growth strategies and not just the traditional few of  (1) Product growth in mature markets; (2) Product growth in emerging markets; (3) Product Related Services. When these 3 strategies are broadened by Advanced Services focused on solving company’s business problems, or improving a customer’s processes, revenue growth was generally above 11%. In addition these companies were more likely to achieve gross margins across the whole business of greater than 40%.

2. Innovate for customer value

Key to growth and profit margins is a focus on innovation in order to optimise customer value. Successful companies do this by employing multiple tools to glean customer insights and maintain a balanced portfolio between incremental and ‘game changing’ innovations.

3. Demonstrate Organisational Agility

We defined agility as the capability, dedication and culture to rapidly innovate on a continuous basis. The companies that achieve high growth are innovative in nature which leads to change. But all this change creates internal friction and conflict . Hence successful high growth companies develop a culture that can move and change rapidly giving the oganisation an agility to adapt to new ideas

4. Strategic alignment between service- and corporate strategies

Companies need to develop a clear long-term vision as to how to develop their service business, ensuring each step delivers a tangible and credible contribution to the overall performance of the company. Focusing on the overall value of service for the company will secure corporate commitment and thereby further enable (service) business success.

The bottom line: Advanced services are a key differentiator in driving companywide revenue growth.

If you are interested in understanding more about how advanced services differentiate the winners from the losers, you can down load  a summary of the research finding using this link.  Or if you would like to participate in our follow up research, you can join Noventum’s Service Innovation Programme on LinkedIn. When people subscribe they will receive our newsletter including the events updates such as the Servitisation conference in May at Aston Business School.

I will be presenting the research findings at this event, as well as at the Service Management Expo at the ExCeL in June.

 

 

Welcome to the fourth edition of our Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Noventum Service Management consultant Nick Frank. 

In this exclusive interview Nick talks extensively about a recent study he and his colleagues have made into what are the key drivers for growth for businesses and the role service plays in this.

This podcast is also accompanied by a great article written exclusively for Field Service News by Nick which you can find here

Nick will also be joining Field Service News in the Field Service Solutions Theatre at this year's Service Management Expo being held in London's ExCel on June 17th, 18th and 19th. So if you want to here more from Nick then make sure you get your complimentary 3 day pass by clicking this link

 

 

Click Software's Gil Bouhnick, Vice President of Mobility looks at how how companies can use gamification in their organisations to improve efficiency....

Gaming has become a core part of our daily lives. Whether we’re sitting at home playing Candy Crush or trying to break that unbeatable Flappy Bird record on the way to work, people from all walks of life are beginning to play more games, ever more frequently. All you need to do is sit on a train and see men in suits, parents after the school run, teenagers, or people just enjoying a day of leisure – most of them will have a gaming app on their phone, and more often than not, will play it on a regular basis.

We work best when we are happy, and so smart companies are looking into how they can use the surge in popularity of both games and the smartphones they are played upon. Is there some way you can blend the two to make work that little bit easier? The answer is absolutely.

Gamification is a term that has been around for a while, but now we are really seeing it adopted by companies of all varieties for things such as helping them increase employee collaboration and motivation, to providing training and supporting change management. Essentially all the tasks that you know you have to do, but don’t always enjoy doing can have an amount of gamification woven into them. And in a way, this can be turned into a reward for employees who do these tasks on time and accurately. A small badge here, an unlockable picture there, small tokens that can make staff feel better for doing the administration.

Engaging employees of all levels and functions is a notoriously difficult thing to do, especially when it comes to adopting new processes. It often happens that employees are resistant to changes because they can’t understand the new processes nor do they see any personal benefit in adopting them. But having an engaged and motivated workforce is a crucial ingredient to a successful company, even more so when that company has a dispersed workforce.

In businesses where there is a core back office function and then a field team carrying out the tasks, it’s very easy to become split between these two fault lines. Unifying them and making sure they are all following the same procedures can be much more difficult than a business that is self-contained or less diversified in the roles and responsibilities of the staff.

Yet tapping into a common ground can be a great way of bringing a company together. This is where it’s hoped gamification will come into its own. Think about some of the tasks you need to do as part of your job – timesheets, expenses, logging tasks. It can be pretty boring stuff. But what if you livened it up a little bit and made it more compelling by adding a competitive element to what you are doing? And if you made your employee feel appreciated for doing such tasks?

We have begun to see businesses doing just that. Company-wide league tables charting who is best at one task, or which division is doing something better or faster than another. A little healthy competition goes a long way to bringing people together.

You can also apply this to customer service too. If the end customer has the option to directly feedback via a smart device, then suddenly it is even more critical for the technician, engineer, or salesman to make sure they do the best job possible. It provides a way to show how well they are doing by comparing the best in your company with each other and it also allows companies to reward their top employees for their outstanding results. It’s like the old sales charts companies used to have where at the end of the month, a salesman of the month would be announced. The concept is exactly the same, just digitising it and making it something that people from across the business can take part in.

At the foundation of any good gamification model is the goal to reward staff. This doesn’t necessarily mean holidays abroad, mountains of cash etc., it’s more about appreciation that they are doing a good job and are recognised across the business as such.  A good gamification model should be easy to embrace. The moment it becomes as complicated as the tasks it’s trying to replace, then you’ve lost sight of the reason of employing it.

Make it simple. Make it compelling. And make it as fun as possible. If you stick by these rules, then you should begin to reap the benefits pretty quickly. Benefits, such as a more engaged workforce, more accurate reporting and completion of administrative tasks, and ultimately a better customer experience. We are still in the early days of companies adopting true gamification policies, but with no end in sight for the adoption of smartphones, the technology is finding its way into more people’s hands, and that’s an opportunity businesses should be seriously considering in the years to come.

 

Recruitment consultancy Concept Resourcing have recently announced that they are able to report the highest demand for their services since 2008.

This growth is largely due to the company having seen particularly strong demand for their Field Service Engineering division.  This division specialises in providing field engineers to a number of sectors including IT, document solutions, domestic appliances, plant hire and commercial and domestic gas.

In March this year the company registered 346 new client vacancies, which is a 57% increase on the same period last year.  This increase is a clear indication that many UK business owners across the UK have confidence to increase permanent headcount in their service departments.  Good news overall for the UK employment market and further proof of a strong growth in the economy.

Concept Resourcing’s field service engineering division has placed more permanent staff over the last quarter than ever before. As a result they are currently hiring new resourcers and recruitment consultants into the division in response to increasing demand for our services.

It seems that the service industry continues to remain a strong, vibrant and vital part of the UK’s economic recovery.

 

 

‘Congratulations! You grew your service business by 25% last year…but how much money did you make?!’

This is the dilemma we often hear when talking to disappointed and frustrated managers.

In our experience this is especially true for organisations undergoing rapid change or growth through acquisition. Their Service Delivery Processes have not been built on a solid foundation and they experience large variations in how services are delivered from the excellent to the appalling.

Increasingly there are many new service management and mobile solutions on the market that bring transparency to the operations. Although they are a critical ‘enabler’, they do not address the root cause of the problem. We know that for a company to successfully industrialise its back office and deliver a consistent customer experience, it is key to have a clear vision of the:-

 

• End to End business processes
• Service management practices
• People competencies
• Performance management systems
• IT requirements

 

These building blocks are not only the basis for ensuring the existing service delivery model can be profitable, they will also de-risk the introduction of new service offerings.

Take one of the company’s that has featured in this blog series, Bobst SA.

Stephan Maerz, Head of the Service Business Unit faced a classic post acquisition situation. Bobst were working with seven different brands globally, all functioning under different management models; services weren’t aligned, standards and pricing were disparate. If the answer to growth lay in their services, they needed a global plan.

In March 2012, the Bobst executive team decided to create a single One Bobst brand. In July 2012, they started to define and execute a global service transformation programme. The brand-driven strategy they developed required a globally consistent customer experience, and that meant standardisation.  But unifying operations however, wasn’t so simple. The solution? Create a Book of Service Standards, a global undertaking requiring agreement from every regional and functional head. Modes of working were so variable, the project could have taken years. But by working with a 3^rd party with access to proven models and best practice, it took only three months to agree on one model.

A lot of people said it couldn’t be done and that a global service strategy would not work on a local level. Bobst demonstrated that by using a component based service factory model, it is is possible to take a fragmented operation and build a common documented vision of how the business should operate. In this way Bobst has built the basis for a sustainable and profitable service business. The next challenge is to build a completely new IT architecture to make the book of standards an operational reality.

If you would like to know more about this case study or the Component Based Service Factory, use this link to go to the Noventum website at www.noventum.eu.

Or you can meet us in person in May at the Servitisation Conference at Aston Business School or the Service Management Expo at the the London ExCeL where we will be sharing more experiences on how to achieve business growth through services.

Nick Frank is a service specialist with Noventum Service Management

The field service industry continues to evolve at pace. New technologies are constantly emerging which have the potential to change the industry as we know it.

At the same time we are seeing a huge cultural shift with many seeking to realign their service division from cost centre to profit centre. To help us keep up with these changes Field Service News has put together a panel of five field service industry experts and asked them each to share their insight on the industry today. The third member of our panel is Mark Forrest, of Trimble Field Service Solutions

 

What is the biggest driver for change in field service today?

Many companies managing a large field service workforce operate in industries which require highly skilled individuals, whose work is variable and complex in terms of location and task. Add in a high degree of compliance-focused work and that means that field service work has become increasingly mission-critical in terms of timing, skills and consequence. With increased customer expectation it is important that companies ensure that their field service is not derailed by unpredictable dynamics of the working day.

An increasing number of organisations are beginning to realise that it isn’t where the vehicle is that’s important, it’s where the engineer or field service worker is and what they are doing that is of paramount concern, as ultimately they are the ones providing the service to the customer. The support of solutions to help manage work efficiently and effectively has therefore become integral in helping to meet customer demands and achieve service delivery excellence.

 

Which technology has had the biggest impact on the field service industry in the last 5 years?

Organisations with field service technicians have previously struggled to effectively schedule their work and track their progress to continually meet service commitments. Indeed, one in ten organisations still collect data from the field via paperwork. However, work management technologies have emerged to transform the productivity of mobile workforces through intelligent scheduling tools and performance management analytics.

Organisations can measure, manage and improve their operations through optimising resources, offering real-time visibility and monitoring and giving warning of tasks at risk or showing the impact of work allocation decisions.

Data obtained from such technologies can be analysed through performance management analytics to allow interrogation of the information to provide an understanding of the performance, trends and the barriers in line with business targets. The analysis drills down to different variables around individuals, teams, regions, job type etc. and can be provided to different stakeholders within the organisation depending on their business need for day-to-day management or longer term business planning.

 

What is the most important consideration when moving from cost centre to profit centre? 

Field service has evolved from what was once an operational necessity to a strategic significance, as the technician may now be the only contact a customer has with the company and therefore exposure to the company’s service delivery and brand. With a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability, how the technician interacts with the customer can be significant in the customer experience.

The most common customer complaint is when a technician does not resolve the issue first time. Making sure you get the right people with the right skills with the right assets to the right place within a set time is therefore essential. Work management technologies can help by incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is the person who can resolve the issue first time.

In addition, employing mobile workers who have the ability to upsell or cross-sell products and solutions whilst with customers can also make a difference to service delivery as a cost or profit centre.

 

Who is Mark Forrest? 

Mark Forrest is general manager of Trimble Field Service Management, a position he has held since January 2012. In this role, Mark is responsible for providing worldwide mobility-based productivity solutions to the communications, field services and trades markets.

Prior to joining the Field Service Management division, Mark served as general manager and Chief Operating Officer for Caterpillar Trimble Control Technologies (CTCT), a joint venture between Trimble Navigation and Caterpillar. Mark also has served as the general manager and worldwide sales director for the Heavy and Highway Division. A native of Australia, Forrest holds an undergraduate diploma in Engineering Surveying and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Colorado.

To read this full panel debate and much more download a free digital copy of our quarterly magazine. Click here to register.

 

Welcome to the third edition of our Field Service News podcast. This month we are joined by Strategies for Growth's President and Principal Consulting Analyst Bill Pollock. 

In this exclusive interview Bill talks extensively about his most recent research project which he undertook across the last six months of 2013 and drills down to explore those companies that are operating at a best-in-class level and what separates them from the rest of the pack.

This podcast is also accompanied by a fantastic white paper written exclusively for Field Service News by Bill and you can download both of these excellent resources for free by simply clicking the link below and filling out a brief registration form.

 

Click here to get the full podcast and accompanying white paper for free now!

 

Customer service is widely recognised as being the number one business priority with a proven link between customer satisfaction, retention and profitability. Indeed, Aberdeen Group recently reported that organisations that reached a 90 per cent plus customer satisfaction rate achieved an annual 6.1 per cent in service growth, 3.7 per cent growth in overall revenue and an 89 per cent level of customer retention.[1] With approximately 78 per cent of UK GDP derived from the services sector[2], customer service is becoming increasingly recognised as a strategic issue and, according to the Institute of Customer Service, if organisations do not include it in the boardroom then some of those businesses won’t be around in the longer term.

The growing importance of customer service

Tom Gorman, president of opXL, LLC and a field service expert believes that the goal of field service excellence is to respond quickly to customer needs, whatever they may be and it takes four criteria to meet this goal: Be on time; allow enough time to do the job; have the right skills; and bring the right equipment.

The most common customer complaint is when a technician does not resolve the issue first time. This may be due to not having the right part or tools, not having the right skills or not enough time to complete the job[3]. Considering 25 per cent of service calls require a follow-up visit, the result of not achieving a first-time fix can be detrimental. Indeed, Aberdeen Group report that companies not meeting a 50 per cent first-time fix rate and requiring a return visit reported revenues dropping by nearly 3 per cent.

As a result, more and more organisations are beginning to realise the value of ‘intelligent scheduling’ - incorporating technician knowledge, parts availability, and capacity into their scheduling processes to ensure that the technician arriving on site is actually the person who can resolve the customer’s issue first time. Businesses can address the challenge of making better in-day decisions by utilising a work management self-learning tool. To avoid large data set-up exercises of skill sets and work areas, a self-learning tool supports the assignment of work orders to the field technicians by remembering who has the right skills and their usual work areas. The user also has the ability to enquire what has been learnt by the system and correct it. Aberdeen’s research found that the Best-in-Class (the top 20 per cent) performers had mean success ratios of 92 per cent for meeting response or project completion deadlines and 88 per cent for first-time fixes.

What matters most to customers?

According to Jo Causon from the Institute of Customer Service, there are five key areas which matter most to customers:

• Well trained and professional staff members who are genuinely empowered to do their jobs.... are the people that interact with customers professional and empathetic with emotional intelligence and business acumen?
• How easy is the organisation to do business with... does the business make it easy for me to interact with them across all channels?
• Product and service quality...Does the product or service do what is expected?
• Problem resolution.... how are any issues resolved? This is not just about the outcome but also includes the way the process is managed.
• And timeliness...care needs to be taken when managing customer expectations about the timescale in which products or services can be delivered. It is absolutely critical to match and manage customer expectations.[/unordered_list]

The strategic importance of the field service worker

The role of the field service operative has changed dramatically over recent years; shifting from one of operational necessity to strategic significance. Why this change? Because with the rise in use of automated booking systems, for example, and with the growing trend of machine to machine (M2M) capability allowing applications to provide preventative and predictive analytics, the field technician’s visit to the customer may be the first and only exposure a customer has to the company’s brand and service delivery.

Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service:

“The biggest change we have seen in customer service, 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. A ‘personalised service for many’ and a dialogue approach, as opposed to the traditional monologue, is now desired. This power shift has come about, partly due to technology and the rise of social media, but also because you and I, as customers, want to be much more engaged in the customer experience.”

“Looking ahead, demand for staff who have desirable attitudes and attributes for customer service will increase. In particular, there will be a stronger focus on the importance of emotional intelligence as an enabler to deal with the wide variety of changing customer service relationships and interactions.[4]”

Social media given power to the consumer

How do you build relationships with so many, while personalising the interaction? This dialogue approach is a major management issue but one which can, in part, be addressed through the use of social media.

Social media channels have given power to the consumer like never before. We now take to Twitter and Facebook to communicate with organisations about our customer experience, with many of us expecting rapid responses to our queries and complaints. It is therefore vital that organisations not only have a social media presence but have clear messaging via social channels and teams empowered to conduct social media interactions with customers in a rapid and flexible way.

Who owns the customer experience?

According to the Institute of Customer Service, having somebody on the board who has overall responsibility for the customer experience is essential and that somebody needs to be the CEO. The customer service strategy is integral to the business strategy, and the board needs to lead on this.

For further understanding on the changing landscape of customer service get a copy of Trimble FSM's latest Insight report Transforming Service Delivery which delivers more exclusive analysis and insight from Trimble's latest research plus a number of great insights from industry leaders and examples from real-life businesses.

Click here get your free copy of this excellent 40 page insight report

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