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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. Second in the firing line is Paul White, CEO mplsystems

 

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

It’s all about customer expectations, today’s smart phone empowered customers expect immediate service when they want it - or they’ll switch. Delivering field service is no longer just about dispatching resources. Instead the focus is on delivering end-to-end customer service targets and reacting to changes in real time. However the reality for most organisations is still a proliferation of disconnected systems and processes that make it impossible to monitor and deliver true end-to-end service. Systems integration simply won’t fix this for most organisations, it will just result in inevitable manual data fill and mistakes – and an inability to deliver the reactivity and service that customers demand.

 

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

The ability to deploy affordable field service apps on standard mobile consumer smart phones and tablets rather than expensive dedicated devices has had the biggest impact, enabling an entirely new generation of connected field service solutions. You can now equip field staff to support customer engagement activities, track on-site attendance and feed back into HR, monitor time in the field for improved financial management, as well as provide specialist telematics services - all via flexible smart phone apps. However, these will still require integration to avoid the kind of piecemeal approach that inevitably leads to efficiencies, with vital customer data getting stuck in individual departments.

 

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

Turning field service from a cost centre into a profit centre demands an end-to-end approach that’s reactive to customer requests and strengthens loyalty by driving out errors. This then empowers those people who spend most time with your customers – your field service staff – to identify and action the right cross sell and upsell opportunities with your loyal customers. An engineer fixing the lighting, for example, may notice that an air conditioning system also needs work – so it’s important that they have the sales mechanisms in place to immediately recommend and action repairs.

 

Who is Paul White? 

Paul White joined mplsystems as Chief Executive Officer in May 2005. Paul has spent the last 20 years working in and around the Field Service and Contact Centre industry and is one of the industry pioneers in the creation of affordable service management and CRM and Customer Service contact centre solutions. Prior to joining mplsystems Paul was the founding CEO of BT Contact Central, which, over 4 years, grew into a global business across UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. Whilst at BT, Paul was responsible for designing some of the largest CRM and Customer Service solutions in Europe and had major roles in systems architecture, product management and sales.

 

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

 

 

 

 

Nick Frank, Consultant with Novetnum Service Management continues his exclusive series looking at building revenue from services...

Selling services, how difficult can it be? Talk to a product sales person: ‘Piece of Cake, but…’.     Talk to the Services Sales specialist about their product colleagues; ’They don’t understand…. all they care about is the big deal’

In truth it’s not black and white, which is why it’s not so easy. Product Sales people can be very successful at selling services, if they are packaged as a product. For example I have seen great results for well defined service maintenance contracts, sold up front with the product. But I have also experienced complete frustration with some product sales people, as they struggle to sell managed services to more senior decision makers.  Generally this because they do not fully understand the strategic growth issues the boardroom faces and focus on service features.

To find the best path for your business requires an in depth knowledge of your customer’s buying processes, your own service propositions and your people. Get the answer right and it’s possible to create tremendous momentum, where you can start to see growth rates of between 20-40% per year in your services business.

Easy words, but what about the reality. Lets look at the experiences of a world leader in packaging equipment, Bobst SA based in Switzerland. The Head of the Service Business Unit, Stephan März saw the opportunity to transform the Services into a sustainable engine for long term growth. Two years in and Parts & Service is starting to push past 6% annual growth. This growth has been led by a focus on services where contract penetration has doubled. Although he is mid- journey, some of the lessons Stephan has learned about energising service sales are a good guide for anyone making this transition:

 

1. Technology leadership is not enough anymore: Spend time with the product sales force repeating this message. ‘Good Services are key to selling more Machines’. They will get it in the end, especially when you look at their incentives!
2. Focus, Focus, Focus: Creating a separate service team gave service an identity and motivation. Bobst had gone as far as creating a separate Business Unit, which allowed Stephan to demonstrate who was making the money…and it was not the products! Dedicated marketing, sales and supply chain allowed him to develop and implement very effective service proposition quickly. A focus on sales people skills; who were hunters or farmers. And often a successful approach for complex equipment manufacturers, leveraging  the customer perception of Regional Service Managers as trusted advisor’s, and using their skills to drive Service Sales.
3. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: It’s a major cultural change, but change does not happen overnight. Even though Stephan had 100% commitment from the CEO and the Executive team, he still had to work through the silos issues, dealing with jealousy, finger pointing, remuneration, profit & cost allocation and yes, car policy. Bobst worked very hard on team work with their product Sales colleagues, making sure roles and responsibilities were clear; and its beginning to work!
4. Patience, Patience, Patience: Business is impatient for results, but service sales is in fact part of a long term transformation programme, where the business model, processes and people all need to be challenged. It takes time commitment and management skill to achieve the desired relationship and results.

If you are interested in how to sell service more effectively, why not look to attend Noventum’s next Service Sales Course or look at our article on ‘How to boost Service Sales at this link

 

 

Trimble Field Service Management are bringing together a panel of field service leaders and industry exerts from around the globe to participate in a virtual summit which will be focusing on the shape of the industry today.

The summit, Transform Service Delivery: A Global Perspective will be held on Thursday 3^rd April and follows on from the launch of a new research paper from Trimble FSM entitled Transforming Service Delivery: An Insight Report, and addresses issues and challenges that are faced by field service organisations today.

There are five speakers scheduled to participate in the event whose presentations will cover topics including change management, emerging technologies, mobile resources, issue resolution, performance excellence and future trends.

The Aberdeen Group’s Aly Pinder, will lead the presentations discussing “Breaking through the roadblocks to deliver exceptional customer service.”

He will then be followed by:

• Anil Tiwari, solutions architect at Trimble Field Service Management, discussing Leveraging Data to Optimise Field Operations
• Barry White, CEO of G7 Consulting, discussing Effective Change Management: Strategies for Success
• Nate Vineyard, director of operations & performance for Multiband, discussing Managing the Mobile Workforce
• Sharon Clancy, editor of m.logistics, speaking on What the Future Holds for Field Service

• Sarah Nicastro, publisher and editor in chief of Field Technologies magazine, will moderate.

To register for the summit, or to obtain a recording of the event click here

 

Across the last couple of years there have been a number of recurring themes coming out of varying research projects looking at the field service industry.

One fact that is highly apparent is that whilst the global economy has steadied herself somewhat following the worldwide downturn in 2008, the field service industry, like most other industries is still feeling the effects of the decline. One poll conducted by the Aberdeen Group highlighted the two biggest market pressures were reduced customer spending alongside increasing resource costs.

These factors sitting alongside each other are major drivers for the need for companies to rethink how they structure their profit and loss sheets and shifting the service division from a cost centre to a profit centre is in some cases a sensible move to make, in others it is absolutely essential to secure a long term stable future.

Another recurring theme is that in general service standards appear to be falling. One report run by TomTom and TNS highlighted that 87% of Europeans suffered field service operatives turning up late to an appointment. Another report, this time based on research conducted by Cognito identified that 67% of UK consumers believe service has deteriorated within the last three years.

Is this decline in standards the result of strained resources due to lack of financial support? Or is it the result of the ‘connected consumer’, where through social media and the vast array of communication tools readily available via the internet the consumer is not only fully empowered to voice there dissatisfaction, but also have expectation levels raised beyond any previous standards? Likelihood is it is a combination of both, however if monetising service is a target, then a field service organisation delivering anything less than excellent service is likely to struggle to make the transition smoothly.

Yet at the same time the tools to improve field service standards, raising efficiency, lowering costs and improving productivity are not only becoming more sophisticated than ever before. Due to the impact of Cloud computing and the Software as a Service model they are also more easily available for even the smallest companies. The days of service management systems being available only to those organisations that could afford the initial capital expenditure are no more. Today, technology that can enable and empower the mobile workforce is accessible on even the most modest budgets.

With this in mind it would seem fool hardy for any company to not explore investing in the technology available that can facilitate the move from cost centre to profit centre (although whilst technology is a key factor, there are of course other more strategic and cultural considerations to be implemented too of course.)

However, as with anything in life it is not always feasible (or even sensible) to try to undertake a huge redevelopment of your service department in one go. It is important that you understand where you are today, where you want to be and then plot a sensible and achievable roadmap of how you are to get from one to the other.

There are a number of stages between your field service solution evolving from out-dated manual processes that eat up your companies time and money, to a fully automated, efficient and streamlined field service solution, that allows you to position your staff resources into the most optimal positions to allow you to harness and secure new and on-going revenue streams.

Broadly these evolutionary stages are as follows:

• Stage One: Basic Automation
• Stage Two: Extended Automation
• Stage Three: Integration
• Stage Four: Optimisation
• Stage Five: Decision support and effectiveness.

Whilst each companies path will be unique to them, it is good to have an understanding of each of these stages, so you can use them as sign posts on your own road map.

To give you further insight into these stages, Field Service News has compiled the white paper “The 5 Stages of Field Service Evolution”. This white paper, which is sponsored by Solarvista details each of these key stages, what they entail and what the benefits you will see at each level are, as well as further analysis of the state of the field service industry today, and the importance of moving from cost centre to profit centre.

To download your free copy of this important resource simply click this link and complete the very brief registration form.

In any number of forums, ranging from trade shows and conferences, to workshops, seminars and general consulting assignments, we are often asked the question: “What do Best Practices services organisations do differently from all others in order to attain that status?” The way we like to answer that question is with an explanation of why “less isn’t always more!”

In business – as in life itself – the best way of operating generally revolves around the concept of “less is more.” And, in most circumstances, this philosophy typically holds true. For example, less costs incurred with respect to operating a service center would certainly be a desired goal – as would less customer complaints, less customer system downtime, less technician time spent at the customer site, and so on.

However, Best Practices services organisations have learned, typically through experience, how to discern when a “less is more” approach is required, and when a “more is better” approach would be more desirable. There is a true distinction, and one that the Best Practices organisations have found they can literally “take to the bank!”

[quote]“Best Practices organisations have already learned that the best way to justify an investment is to measure how your performance has improved as a result.”

 

From research conducted over the past year, a number of factors stand out that truly differentiate Best Practices organisations from the general population. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Best Practices organisations do not necessarily face a different set of challenges than all others – they just deal with them more effectively. They don’t necessarily embark on a differing set of strategic actions than all others – they just apply more emphasis on some than they do on others. And they don’t necessarily utilise differing technologies and applications than all others – they just use them more pervasively and effectively.

Of course, it is not really just that simple. There is no doubt that Best Practices organisations generally have more resources available at their disposal than most others, and that they know how to use them better. But the story is actually much more complex than what may initially meet the eye. Let me explain …

First, most Best Practices organisations have already dealt with – and mostly successfully – the need to cut costs over the past several years. In addition, they have also taken steps to drive increased service revenues in the most recent timeframe. This is not to say that they have cut ALL costs, or that ALL potential revenue streams have been successfully cultivated; but, rather, that these issues are now fairly well under control among the leading organisations (i.e., as opposed to all others, many of which are still addressing these two issues as their number one and number two challenges). The advantage that Best Practices organisations have, as a result, is that they can focus more on other key strategic and tactical actions that will assure they stay ahead of the pack for some time to come.

Some examples of the primary means by which Best Practices organisations have dealt with cutting costs may include areas such as (1) restructuring the services organisation; (2) streamlining primary services processes, policies and procedures; (3) automating historically manual tasks and activities; and the like.

Examples of some of the more common means by which they may have driven increased service revenues include (1) implementation of a formal warranty and contract management solution; (2) deployment of mobile tools in support of the field force (e.g., to capture signatures and submit invoices at the customer site, etc.); (3) move toward the increased use of real-time data collection and exchange; etc.

Perhaps the greatest differentiator between Best Practices and all other services organisations is the following: Best Practices organisations typically know when they need to do “less”; and when they need to do “more.” However, the one key area where they are truly doing the “most” to maintain their status of Best Practices, is with respect to performance measurement.

In fact, Best Practices organisations are 20% more likely to utilise a formal set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure their service operations and delivery performance than all others. In addition, they are also using up to a dozen – or more – targeted KPIs to routinely measure critical performance areas, and report the results – often in real time – to all relevant stakeholders (i.e., those on a “need to know” basis).

This is clearly an area where “more” is better than “less,” and one where Best Practices organisations have already learned that the best way to justify an investment is to measure how your performance has improved as a result.

For a more detailed analysis of what differentiates Best Practices organisations from all others, we invite you to download our White Paper entitled, “Best Practices Organisations Plan to Invest More – and Measure More – in 2014”, available through Field Services News here

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. First up is Ian Mapp, Director with Wyser Stewart...

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

Field service has always coped with constrained resources – in terms of manpower and investment in spare parts inventory - and the recent harsh economic times have been very tough for many, both OEMs and independent maintainers. Those now poised to grow have continued to invest through the downturn, particularly in skills development, and that will now enable them to out-compete others.

With no money to waste themselves, customers are more demanding in the standards they expect and less tolerant of poor performance. This has accelerated a trend already entrenched for a number of years. Plus, bad news travels further and faster than ever via social media. Equivalent stories about exceptionally good service (they do exist!) do not travel as far or as fast. Service organisations will have to learn to live in this unbalanced environment, obsess about quality and focus on protecting and communicating hard-won reputations. It as a discriminator when customers choose suppliers.

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

In my opinion, it is all about the mobility revolution. Specifically, the intersection of two trends. The higher adoption of mobile devices by service organisations, and the explosive growth of smartphone usage amongst customers – 72% of the UK population according to a 2013 Deloitte survey, up 14% in just 10 months. The result of near ubiquitous use means more enthusiastic acceptance by technicians and engineers of a mobile device as an integral part of their everyday work. Maybe “grudging acceptance” is still more prevalent than “enthusiastic acceptance” in some organisations and industries!

Once upon a time, and not that long ago, mobile devices – typically ruggedised – were seen as the sign of a tech-savvy, forward-thinking service provider. Today, that has been turned on its head and organisations that do not deploy mobiles – more commonly consumer-grade or BYOD – are seen as laggards.

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

That’s simple. Independent maintainers are, by definition, driven by profitable service provision. For OEMs, the profits on after-sales services are frequently higher than products sales, and servitization has become an obvious strategy to maintain financial performance. For some it is a matter of survival and so it is a “no brainer”. The question becomes ‘how-to’ and not ‘whether-to’. Particularly as more product categories become commoditised, and manufacturers are unable to compete simply on product quality.

This is not the same as engineers being transformed into salespeople, as is often imagined. Many OEMs do not properly credit their service departments with revenue for their work. A notional accounting transfer is made, one that does not reflect the true commercial value. This gives a misleading impression of the service operation’s financial viability. Resolving this anomaly - to give an accurate baseline – and training service managers in financial disciplines are critical transformational steps.

Who is Ian Mapp...

Ian is a veteran of customer service - both in the provision of software applications and consultancy, and in actual service delivery. He has worked with companies large and small, both in the UK and internationally over 25 years. Presently, he is providing specialised customer service and customer experience consulting services to “people-powered” organisations through his company Wyser Stewart.

 

 

 

 

 

We live in an increasingly mobile world – how often you are at your desk when a crisis occurs? Where are your colleagues? Do they work in different offices and do they support your business continuity efforts? Teon Rosandic, VP EMEA, xMatters takes a look at then need for a virtual team strategy in modern business... 

Disasters can occur anytime and everyone may not be able to get to a physical location to manage the incident.  When an emergency occurs, we need to pull together teams, assess the incident, develop a plan of action and work the plan.  The team’s role is to manage and monitor the response, as well as the recovery of the business.

The primary function of any Incident Management Team is to establish and manage the Six Cs: Control, Command, Communication, Collaboration, Coordination, and Consistency.

Why do you need a Virtual Team and Process?

Primarily, because the world is mobile and employees may be dispersed, so there’s a threat of a pandemic or transportation is difficult.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Virtual Team

1. No waiting – A virtual team allows you to manage the event immediately rather than waiting for the team to assemble in a location.
2. Flexibility – Plans, teams, and processes can be changed easily in a virtual world and meet the fast changing demands of a disaster.
3. Location – Team members can participate regardless of where they are, as long as they have access to a tool.
4. Redundancy – If your facility is damaged or not available, response is not delayed.
5. Cost effective – The cost of being mobile may be less than maintaining a physical space.
6. Efficient communication – Relevant teams can get updates in real time, view “live” status boards and hear or participate in briefings.
7. Timely resource deployment – Resources can be deployed quickly and efficiently, reducing response time, making recovery faster.
8. Safe - If there’s a disease outbreak

So if virtual centres are so great, why doesn’t everyone have one? Often, utilities are affected after a major disaster.  A virtual team is dependent on power, phones, computers, networks and the company’s data centre.

Processes and procedures

For any process to be effective, you need to have a plan.  If your processes and procedures are not thought-out, the virtual road will be full of obstacles. So, if the current team is a train-wreck, the virtual one will be a nightmare!

Virtual or physical, it is essential to carefully craft the following processes:

1. Roles and responsibilities – You need discipline and clearly identified processes. Everyone should know what he or she should do, and what other team members are responsible for. Using team checklists is useful for this. Think carefully about team organisation and use a well-honed methodology, such as the Incident Command System.
2. A well-defined process and criteria for incident assessment and activation. Have a team including facilities, security, and technology with key leadership showing in responsibility matrix.  We advocate the team discuss issues related to: Life safety, Facilities, Technology, Mission-critical business and Reputation.
3. Incident Action Planning meetings are essential and include documentation of current situation status, development of strategic objectives, assignment of objectives to a team owner, and the time and duration of the operational period. They are shared with those working on the issues and/or in senior management using mobile technology.
4. Ability to track status so you don’t overlook necessary tasks. Depending on the tool or platform you use, you could use virtual status boards giving privileges to team members or update the boards with current status and action steps.
5. During an incident, it is critical to gain awareness from multiple sources including: Employees, News sources and Social Media.
6. Team Notification, including timely and efficient notification of team members and business unit recovery staff is important and might be worth considering emergency notification system.
7. Integration of maps, floor plans, and real-time images must be easily found and available in a mobile/virtual setting.
8. Resource deployment and logistics tracking of physical equipment such as laptops, mobile phones, and office space and personnel.

What Type of Technology Do You Need?

It takes more than one phone-bridge to be successful.  One bridge per team should be created for the Initial Assessment Team, Incident Management Team, and senior management.  Where possible, this should also include Command, Operations, Logistics, Planning & Intelligence and Finance.

Tools are needed to facilitate online communication and include:

• Instant messaging  – On the company’s network or products such as Skype, instant messaging allows teams to talk in real time, allowing instant communication, coordination, and collaboration.
• Project management tools – Products such as SharePoint allows teams to work virtually, track actions, and document progress.
• Web-enabled meeting tools – Products including NetMeeting and WebEx can assist in facilitating virtual briefings and team organisation.

Many smartphones have advanced the state-of the- art of mobile incident management with apps that can: Store and recall plans, team definitions, roles and responsibilities, task lists, contact information.  They can also enable communication and collaboration processes leveraging hosted services and native smartphone capabilities for redundancy.

A virtual team, whether stand-alone or with an existing physical team and Command Centre, offers many advantages. If you can design a virtual process that embraces the Six Cs: Control, Command, Communication, Collaboration, Coordination, and Consistency, you’re almost there. Time to jump in and go mobile!

Moving the field service division from being a cost centre to a profit centre is a shift that many companies are trying to undertake and something most service management experts suggest wherever possible.

There are fantastic opportunities for establishing revenue streams from your field service engineers but remember you employed them for their technical skills not their outstanding flair for sales. In fact, the likelihood is that many members of your mobile workforce may not be natural salesman and may find these additional requirements outside of their comfort zone.

To help you encourage your field service engineers to be more comfortable with the added expectation of becoming revenue generators Field Service News looks at five tips that you can role out to your field service engineers to help them grow and nurture their inner salesman.

Remember that the field service engineer is the expert

Field service engineers are knights in shining armour. Invariably they have been dispatched to fix a problem in your customers’ lives. Whether it be in the working environment or the home environment, your field service engineers are the experts that will get your customers’ back on track. As such they are given trusted advisor status from the moment they arrive on site.

Perhaps the most important and often hardest thing for a salesman to achieve is to gain the trust of their prospective clients. The field service engineer with their status as trusted advisor has broken down this first barrier immediately and is therefore in a great position to sell additional services or products.

Field service engineers who may not feel comfortable selling in a direct face to face environment (which can certainly be daunting for the inexperienced) should be reminded of their ‘trusted advisor’ status and be encouraged to draw confidence from this elevated position. In sales, confidence is absolutely everything.

Honesty is ALWAYS the best policy

Okay so your field service engineer is aware of the power of his position as a trusted advisor and is a super confident natural salesman.

Great, this gives him a perfect opportunity for that first time sale but as any good sales organisation will attest, whilst the first sales is important it is repeat business from your customer base that is absolutely vital to future proof your business.

Therefore it is essential that your field service engineer doesn’t taint the image of trusted advisor and only uses his position to sell your client products or services that are of genuine value to them.

Your clients are not stupid and if they are sold something that they didn’t necessarily need or at a price that is out of kilter with standard market rates, more often than not they won’t bother phoning you up to complain, they’ll simply take their business elsewhere.

However, if your field service engineer provides your clients with solutions to problems they need on a fair and honest basis, you will find that repeat sales will remain steady for years and years.

Don’t try to be a SALESMAN

If we were to ask you to describe a salesman how many of you would say loud tie, cocky attitude, and with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheesy lines? (Looking just like the chap at the top of this feature perhaps?)

Well, for a start remember not all salesmen are estate agents or second hand car dealers.

In fact you’ll probably find that those estate agents or second hand car dealers that fit into this stereotype of the ‘classic’ salesman are amongst the poorest performing in their respective field.

Whilst there are a number of sales techniques whether it be SPIN, AIDCA, DIPIDA or any of other acronym out there, the simple fact remains that the best sales people play to their strengths and are just themselves.

Sales needn’t be any more complicated than understanding your customers’ problem and offering them a solution. Your field service engineers should be better placed than any salesman to achieve this and don’t need to try to be something they’re not.

Educate your field service engineers on all your products

Your company may operate a number of related or even disparate solutions and your field service engineers are perfectly placed to cross sell if they have a broader understanding of your full product set beyond their own area of expertise.

Field service engineers are the greatest conduit that you have to your customers.

They are right there, talking to customers face to face, with a unique opportunity to gain insight into their needs. Whilst their primary role is to remedy a problem, and their secondary role may be a direct sale, a potential third role could be to be to open up cross selling opportunities into other areas of the business.

For example whilst recently having a field service engineer visit me to fix an issue with my phone line, I got into a conversation about broadband speeds.

The field service engineer was knowledgeable and gave me some good advice about moving to fibre optic internet (as well as other options for improving my broadband). He also worked for a rival company to my current broadband provider.

If he had been able to arrange an appointment for me to get fibre optic broadband installed I probably would have scheduled something there and then. If he had been able to arrange a call with a member of his company’s broadband sales team I would probably have agreed to a call and would have been a very warm prospect.

As it was he did neither and the likelihood is I will now remain with my existing provider and upgrade my service, because it is the easier option for me and I like most consumers will opt for the solution that requires the least hassle.

Yet had the field service engineer had the tools and incentive he could have sold me into another service his company provide as he had the knowledge and opportunity.

Give them the tools to succeed.

Which leads us into our final point, if you want to your field service engineers to become revenue generators, you need to give them the tools they need to achieve this. Fortunately the technology is all there waiting for you.

Key needs will include form creation and signature capture, access to ordering systems and of course payment collection. All of these can be found as apps that sit on smart devices operating on both Android and Apple’s iOS and can sit on a plethora of devices .

However, perhaps the most important consideration is to establish a transparent means of communication and interaction across all divisions of the company.

Whether this is a sophisticated cloud based end-to-end software solution or a simpler processed based solution that makes use of your existing assets, if you are expecting your field service engineers to become revenue generators you need to give them the tools to succeed.

 

 

When building, developing or establishing a service business there are numerous factors that need to be considered. However, the most fundamental strategy to ensure service excellence is delivered remains one of the simplest. The customer needs to be at the heart of all your endeavours. This fact was at the top of the agenda during a recent webinar that was hosted by the Aberdeen group and Trimble FSM.

During the session some very interesting points were made by Aberdeen Analyst Aly Pinder during a Q&A session. Indeed Pinder asserts that best-in-class businesses are united in putting the customer at the centre of their field service operations.

Whilst field service has always been an undertaking with the customer at its centre, across the industry globally we are currently seeing a renewed focus on improving the customer experience. Simultaneously field service technologies become more and more refined enabling vast improvements in managing and monitoring how service is delivered.

Furthermore communicating these improvements to the customer base is another factor in building a reputation for such service excellence.

In PInders words  “Providing better customer reporting is essential and it is important to relay the data that you’re collecting back to the customer, allowing them to effectively be an advocate and partner of your business.”

In fact Pinder provided a neat example of this highlighting those companies that are now applying predictive or preventative maintenance. Such companies have a fantastic story of delivering such advanced customer service through adopting such a proactive approach, and the customer really should be made aware of it. A satisfied customer, who feels reassured that they are in competent hands with their service organisation is fantastic ambassador with the potential to help drive higher levels of engagement between the two parties moving forward.

Another interesting point that Pinder makes is that within the mobile workforce there are different skill sets, beyond those that we would consider essential to the field engineer’s role, that are exploitable. For example some of your field engineers may be particularly effective salesmen with a natural gregarious demeanour, an obvious asset. Yet not all field engineers may be so comfortable to don a salesman’s hat. However, there are other opportunities beyond direct selling. Field technicians are in touch with the customer and those less suited to sales can add value bringing in customer data from the field.

Some companies have moved towards incentivising their field staff, although Pinder advises stepping carefully down this path.

Pinder comments: “This is not necessarily the right thing to do for every company as you need to understand the skill set of your technicians and understand which technicians could be good sellers and which aren’t…” 

However he also identifies the benefits of this route also adding:

“For those organisations that understand the skill sets of their technicians, incentivise technicians that are really good at selling and incentivise those that aren’t good at selling at bringing that data back in and passing that along to the sales and marketing team.”

Perhaps the biggest issue in the shift from cost centre to profit centre that Pinder identified was the devaluing of the service experience.

There are many different elements of a field service organisation that can deeply affect the customer experience and both sales and marketing can have a major impact. Often, sales representatives will bundle service in for free as part of the overall sale. Pinder believes this is a dangerous path to follow.

“When a sale is given away for free your ability to deliver that ‘exceptional service experience’ is greatly devalued. Therefore, ensuring your sales organisation understands the value of service internally and that they can communicate that to your end customers is important.”  Pinder commented.

One additional area that perhaps doesn’t get the credit that it deserves for its impact on the final impact on customer experience is engineering and design. Pinder also identified this as a two way street.

“Best-in-class organisations pull in data from technicians, give that back to engineering and design and have those teams create products that fulfil customer needs. The technician incorporates the insight provided by customers to create a product or new service that is tailored to customer needs.”

Whilst best-in-class companies push the boundaries of service excellence, at the other end of the scale there are three common issues that Aberdeen have identified that field service companies are not meeting which result in dissatisfied customers. These were:

The technician did not resolve the issue first time, The wait for the appointment was too long, The technician didn’t show up for the appointment at all

Companies can address these fundamental problems and improve the customer experience they deliver simply by making sure the technician to be sent to the appointment has the correct skills set and tools for the job and ensuring communication with the customer around appointment times is accurate and reliable.

Discussing this Mark Forrest, general manager of Trimble Field Service Management commented:

“Achieving customer satisfaction in today’s marketplace is tough. On-time performance is the Holy Grail – problems must be solved the first time, and solved effectively. 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.”

He continued: “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.”

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