Think Ahead About the Future of Remote Service

Oct 18, 2021 • Features • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Covid-19 • Remote Services • GLOBAL

In this final feature from a recent white paper published by IFS, we discuss the importance of thinking ahead about the role that technology can play in your business in the future.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

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With the rapid pace of change that we all acknowledge at play, it is important to be thinking not only about how to make the best use of augmented reality and remote assistance tools today – but to be thinking ahead to create a vision for the role the technology can play for your business’ future state. COVID made the value of remote assistance crystal clear, which I think will only spawn further use of the technology in the months and years to come.

So, what do we expect to see? One major point is the expansion in use of the technology across businesses. While these tools are often deployed for a point-specific purpose, this enables the value of the technology to be recognized within an organization and for use to become more pervasive. “Various ideas have been brought up through our innovation counsel about the future use of remote service,” says Scott. “Two of the most notable solutions were having technical advisors on large scale emergency scenarios remotely connected to provide eyes in the field and providing immediate support to our technicians from peers or trainers who may not be in the local area. The future of technology is growing at such a rapid pace, it’s truly hard to predict what’s to come but I feel we are on the tipping point of even larger acceptance of these innovative technologies.”

For larger-scale acceptance and use to occur, its likely that the technology needs to become more cohesive and seamless. “Over the next few years, I would hope the technology is able to catch up to the vision of self- service and remote resolution,” says Marlene. “Chatbots today are unable to provide the level of understanding to truly make a difference in self-service. I would like to see technology integrate and mature, providing a more robust interactive experience for the customer for remote resolution.” When you look at how a variety of technologies including remote assistance, IoT, AI, ML, knowledge management, and service management intersect, you see the immense opportunity for these tools to become more unified.

Pandemic-initiated travel restrictions have resulted in a recognition of exactly how productive and effective remote interactions can be, and this will drive the use of remote assistance and other technologies to permanently eliminate unnecessary travel. Companies who have used remote assistance as a stand-in and have achieved impressive results are looking for areas where it can become the standard process. We’ve looked at factory acceptance testing with customers, for instance,” says Roel. “So, we involve the customer in the factory acceptance testing without traveling. And that seems to be quite successful.” Whether internal travel of knowledge workers or situations like Roel mentioned with its customer-facing factory acceptance testing, there are certain applications where travel was the standard before that it simply just doesn’t need to be any longer. This isn’t to say that companies will look to replace all, or even most, travel with remote assistance and other tools – but it will certainly have an impact.

The Impact of Remote Assistance on New Talent

I believe in the coming years we will also see remote assistance play a significant role in how companies deal with the talent gap. The talent gap presents a major challenge for businesses across almost every industry and geography, and the value proposition of remote assistance is simply too strong to not be leveraged as a part of the solution – both as a direct training resource and to play a part in knowledge capture and transfer. “When we onboard our newer or greener technicians, we’ve grouped them into three training workstreams. We use baseline testing to assess which workstream they fall into: beginner or associate, intermediate, and master level. For anybody who falls into that first group, part of their onboarding and training is introducing them to remote assistance,” explains Gyner. “So, we give them the opportunity to have this technical resource to help them with diagnosis. Use of the tool drives scalability in terms of building a bigger knowledge base of recorded sessions in the LMS. You’ll see this knowledge grow in the next five years and it’ll also be enabled by IoT because the IoT may tell a technical resource, ‘Here’s the problem to begin with,’ and that technical person can get on the phone then with the customer or technician and say, "Okay, I’m seeing what the piece of equipment is telling me is the problem. Let me help you walk through how to resolve that’.”

Finally, remote service will be a key aspect of any company’s journey to Servitization or delivering outcomes. We’ll see use of the technology expand and mature as organizations work through the role remote service plays in their broader service strategy and value proposition. “We feel that we’re only scratching the surface with what we will use this for now and in the future. But I think one thing is that we certainly won’t go back to doing things how we did before,” says Karl. “We’ve seen situations where we’ve had to do an intervention and we’ve been able to provide very quick response. We’ve looked at this from a training point of view as well. Things are moving much more to a Servitization model so service is hugely important for us. We’ve been primarily a manufacturer, but now we’re looking to provide a solution. Our use of IFS Remote Assistance has been thought provoking, it’s given us a lot of ideas about how we can evolve and change."

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

Further Reading:

Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
Read more about Remote Service on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote-service
Learn more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

Overcome the Barriers to Remote Service Success

Oct 08, 2021 • Features • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Covid-19 • Remote Services • GLOBAL

In this third feature from a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by IFS, we look at how field service organisations can overcome the barriers to achieve remote service success.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

While remote service technologies can have a very positive impact for businesses that reach far beyond their obvious pandemic use case, the reality is that making proper use of the technology is not without its challenges.

First and foremost, companies must understand that augmented reality and remote assistance – like any technology – must be part of a broader, well thought out strategy to have the desired impact and to result in ROI. When you think about the primary use cases for remote service – better customer experience, knowledge transfer, increased speed and effectiveness of training – you can see that the technology addresses needs that demand innovation and alignment beyond one particular tool.

The technology you select needs to fit within this broader strategy and within your digital landscape. “One of the key steps to us selecting the best tool was to ensure we completed a thorough analysis and pilot with a wide range of skillsets involved,” says Scott. If you’re newly incorporating this technology into your business, Roel suggests starting with a function where you know you’re likely to have quick success and impact. “I would suggest starting with internal use first to test it and see that people get acquainted with it and then add customer support in as well,” he says. “Try out some of the different tools on the market. Get a few licenses, spend some hours, and make a list of criteria that you think is most important. For us, connectivity, ease of use, price, and integration with your existing field service management system were important.”

If you know at the outset that the tool will be used in a customer-facing manner, be sure to consider their experience from the very beginning. “Don’t pick the technology and then try and make the process fit,” cautions Marlene. “Think about the customer experience, what you want to get out of the service, your desired result, and how it best serves the customer, then match the technology to those requirements. Also, don’t think one tool will solve the issue, and you may need two or more tools to help facilitate resolution.”

The Criticality of UI

User interface is important, both for internal workers and customers. One of the positives for many of the solutions on the market is that they can be used along with your existing hardware and can be easily accessed by customers using a simple link, without the need to download anything. “All of our techs have an iPad and an iPhone and use the iPhone for remote service,” says Gyner. “Because blue collar workers may be technical repair specialists, but don’t necessarily like technology, so the ease of use is super important in the adoption.”

Keep in mind that user experience is impacted by more than just the UI of the tool you select. “Connectivity was a bit an issue for us and we found we couldn’t use the technology in every location,” explains Roel. “You need to ensure that bandwidth is sufficient for the video stream and we discovered something in our own network setting that caused us not to have such a good connection. So, be sure to do proper testing to remove that burden from your customers and ensure their experience is seamless.” The consensus seems to be that the technology is remarkably easy to deploy but can be a bit more challenging to gain full acceptance of to drive true adoption. “Remote Assistance was very easy for us to roll out,” says Karl. “In fact, actually, the hardest thing was the mindset change internally, with having colleagues start to use this and trying to think of the tool as a different way of working rather than seeing it as an additional tool within their toolbox to apply. We’re working to create some kind of governance structure about how it should be used, when should it be used and that has actually created a lot more thought about how we work now and in the future.”

“Adoption is a challenge because your more senior technicians see technology as a threat to their competency,” says Gyner. “You can get past that by discussing the ‘why’ behind your decision to use remote assistance tools. For instance, explain that in scaling the business you don’t want your workforce working 50- or 60-hour weeks; you want to help them do their jobs more efficiently to enable their success."

Remember that remote service isn’t just an adjustment for your workforce but can be for your customers as well. Some may welcome the opportunity to engage in a remote service interaction, but others may show some initial resistance. “It’s a mentality thing. All of a sudden, I go to my customer now saying I will first try that remote session. That’s an adjustment,” says Roel. “But many of our customers are asking for it. They realize it is helpful for them and easy to use.”

"The hardest thing was the mindset change internally, with having colleagues start to use this and trying to think of the tool as a different way of working rather than seeing it as an additional tool within their toolbox to apply."

Karl, COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions

Tackle Change Management to Create Companywide Adoption

One of the points that comes up in many of my conversations is that promoting adoption of remote service technology can be a bit tricky because, at least currently, for most organizations it isn’t a mandated tool or standard part of the workflow. If it is being presented as something that is valuable, but optional, it is easier for those who prefer the status quo to stick with just that and simply let the tool sit. Of course, this particular challenge is negated if you get to a point where your service strategy is remote-first and therefore the process is required, but many companies aren’t there yet – or don’t plan to be.

Regardless of whether you’re presenting remote service as an optional “tool in the toolbox” or a required step in your service strategy, adoption is important and is touted as the number one challenge companies face in achieving remote service success. Therefore, it is imperative to think about how you’ll manage change related to the introduction, incorporation, or expanded use of this technology – and the broader strategy it is intended to enable. You also need to consider whether you want to take a more hands-off approach to adoption and allow employees to come around at their own pace, or if you want to put more specific measures in place to promote adoption and/or require compliance.

Enlist Your Change Agents

At FortisBC, the focus has been on finding and leaning in on internal change agents. “In my opinion, the key to success is to manage the change and have passionate team members who will push the project forward even in the face of challenges,” says Scott. “From what I have seen in our employees’ adoption it has been largely resistant to the changing work model. Part of seeing our success, however, has been having employees who can buy in and drive the change from the ground level.” While not unique to remote assistance, the concept of finding these internal change agents and empowering them to advocate for the change at the peer level proves impactful.

"We turned to remote service because we wanted figure out how we could bring the competencies of our trainers, who knew those pieces of equipment well, out to the field more quickly to drive down those callback ratios."

Steve Lowes, Construction Supervisor at Fortis BC Digital Services

At Munters, the company isn’t mandating use of the technology but is working hard to amplify its value and impact and to remove any barriers or objections to use and adoption. “We make the technology available at the central level, but we don’t demand its use,” explains Roel. “What we do focus on is removing their objections to its use – it’s too expensive, or whatever else it may be. We also focus on creating super users from which we gather feedback and make adjustments to show are listening and will continue to invest in the tool’s success.”

Gyner points out that in instances where you’re leveraging the technology between frontline and back office workers, you need to ensure that you have those resources aligned in the proper way. “I explained our use cases – for example, ice machines, for which a very small subset of technicians were represented in our pilot,” he explains. “If that’s what the use case is focused on, then the experts on that equipment needed to be available when the technician needs them. You can’t have a technician initiating a session and have no one on the other end to be able to help. If that happens, that is the moment when you lose his heart or her heart. As soon as there is an unavailability or an access problem, they just lose heart in adoption. Especially if they were already skeptical.”

For some, like Panasonic Heating & Cooling Europe, the experience of the pandemic has created a greater openness to change which may not remove but perhaps will minimize resistance. “The experiences of the pandemic, the working from home, the fact that the service organization had to find different ways to support customers, it has all shown us that different things are possible,” says Karl. “It helped us to see that this technology isn’t something necessarily to be afraid of but something that is a real game changer and something that we’re really only scratching the surface of what’s possible.”

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

Further Reading:

Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
Read more about Remote Service on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote-service
Learn more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
Learn more about IFS Cloud @ www.ifs.com/ifs-cloud-overview/
Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

Determine Your Remote Service Strategy for a Post-Pandemic World

Oct 01, 2021 • Features • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Covid-19 • Remote Services • GLOBAL

In this second article of a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by IFS, we analyse what role remote service will play for companies in the post-pandemic world when it comes to customer-facing use.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

Whether remote assistance was in use prior to the pandemic, put in place to persist through the pandemic, or is still on your company’s roadmap, the question at hand is what role remote service will play for companies from this point forward when it comes to customer-facing use.

We know that customers are demanding speed and simplicity, which remote service can certainly provide – but also knowledge and relationships, which often can be more effectively accomplished face-to-face. So, is remote service the new frontline of defense? For many companies, a remote-first approach seems to make sense. For others, there’s reluctance to migrate away from what has always been an in-person aspect of the business. There’s no easy or even right answer here, but it is important to consider the role you want remote service to play in your service strategy going forward and be sure you put measures in place to bring that desired state to fruition.

“To determine the best strategy for remote service, you need to identify issues that can be resolved by a customer, without parts, instructions, and have minimal resolution steps to follow. Then understand why the customer is either choosing to not resolve on their own and address those concerns,” suggests Marlene. “Is documentation lacking or not clear? Is the customer resistant to self-serve? Also start with a small pilot to discover gaps and areas of improvement prior to roll out. Understand what is in it for the customer to participate in remote services and communicate those benefits clearly to them.”

It’s important to keep in mind that augmented reality or remote assistance isn’t the only tool related to being able to deliver remote service, and remote service strategy needs to be considered holistically. This means looking across service functions, and across technology use, to determine how everything in play fits into your customer journey in the best possible way. Despite the best of intentions, fragmented use of multiple tools and processes – no matter how useful on their own – will not positively impact your customer experience, or your productivity. “At RICOH, we are now beginning a formal program for our shift-left work, including combining all of the remote resolution activities across the organization. This formalization will combine the people, technology, and processes, as well as integrate our quality management and knowledge centered services programs, into delivering a holistic approach to remote service and remote resolution,” notes Marlene.

There's No One-Size-Fits-All for Remote Service

Striking the right balance between remote and onsite service might involve exploring company use function by function and scenario by scenario. For Munters, remote service is proving to be a valuable first line of defense but is not in any way intended to detract from or replace onsite interactions. “In warranty cases specifically, it’s a process to start with remote service before you go onsite. I see a shift towards more remote service, but not just because of this solution. I see it because we connect our devices and remote management as a whole service offering. Meaning, I connect to the device, and I maybe include the customer to say, “Hey, I’ve seen this. Can you try this?” That combination might come to a better diagnosis and maybe a faster resolution,” says Roel. “That said, we are still very much an onsite visit company. That mentality is still in there, and it is important to consider the role this plays beyond the actual issue resolution. Customer visits are imperative for our technicians to have the relationship with the customers as a trusted advisor. During visits, sometimes technicians pick up on things that a customer might not be seeing or saying remotely. This is all very important. You can’t lose sight of the customer. It’s not your own efficiency and effectiveness that should be your priority; it is still the customer that is your priority. Finding the right mix of the two is what will make it you can work in an efficient way.”

Of course, in prioritizing your customer needs you have to realize what their specific challenges, restrictions, and objectives are and ensure your strategy aligns. “I think there’s a little uniqueness in how wide what we work on is. We work on thousands of different models and manufacturers of equipment because the kitchen is so diverse,” explains Gyner. “As a support mechanism or competency leveler, I see remote service helping this industry. The customer engagement with remote assistance, though, is more complicated in our industry. There’s a level of safety that is a real consideration. And there’s also the reality of how our customers are resourced and how this constricts them from engaging in remote service. They often have a limited workforce. If you go into a Chipotle, for example, there may be three to six employees working at any given time. To pull one of those employees off and put that expectation on the customer to engage in remote service isn’t entirely realistic. Their focus is on delivering the menu to the customer and providing a great guest experience, not having an employee fix a fryer.”

Opportunities for expanding the strategy certainly exist outside of customer involvement, however, in ways that still have a direct impact on customer experience. “Knowledge management is an area where we see a lot of opportunity. We want to record the remote service sessions, upload them to our LMS and attach metadata so that it is searchable by the technician and information can easily be found relevant to a wide variety of problems to speed resolution and help transfer knowledge from one employee to another,” says Gyner.

"That said, we are still very much an onsite visit company. That mentality is still in there, and it is important to consider the role this plays beyond the actual issue resolution. Customer visits are imperative for our technicians to have the relationship with the customers as a trusted advisor."

Roel Rentmeesters, Director of Global Customer Service at Munters

As you consider what your remote service strategy should look like, you should be looking for opportunities to automate inefficiencies and non-value add work so that the time you do spend onsite is maximized in impact. “Much of field service is not necessarily an efficient use of people’s time. In a country like the UK or like Germany, if you’re in a central city region, sometimes the longest part of the job can be just the driving to sites. We’ve found that it can be one or two hours driving to site if a technician is driving into London, for example. And actually, they know what’s wrong, sometimes within 10 or 15 minutes of being on site. And then it’s the same journey back home or back to the office, so it’s quite inefficient,” says Karl. “What we’ve started to use IFS for is to actually have eyes on to the equipment before we arrive and what we’ve been able to find actually by doing that is that very often, it’s not a warranty problem, it’s perhaps an installation issue or there’s a wire crossed over, something like that. So, what we’ve said to our teams now is that we must support the customer of course but let’s use remote assistance first, so that we can get the unit operationally quicker without the need to dispatch an engineer. It allows a quicker response and, it’s enabling us to do that in a more effective and efficient way as well. This is valuable for an OEM, because it’s very difficult to recover those costs once you’ve dispatched an engineer. Very often, it’s warranty, so it’s seen as free of charge because it’s a manufacturer’s issue. But in reality, it’s difficult to recover those costs when you’re on site, you’ve dispatched an engineer and then you’re saying to the installer or the customer, “I’m sorry, this is not a warranty issue and it needs to be paid for.” So very often, we will do it as a gesture of goodwill. Remote assistance enables us to achieve the same goodwill result without any real cost for us other than maybe a few minutes using the remote assist to aid the customer.”

FortisBC, on the other hand, doesn’t see an evolution to remote-first or for prioritization of remote service, rather views the technology as another tool at the technician’s disposal. “At this time, remote service remains a valuable tool in our technician’s toolbox, but we do not have any immediate plans to move towards a remote only strategy,” says Scott. “Remote service has helped us ensure our customers can still receive a high level of satisfaction in uncertain times through this pandemic and will remain a valuable technology to assist in service delivery post-COVID.”

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

Further Reading:

Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
Read more about Remote Service on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote-service
Learn more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
Learn more about IFS Cloud @ www.ifs.com/ifs-cloud-overview/
Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

Beginning the Remote Service Journey

Sep 24, 2021 • Features • White Paper • Digital Transformation • IFS • Covid-19 • Remote Services • GLOBAL

In the first article of a series of excerpts from a recent white paper published by IFS, we look at companies that have accelerated adoption of remote services in their operation during the pandemic.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

In the midst of COVID, one of the most talked-about and widely leveraged digital toolsets was augmented and merged reality tools that enable remote interaction, collaboration, and service.

In a time of lockdowns and travel restrictions, software that blends two real-time video streams into an interactive environment proved incredibly useful as a business continuity measure for countless businesses, but particularly for field service organizations.

To be fair, many companies had begun using augmented reality and remote assistance technologies prior to the pandemic – but the conditions of COVID rapidly accelerated adoption by those who had not yet considered the role of remote service in their operations. I’ve written about the value proposition of augmented reality for years and am a huge proponent of the impact it can have on remote customer support and resolution, remote diagnosis to increase first-time fix, better utilization of valuable resources, as well as more rapid employee training and knowledge transfer.

What makes for the most interesting conversation today, however, and the purpose of this report is to explore the role remote service will play in a post-COVID world. The

use of the technology when on-site visits are impossible or unsafe is very simple to understand and put into action. What begs a harder question is how organizations who have turned to remote assistance tools for those business continuity purposes will evolve their use of the technology and incorporate it into their overarching service strategy as we move forward. Is it a key enabler of a remote-first service strategy? Or just another tool in the arsenal to improve customer outcomes? This is the question many companies are grappling with as service conditions normalize.

To weigh in on this topic, I invited some of the service leaders I’ve talked with over the last year about their companies’ uses of remote service. On the following pages, we discuss some of the key points related to determining the fit for remote service in your business and how to maximize its potential to create efficiency gains, customer satisfaction, and competitive differentiation.

Beginning the Remote Service Journey

Some of these companies were leveraging remote assistance tools pre-pandemic, others quickly turned to the technology to ensure service could persist throughout the pandemic.

For those who were already leveraging remote assistance, there’s a sense of relief that the investment had been made and that the technology could serve as a means for business continuity in incredibly uncertain times. For those who had the foresight when COVID struck to very quickly get the technology in place, it is clear that it wasn’t an investment made only as a means to survive the pandemic – but a technology that could have both short and long term benefits.

RICOH is one of the companies that had already been leveraging augmented reality before COVID hit but saw use spike 775% when agents and technicians’ normal business practices were impacted. “Originally, we started a Dispatch Avoidance program, now rebranded as Remote Resolution, to focus our service in three key areas (Field Service, Onsite Managed Services, and Commercial Print). All three areas targeted different processes and elements, but in the end, were all primarily focused on shifting support “left” and integrating technology such as augmented reality as part of the process, providing tech to tech support,” says Dr. Marlene R. Kolodziej, DBA, ITIL, Vice President, Centralized Services at RICOH Digital Services. “We did experience an increase in skill set for those resources in the field, since they were potentially supporting devices through augmented reality that they had never supported previously, thereby increasing their knowledge and skills, as well as a shift to increase calls resolved at first level instead of routing to the field.”

While RICOH was able to rely on use of the technology during the pandemic, and therefore saw the 775% spike in use, that rate has normalized now to 150% of pre- pandemic use. “We have also successfully deployed our truck driver MFP Program, using augmented reality with our truck driver delivery program to reduce the deployment of a new MFP from three visits to one. Previously a truck driver would deliver an MFP to the customer, then a field service technician would visit the customer to perform the installation, then the truck driver would return to pick up the old device. Now the truck driver works with our technicians and installs the printer using augmented reality, as well as deliver new/retrieve old MFP, all in the same visit,” says Marlene.

Smart Care Equipment Solutions also had augmented reality in place prior to COVID, but its experience with the technology during the pandemic was far different than RICOH just based on its industry. “We initially invested in the technology because we were looking at two pieces of equipment that had high complexity and a high callback ratio for us: ice machines and combi-ovens in this industry, because remarkably, both of them have electronic controls and both of them have a lot of water with them. There was enough of a gap between those two pieces and all the rest of the equipment and we turned to remote service because we wanted figure out how we could bring the competencies of our trainers, who knew those pieces of equipment well, out to the field more quickly to drive down those callback ratios,” says Gyner Ozgul, COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions. “We had just kicked this off before the pandemic hit and of course our industry was heavily impacted with restaurant closures. I’m pretty confident that it’s going to have a bigger impact as things normalize.”

Utility FortisBC is an example of a company that turned to remote assistance specifically to adjust to trying to maintain service amidst pandemic circumstances. “We were limited in entry into our customers’ premises,” explains Scott Lowes, Construction Supervisor at FortisBC. “Remote service software has allowed our field employees to continue working and providing the best possible customer experience throughout the pandemic, while increasing their safety and reducing potential exposures.” While FortisBC’s initial use of remote surface stemmed from the pandemic, the organization sees potential for use of the technology far beyond those needs.

"We turned to remote service because we wanted figure out how we could bring the competencies of our trainers, who knew those pieces of equipment well, out to the field more quickly to drive down those callback ratios."

Gyner Ozgul, COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions

Munters had remote service on its radar before COVID, but it was on the future roadmap of technology investments. When the pandemic struck, the company saw the opportunity to act fast and speed up this portion of its plans as a way to persist through COVID conditions but also set the stage for post-pandemic success. “We’d been researching remote service applications prior to COVID, primarily looking at how to enable third-line support for technicians. When COVID hit, we saw the opportunity to act fast on the use of the technology in a different way, which was directly with customers,” describes Roel Rentmeesters, Director of Global Customer Service at Munters.

The company was able to act adeptly on the potential for remote service, acting fast to select IFS Remote Assistance and deploying it to more than 200 users across 20-plus countries in just two weeks.

“As our initial use unfolded, we quickly realized we could also use the technology in other areas of the business impacted by COVID, For instance, we used remote assistance to open new manufacturing facilities that previously required travel that became restricted. We also recognized the opportunity to use this technology to train junior technicians – if they get stuck on a job, they can interface with a more experienced resource to aid in resolution,” says Roel. “While the initial use began during COVID, it has become embedded in our organization. Does it mean that every technician is using it? No, but customers accept it and welcome it because you give a faster response than you used to be able to do. It’s more efficient because you don’t need to go onsite before you do it. So, it has become part of our daily way of working and our solutions towards customers.”

"We have also successfully deployed our truck driver MFP Program, using augmented reality with our truck driver delivery program to reduce the deployment of a new MFP from three visits to one"

Marlene Kolodziej, Vice President, Centralized Services at RICOH Digital Services

Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions Europe also acted fast to put remote service in place for business continuity during COVID. “Remote assistance was not yet on our road map prior to COVID. The pandemic obviously advanced the need to have something in place pretty quickly. We started this journey with IFS around April of 2020, right at the UK lockdown time. And of course, primarily, we wanted to provide support to customers. We couldn’t dispatch our engineers in the way that we were used to doing, whether that was for direct line product support or some kind of technical support,” says Karl Lowe, Head of Panasonic European Service at Panasonic Heating & Cooling Solutions Europe. “What we’ve found since we’ve gone live with this technology is that our resolution time has been really quick. We’ve had cases where we’ve had a heating problem in a client’s home, and we’ve been able to use IFS to have the heating operational again within 16 minutes. Normally, that would mean maybe a day’s wait for an engineer to be available and then the engineer would drive to site and then spend some time on site. With remote service, within 16 minutes, the heating is back on and the client is happy. It’s helped us and it’s also helped the client. When it comes to heating, if it’s down and it’s not operating, the customer can’t wait too long before there’s a solution. So, for us, IFS Remote Assistance is key to be able to provide high first-time fix rates, high resolution rates but quickly, so that the downtime is kept to a minimum.”

The company has also been struck by the unique way in which remote service technology allows the sharing and transfer of knowledge in an easily accessible, global manner. “Panasonic has tended to work almost silo by silo or country by country, just because that’s how we’ve been organizationally set up. But what we’ve found with remote assistance is that location doesn’t really matter anymore. As such, we’ve been able to network and link our service organizations together,” explains Karl. “So rather than being a siloed service organization, say for example, the UK, has been able to call in an expert from Panasonic in Germany, obviously language allowing. But bringing them into the call to support them. That enables greater knowledge transfer, which certainly for me, is super important because you do get those technicians that have been in companies for an awful long time, they’ve got a wealth of experience. And it’s difficult sometimes to get that experience out into the younger members of the team, the least experienced guys that are struggling to pick up that knowledge. Where with IFS Remote Assistance, we’ve been able to bring them into calls to provide, again, a quicker solution for the customer but also the engineer learns something at the same time as well."

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

If you are yet to subscribe you can do so for free by hitting the button and registering for our complimentary subscription tier FSN Standard on a dedicated page that provides you instant access to this white paper PLUS you will also be able to access our monthly selection of premium resources as soo as you are registered.

Further Reading:

Read more about IFS on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/ifs
Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
Read more about Remote Service on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote-service
Learn more about IFS @ www.ifs.com
Learn more about IFS Cloud @ www.ifs.com/ifs-cloud-overview/
Follow IFS on Twitter @ twitter.com/ifs

Assessing the Right Software and Hardware for Remote Service Delivery

Jul 29, 2021 • Features • Aly Pinder • Digital Transformation • Hardware • Software • Digital Symposium • Remote Services

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News is joined on the Field Service News Digital Symposium by Aly Pinder Jr, Program Director of Service Innovation and Connected Products at IDC. Aly is a seasoned expert in the field service industry,...

Embracing The Future, While Remaining Anchored to Excellence

May 20, 2021 • Features • Salesforce • Software and Apps • Covid-19 • Remote Services • Michael Maoz

In many ways the world in which we operate has changed so radically that the work-flows of just two years ago may today seem antiquated and outdated for many of us in the field service sector. Yet at the same time when it comes to the fundamentals of service excellence, the essence remains firm - consistently anticipating, meeting and exceeding our customer's needs. It is a balance that all field service companies are attempting to strike at the moment as Michael Maoz, Senior Vice President, Innovation Strategy, Salesforce, outlines in this in-depth article...

The last year has forced all of us to rethink how we live our lives and run our businesses. In field service, employees and customers are focused on:

Health and wellness
Contactless interaction
Safety
Self service and remote support to reduce onsite visits
Job effectiveness to ensure completion the first time

The organizations that excel at field service delivery share two characteristics:

C-Level executive commitment to field service as an area important to the business
Collaboration of field operations in an atmosphere of trust and transparency

This demonstrates empathy and an emphasis on alignment with the customer. These organizations recognize the central role that field service has in shaping perceptions about the brand overall. They listen to their customers, field technicians, dispatchers, customer service teams, and ecosystem partners. Amidst ongoing change, they use what they learn to stay aligned with different, and evolving, needs.

The enterprise goal is to profitably deliver a coordinated customer experience that spans the entire customer journey. In this way, the brand promise is consistent and reinforced at each step that builds lasting bonds with the customer

The realities of customer expectations in modern field service:

Customers expect field service to be as rewarding and easy as the best service experiences they have anywhere. The businesses that demonstrated innovation courage during the global pandemic were rewarded with strong growth. This innovation courage came through particularly strongly in field service, where every technician visit held the potential of a risk to health. The best companies reacted immediately and reexamined their technology priorities. They relegated long running strategic projects in favor of short sprints like remote visual support

With remote support, customers can use their video camera to show a field engineer the issue. The customer doesn’t need anyone to come onsite, and gets faster resolution; the company saves the truck roll. Making this more powerful, an AI component can be used to suggest possible root causes. A second AI component inside of the content management solution can extract the repair documents and instructions most relevant to the particular issue

When needing to go onsite, to provide the best experience, companies have shortened booking windows and provide proactive notifications on arrival time to keep customers updated and give them time to get ready. This reduces missed appointments, increases effectiveness, and provides a better experience for both the customer and the employee.

"One of our customers completely re-platformed their aging and disconnected software for phone support, website, mobile app and technician mobile applications onto a single platform from Salesforce. The resulting speed, consistency, and contactless service allowed them to accelerate business during the pandemic."

There are great cost savings through the combination of technologies such as remote visual support to significantly reduce the number of field visits, together with content discovery and appointment management, which speeds up the time to repair and shortens the onsite visit.

Beyond the cost savings to the enterprise, the use of new technologies and processes in a reimagined world of field service demonstrates empathy and alignment with the customer and with the employee, particularly during the pandemic, but equally so beyond the pandemic.

Customers expect to engage with their service provider via digital channels with the same easy and intuitive experience that they already have in every aspect of their life. A savvy field service organization needs to connect with their customers on the customer’s preferred channel, which is increasingly SMS and social channels. Customers expect their service providers to know them, know why they're there, and have the tools necessary to complete the task on the first visit.

Customer-Centricity is Critical:

The best organizations think of what matters most to the customer. The best service visit is the one that never happens to begin with; proactive support and remote resolution are of top importance. When a visit needs to occur, seamlessly managing the appointment is top of mind. The ability to provide the entire care environment is often overlooked.

It is not enough to book the visit at the customer’s desired time. True field service excellence also requires the organization to select the right technician, with the right skills. Excellence requires the organization to communicate the time of arrival, a summary of the work done at the time of the visit, and a follow up message, through messaging or email, that invites the customer to agree that the work is complete. This final piece: Agreeing that the job is not done until the customer says that it is done, is vital.

There is tremendous upside potential to boost revenue through field service for some industries such as home and business services, HVAC, medical equipment, complex device or infrastructure maintenance.

Many of our customers in these industries are already advanced in providing revenue-generating value-added field services. Some of these are remote diagnostics, remote software updates, remote monitoring, training the customer on best practices, owning centres of excellence that guarantee uptime, and selling uptime rather than selling the product in the first place! Look to these advanced industries. Learn from the best! There is no reason to invent best practices when they already exist in adjacent industries. In all of the cases we have covered, technology has been baked into reimagined processes.

What are the performance indicators that are the most meaningful to improve the brand? To lower costs? To boost sales? To improve the effectiveness and well-being of employees? To improve the customer experience?

One of our customers completely re-platformed their ageing and disconnected software for phone support, website, mobile app and technician mobile applications onto a single platform from Salesforce. The resulting speed, consistency, and contactless service allowed them to accelerate business during the pandemic. Their knowledge-empowered technicians to easily build trust with the customer.

These technicians are more highly motivated because they feel the empathy that the business has for them. They also have all of the information in their hands, and they know that the customer is situationally aware. These technicians are in the best position to build brand loyalty and deliver on upsell/cross-sell targets that many service businesses have.

The companies that are the trailblazers in improving field service to be more customer and employee-centric are measuring the value of improvements in five areas:

Brand loyalty
Costs
Sales
Employee experience
Customer experience

Selecting the first targets for improvement requires measurement. Here are practical and measurable questions to ask: What are the performance indicators that are the most meaningful to improve the brand? To lower costs? To boost sales? To improve the effectiveness and well-being of employees? To improve the customer experience?

Each of these questions has to be converted into real numbers. To lower costs, you might decide that job duration overruns need to be reduced 25%. For customer experience you may decide that the customer needs to select their own time window and within a two hour window, and they must receive a text message upon confirmation and before arrival. These all can be converted into quantifiable numbers.

The savvy field service leader will seize the momentum and move forward boldly with a customer and employee centric approach to innovating field service processes. Define success criteria by selecting the targets you want to measure, determine several relatively small changes to impact those targets, iterate quickly, and measure each process through the eyes of the customer and the technician. There has never been a better time to make the move from follower to leader, and your customers are expecting nothing less.

Up Time as a Service: The New Normal Expectation for Field Service

Jan 28, 2021 • Features • Michael Blumberg • Digital Transformation • Covid-19 • Remote Services

In this article for Field Service News, Michael Blumberg, President of Blumberg Advisory Group, discusses the "new normal" expectation for field service organisations to offer a proactive, connected, and remote service...

Over the last 12 months, Field Service Organizations (FSOs) have had to rethink how they deliver service due to the restrictions of COVID-19. With the limited ability to provide onsite, face-to-face service 100% of the time, FSOs needed to implement new processes and procedures to ensure their employees' and customers' health and safety. One of the developments which emerged was the concept of a Hybrid-Service Delivery model. This model, fueled by remote monitoring and IoT technology, enables FSOs to resolve a significant amount of service issues remotely through enhanced triage and troubleshooting capabilities while improving technicians' ability to quickly resolve onsite service issues if an onsite dispatch is needed.

The ability to offer and deliver this proactive, connected, and remote service, which had once been the domain of best-practice companies, has become the "new normal" expectation for FSOs of all sizes. Covid-19 may have been the catalyst for rapid change, but the foundation for these offerings has been building for many years. At issue, several macro-environmental trends have been fueling investment in the building blocks necessary for delivering a proactive, connected service experience. These trends include the proliferation of IoT devices, Moore's Law, and Servitization.

The significance of COVID-19 was that it forced FSOs to adopt and apply the building blocks of Hybrid Service much sooner than expected as a matter of survival. Indeed, a recent study by Field Service News reveals that 67% of respondent companies surveyed have implemented these types of solutions because of COVID. However, many FSO industry participants found themselves quickly cobbling together these solutions to deal with the immediacy of the situation. This has led to gaps in capabilities within and between FSOs. The industry now faces the challenge of filling in these gaps by systemizing and scaling these capabilities and providing access to FSOs of all sizes.

FIELD SERVICE ORGANISATIONS ARE USING UtaaS SOLUTIONS TO PROVIDE CUSTOMERS WITH A PROACTIVE SERVICE

The ability to capture and monitor data from assets in the field is central to the Hybrid Service Delivery model. By collecting, monitoring, and analyzing this data, FSOs can anticipate future service events and reduce face-to-face onsite visits. It enables FSOs to take the appropriate preventive actions to resolve problems, often remotely before they occur, which extends the life of their customer's equipment. Lastly, they can generate new revenue sources through an Uptime as a Service (UtaaS) offering. Through a UtaaS offering, FSOs can meet their objectives of cost reduction, service excellence, and revenue growth. These objectives will remain central to FSO strategies in the new normal. To provide UtaaS, FSOs must have a few basic building blocks in place, including but not limited to

the capability to read data from assets in the field
the ability to read data in real-time
the ability to utilize the data as part of a triage process for identifying faults and guiding the best route for issue resolution
automation of the workflows and processes to activate service
accessibility to organizations of all sizes

Achieving this outcome presents a challenge for a significant segment of the Field Service Industry. Per research from Field Service New, three quarters (76%) of respondents can read data from assets in the field, but only two-thirds can view it in real-time. The net effect is that only 51% of respondents have this combined capability. While 72% can utilize the data as part of the triage process, slightly more than one-third (36%) possess all three abilities. In other words, there is a large gap in capabilities between FSOs who have fully enabled UtaaS solutions in place and those who don't. Only a small segment of the market has all the building blocks and can deliver a complete Hybrid Service experience.

Fortunately, macro trends such as Moore's Law combined with cloud computing and advancements in telemetry have made it possible for SMB and Mid-Sized companies to implement many of the foundational components for UtaaS solutions in recent years. The technology has become more affordable, easier, and efficient to deploy. It also helps that software vendors have made a strategic decision to target these market participants.

Field Aware, a developer of Field Service Management software, and ThingTech, a supplier of IoT -based Asset Management solution, are two such vendors who have teamed up to deliver UtaaS solutions accessible to organizations of all sizes. Their combined solution provides a perspective of what to look for in a best-in-breed, UtaaS solution.

The UtaaS solution from FieldAware and ThingTech enables companies to gather data from any asset type in the field. The data is processed in real-time and produces alerts, reports, and notifications based on user-configured rules and workflows. Based on these rules and workflows, automation within the FieldAware service hub triggers the appropriate action. For example, submit a work order, dispatch a technician, or schedule a preventative maintenance visit. Once the service event is completed, the technician can document his actions and update the system through his mobile device.

M.E.S.O., a company that provides Fleet Maintenance on capital intensive, mobile equipment found in multiple industries (i.e., Oil & Gas, Construction, Utilities, etc.), needed a solution that could provide a line of sight to the assets in the field, facilitate high levels of technician efficiency and productivity, and streamline back-office operations. M.E.S.O. was able to achieve these results by implementing the UtaaS solution described above.

By implementing this solution, M.E.S.O. can provide its customers with a predictive and proactive solution that increases uptime, reduces maintenance and repair expenditures, and extends the equipment lifecycle. This solution also saves M.E.S.O. an enormous amount of time. Backoffice productivity has improved by a factor of five without hiring additional staff. The decision to provide Uptime as a Service and invest in the has had positive results for M.E.S.O. The management team views it as a huge competitive advantage, and it plays a central role in the company's sales & marketing message.

Read Michael’s latest white paper, Uptime as a Service: Driving Service Excellence, Cost Reduction, and Growth in the New Normal, to obtain more insights and perspectives on this topic. Click Here

Leveraging the Value of Remote Support in a Post COVID World

Dec 11, 2020 • Features • Michael Blumberg • Digital Transformation • Covid-19 • Remote Services

In this exclusive article for Field Service News, Michael Blumberg, President of Blumberg Advisory Group, analyzes how remote support tools will continue to provide lots of benefits to organizations in the field service sector in the post-pandemic...

One of the ways that Field Service Organizations (FSOs) have been able to overcome the challenges of Covid-19 is through the provision of Remote Support, also known as Touchless Service. This represents a viable way for FSOs to renegotiate SLAs and to effectively resolve customers’ service issues where restrictions exist. Although remote support has been around for some time, it was not always the preferred solution. Covid-19 has made the provision of remote support a necessity.

Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been an increase in the use of remote support tools to deliver a Touchless Service experience. The increase can be measured in terms of the number of companies using these tools and applications, the frequency in which they are used, and the applications in which they are used. Originally perceived as an application for delivering 2^nd tier expert support, remote support tools are now used in a broad array of service situations from installations, to depot repair, to site surveys and application support.

Many industry participants wonder how remote support tools will be utilized Post COVID. Will FSOs abandon Touchless Service for a more traditional onsite experience? The answer is no. Touchless Service is now becoming table stakes for FSOs. This is because remote support tools offer a lot of benefits to a service organization and the customer. One of the biggest benefits is it eliminates friction, and friction is caused when there are a lot of touches, steps, or time involved in completing a task or process. Remote support tools enable FSOs to reduce or eliminate technician travel time which allows them to complete more calls per day.

REMOTE SUPPORT WILL CONTINUE TO PROVIDE VALUE TO ORGANISATIONS AND CUSTOMERS POST COVID

No doubt, FSOs will need to incorporate Touchless Service into their overall business strategy. The specifics of how and when remote support will be deployed will depend in part on the industry or vertical market. Key considerations include the complexity, criticality, and safety issues involved in supporting the install base. Touchless Service is appropriate for supporting equipment in an environment that’s not complex and where the customer is willing and capable of participating in the service resolution process. However, a more complex service environment, one that is mission-critical and presents safety concerns or requires specialized skills or certification, will likely mandate an onsite service visit. Nevertheless, remote support tools can still play a critical role in providing expert assistance in either case.

FSOs also need to decide when to deploy or emphasize the softer skills involved in maintaining high levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction. After all, the human connection is important and it’s just not the same with remote support, even if it involves video. As such, FSOs should evaluate the critical touchpoints during the customer journey where an in-person site visit is both appropriate and valuable. These can be planned or ad-hoc or by exception. For example, in reoccurring service issues or during a service event that occurs less than 90 days before service contract renewal. In these instances, the technician servs as a brand ambassador and trusted advisor to the customer.

FSOs may also want to consider how they monetize their investment in remote support technologies. The ability to monetize will depend on the economics of service delivery, customer willingness to pay, or the competitive practices within a specific service market. In other words, there are use cases where it could be more economical for an FSO to provide remote support as part of a basic service offering and not charge extra while there are other use cases that justify offering it as part of a premium-priced, value-added service. Assuming monetization is an objective, then there are several steps that an FSO needs to accomplish First, they need to gain clarity about the value-in-use of remote support. They need to be able to clearly articulate this value to their customers. The second step is to construct service offerings with different price points. Third, conduct market research to validate there’s a value to the customer and the customer is willing to pay for theses services. Fourth, determine the addressable market for the service. Lastly, create a go-to-market plan and roll-out the new offering to a select group of pilot customers.

Remote support will continue to provide a trifecta of value in our post-pandemic world. Value driver #1 is that it dramatically improves the customer experience. Customers receive faster service and are more engaged in the service resolution process. Value driver #2 is that it optimizes service delivery, so an FSO can do more with fewer people. Remote support frees technicians from travel which means one technician can handle more service request per day. Value driver #3 is increased technician productivity. Less time on the road means more time resolving customers' issues remotely, which leads to more calls completed per day.

It is important that FSOs view the rollout of remote support solutions from a strategic perspective not simply as another application within their technicians or tech support personnels’ tool kit. Remote support has implications for various aspects of the service business and stakeholders. Due diligence is required when it comes to integrating remote support into the overall service business strategy since the return on investment can be significant.

Sustainability Can be the Outcome of COVID (podcast highlight)

Nov 20, 2020 • Features • Digital Transformation • Salesforce • The Field Service Podcast • Covid-19 • Remote Services

In this final excerpt from a series featuring conversation between Salesforce's Gary Brandeleer and Field Service News' Kris Oldland the conversation takes a more philosphical turn as Brandeleer outlines why we should be taking the opportunity to...

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

A SERVITIZED WORLD IS A SUNSTAINABLE WORLD

In a recent white paper authored by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News, published in partnership with Salesforce we looked at one of the big questions as we build the new normal and we plot our route to recovery – ‘should we be redefining the very definition of what the value proposition is of field service in a world of remote service delivery, zero touch service delivery?’

Of course, in this post pandemic, new world, it's an embryonic conversation. It's early days as we find our way towards these new modes of working, but it is imperative that we, as service leaders, are having these kinds of conversations today as we all build towards recovery together.

The white paper, which is available on the button beneath this article, goes into a number of aspects of this conversation and it's designed to promote the leaders of our sector to start thinking about these kinds of conversations. To further build on this discussion Oldland invited Salesforce’s Gary Brandeleer onto the Field Service Podcast to push that discussion further and to hear Brandeleer’’s insight reflecting on the many conversations he has had working with companies from all different parts of the world across many all different industries, in terms of embracing digital transformation.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the discussion was how Brandeleer outlined that what we're doing now isn't just reaction to the pandemic but can also really be building a much more sustainable future as well.

"Can we actually sell much more services and our experience, and really think about the impact on the climate when we do this?"

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

“I think if you look at optimization right now there is a really deep advantage at moving towards these more advanced services-based relations on a recurring basis,” begins Brandeleer.

“What I mean by this is that if we want to achieve sustainability on this planet, consuming more products is not the way forward. We know that literally every single time you consume anything it's pollution one way or another. When you consume a service, well, there is not always pollution behind it. Going back to outcome-based services, sometimes actually, the outcome can be where the device is going to be more efficient, which is going to consume less energy, which at the end of the day, we make it a more sustainable device.

“The criteria we're going to have to think of is ‘can we use everything that is going right now in the world, especially in the field service world where many of the companies we have as customers, make the world a better place by servicing the device making the product better and keeping the world running.

“Can we use now all the skills we have around us to actually say, ‘Well, you know what COVID-19 that's one thing, but there is also climate change going on?’ I mean, literally three weeks ago in San Francisco, we had a day where it was night during the day, which was pretty disturbing, for sure. I was thinking like, well, these are sharp, guys. I mean, that's where we are going, we need to make sure that we are creating differentiation for services and that we literally stop selling too many products.

“Can we actually sell more services, leverage our knowledge and experience, and really think about the impact on the climate when we do this? Of course, we are not going to stop selling every product out there and for the install base that is 40 years old, actually keeping it running is more polluting than not having a new product. However, for some products, it may be a case of thinking ‘I can keep it for three years more, it's fine’. ‘I'm going to be fine with that, I'm going to maintain the asset to improve the efficiency of the device for two more years and that's going to save us maybe a little bit of steel, a little bit of co2 emission and we can optimise this.

“I think there is really a spot we can reach which this kind of optimal place with a balance between new products and services which by the way, we need to be offered in a trusted relationship style and get to a world where there are no surprises with the product, it's not breaking anymore - but on top of that, actually, it's helping the world to be more sustainable. I think that's really all Holy Grail I would love to reach at one point of time."

Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

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ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘remote-services’ CATEGORY

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

"The hardest thing was the mindset change internally, with having colleagues start to use this and trying to think of the tool as a different way of working rather than seeing it as an additional tool within their toolbox to apply."

"We turned to remote service because we wanted figure out how we could bring the competencies of our trainers, who knew those pieces of equipment well, out to the field more quickly to drive down those callback ratios."

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

"That said, we are still very much an onsite visit company. That mentality is still in there, and it is important to consider the role this plays beyond the actual issue resolution. Customer visits are imperative for our technicians to have the relationship with the customers as a trusted advisor."

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

This feature is just one short excerpt from an white paper recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full white paper now by hitting the button below.

"We turned to remote service because we wanted figure out how we could bring the competencies of our trainers, who knew those pieces of equipment well, out to the field more quickly to drive down those callback ratios."

"We have also successfully deployed our truck driver MFP Program, using augmented reality with our truck driver delivery program to reduce the deployment of a new MFP from three visits to one"

This feature is just one short excerpt from an e-book recently published by IFS.

www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can read the full e-book now by hitting the button below.

Want to know more?

Further Reading:

The realities of customer expectations in modern field service:

Customer-Centricity is Critical:

What are the performance indicators that are the most meaningful to improve the brand? To lower costs? To boost sales? To improve the effectiveness and well-being of employees? To improve the customer experience?

Further Reading:

FIELD SERVICE ORGANISATIONS ARE USING UtaaS SOLUTIONS TO PROVIDE CUSTOMERS WITH A PROACTIVE SERVICE

Further Reading:

REMOTE SUPPORT WILL CONTINUE TO PROVIDE VALUE TO ORGANISATIONS AND CUSTOMERS POST COVID

Further Reading:

Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts

A SERVITIZED WORLD IS A SUNSTAINABLE WORLD

"Can we actually sell much more services and our experience, and really think about the impact on the climate when we do this?"

- Gary Brandeleer, Salesforce

Want to know more? Field Service News Subscribers can access a White Paper on this topic on the link below.

If you have yet to subscribe click the button below to join 30K of your field service management professional peers and subscribe now to access this content and our entire premium content library now!

Further Reading:

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