ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘service-strategies’ CATEGORY

In this final feature of his blog series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team, Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, explains how to create a plan to maintain the focus and enthusiasm of your field team.

This is my last blog on supercharging revenue generation through your field service team.

Imagine opening up a reputable trade magazine and reading an article that states that you should stop maintaining your mechanical and electrical equipment.  You read the following:

Engineers have just discovered that maintenance of mechanical and electrical equipment is not needed to keep equipment running at peak performance.  You’ll get better performance by ignoring the equipment altogether.  The equipment will run better and you’ll save money on not having to pay those service bills!  This is great news for building owners and process managers.  They can now take a hands-off approach, while getting excellent performance from their equipment.

Sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?  Who could possibly believe that the equipment that we lovingly maintain for our customers could possibly perform better if left un-serviced?  In real life, without maintenance, filters will clog, belts will break and electrical connections will overheat.  The cost of keeping things running, let alone performing at their peak will go up exponentially.  Ultimately, everything will grind to a halt.

And yet, if we don’t take steps to help our techs maintain focus, is it not suggesting that we’ve similarly unrealistic expectations when it comes to their proactive performance?  What are we doing for our field team to “maintain” their focus of making recommendations that will help the customer to be better off?  We can do little or nothing and leave it to chance, or we can take the initiative to put into place a strategy to maintain focus and continually upgrade skills.  The choice is ours.

Maintaining focus requires that we put in place a strategy to constantly “maintain” the service our technicians are providing. This includes:

• Talking about the valuable service provided by the field service team at every opportunity
• Providing skills reinforcement on a regular basis
• Coaching the desired behaviour
• Keeping the team current on all of our company’s capabilities
• Evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of our tools and processes to ensure they continue to provide the support needed to help the techs do their job
• Measuring and reporting on results

A special word about measurement. The proactive efforts of our technicians will generate new revenues so it’s natural to want to measure any revenue growth associated with their efforts. This could include measures such as overall revenue growth, growth of project business compared to the maintenance base, etc. But these types of measures only look at part of the picture. If we’re performing a valuable service, we should also consider other measures of the success of our initiative. These include:

• Customer satisfaction scores
• Customer retention rates
• Emergency vs. planned work (the percentage of emergency work should decrease vs. our planned work which will have an impact on our labour planning)

And don’t forget to ask the customer how they feel about the service itself. For example, we could ask, “How happy are you with the recommendations our technicians are making to help you achieve your business goals?

This is the last blog in our series of supercharging revenue generation through the field service team. I hope you have found it of value. To return to the first blog in this series, click here. If I can be of any assistance, please just let me know. You can reach me at jim@jimbaston.com or call me at (416) 254-2383.

Reflection

Create a plan to maintain the focus and enthusiasm of your field team in each of the following areas:

Focus

• Skills reinforcement
• Coaching and development
• Maintaining currency
  • Skills
  • Systems and tools

Measurement

• Customer satisfaction and retention
• Performance measurement
• Operational impacts

NEW! NOW TAKE THE COURSE!

Supercharging Revenue Generation through the Field Service Team!

In this course created and hosted by Jim Baston, President BBA Consulting Group Inc you will be given the tools to help you develop your own framework to implement a project within your organisation to help generate greater revenue from your field service team by shifting the perception of revenue generation away from being a sales activity to being an extension of service excellence.

This course is available to purchase for just £299. 

Alternatively, this course is available as part of the Field Service News Masterclass program included within an annual subscription to FSN Elite our new membership community. Currently, while we are in a beta trial of FSN Elite we are offering a free upgrade for all FSN Premium subscribers.

FSN Premium subscription costs just £299 a year (giving you a year's access to this course and others within the Masterclass program as well as access to weekly zoom discussion calls and our in-person event) 

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his blog series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this new article, he discusses the importance of clearly communicate the service you are offering to your customers.

Last time, we spoke about the importance of the words that we use to describe the proactive efforts of our field team. This time we will consider how we explain what we are doing to our customers.

Can you imagine implementing a new service, making the necessary investments in tools, processes and training and then not telling anyone about it? If we’re not telling our customers about the proactive efforts of our field service teams and the service their efforts are providing, we’re effectively doing just that.

At a service conference that I spoke at recently, I asked the attendees to raise their hands if they either formally or informally encouraged their technicians to proactively recommend their services to their customers. Most of those service managers in the room raised their hands. I then asked them to keep their hands raised if they told their customers that they were engaging their technicians in this way. Not a single hand remained in the air. This result is entirely consistent with other discussions that I’ve had.

Asking ourselves whether we tell our customers about what our techs are doing is a good test for us. It gives us an insight into how we see the proactive efforts of our field service team. If we don’t tell our customers, why not? Is it possible that the reason is that, deep down, we don’t regard their efforts as a service activity but more of a sale? It’s hard to promote “selling” as a benefit to our customers.

In an earlier blog, we asked where the value was for the customer in a conversation that goes like this:

“Mr./Mrs. Customer, I want you to know that we’ve encouraged our technicians to look for opportunities for us to sell you more services so that we can get more money out of you.”

It’s hard to see any value in this statement, regardless of how noble our intentions or those of our field service team are.

In finding the right words to promote our techs’ efforts to our customers, the key is to keep in mind that we’re encouraging our technicians to use their expertise and proximity to look for opportunities to better serve our customers’ needs. Their recommendations therefore, are a valuable service.

Here is an example of how we could initiate the discussion with our customers. “Mr./Mrs. Customer, we’ve provided direction and training to our technicians to encourage them to look for opportunities to help you operate your facility/processes more effectively while they’re performing the service. Would you have any objection when they find something that will help you achieve your business goals, if they bring the opportunity to your attention?”

We can then position our techs’ efforts as a point of difference. We’re providing our customers our “heads” as well as our “hands”. When they recognize the value of these efforts and benefit from the resulting recommendations, they’ll be delighted that we’ve engaged our technicians in this way.

Next time we will consider the last item on our list – How we maintain our focus and efforts.

Reflection

Clearly articulate the conversation you will have to introduce the proactive efforts of your field team with your customers.

• What is this new service?
• Why is it of benefit to the customer?
• How does this differentiate you from all the other service providers?
• What can the customer expect?
• How will you measure your performance?

Using the same approach, how will you describe the service on your website or service brochure?

NEW! NOW TAKE THE COURSE!

Supercharging Revenue Generation through the Field Service Team!

In this course created and hosted by Jim Baston, President BBA Consulting Group Inc you will be given the tools to help you develop your own framework to implement a project within your organisation to help generate greater revenue from your field service team by shifting the perception of revenue generation away from being a sales activity to being an extension of service excellence.

This course is available to purchase for just £299. 

Alternatively, this course is available as part of the Field Service News Masterclass program included within an annual subscription to FSN Elite our new membership community. Currently, while we are in a beta trial of FSN Elite we are offering a free upgrade for all FSN Premium subscribers.

FSN Premium subscription costs just £299 a year (giving you a year's access to this course and others within the Masterclass program as well as access to weekly zoom discussion calls and our in-person event) 

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his blog series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this new article, he discusses the importance of evaluating the words we use within our organization to describe the technicians efforts to help the customer.

Talk the walk. Language is important. Our team will scrutinize what we say in an effort to understand what we mean. So, if we tell everyone that their proactive efforts is a valuable service but we talk about it as if it’s a sale, then our team will think that our service ideas were just for show. If the team feels that the proactive initiative is really a sales program in disguise, it’s unlikely that we’ll get enthusiastic participation from them. We might get lots of lip service, but no one is going to do the really uncomfortable bits like talking to the customer about an idea that they have. Leave that to the sales team.

Here is an example of what I mean by not “talking the walk”. We’ve introduced the initiative, everyone is excited and at a service meeting we decide to report on the efforts of someone on the team. We announce with some fanfare that: “As a result of this technician’s efforts, we have increased our sales to this customer by 10%. Way to go tech!” Hmmm, sounds like selling doesn’t it. Notice that the words view the benefits from the service company’s perspective. It’s focused on what the tech’s efforts have done for our company, not the service impact for the customer.

Please understand that I’m not suggesting that there’s anything inherently wrong in recognizing the tech’s efforts and saying those words, it’s just that by speaking about the tech’s accomplishment in this way we may do more to dampen enthusiasm around the initiative than to boost it.

Recognizing the tech’s efforts by “talking the walk”, starts with describing those efforts from how they impact the customer rather than our service company. For example, we could say: “As a result of this technician’s efforts, we’ve helped this customer lower their operating costs and reduce their risk of failure”. In other words, rather than talking about how the technician’s efforts helped us (sales), we’ve talked about how their efforts helped the customer (service).

It’s worth taking the time to evaluate the words we use on a regular basis to describe our techs’ proactive initiatives to help the customer. Do we use words like “sales”, “selling” and “cross selling” as part of our regular vocabulary? Do we talk about your techs’ efforts from how it impacts our business rather than our customers? This awareness will help us be more sensitive to what we say and help ensure that we talk about our techs’ efforts as the valuable service that it is.

Next time we will consider how we promote what we are doing to our customers.

Reflection

Over the course of the next week, listen carefully to and make a note of how people within your organization talk about the role of techs in business development.  How many times do they use the word “service”?  How many times do they use the word sales?”

Create a plan to raise awareness of how you and the rest of the management team speak about your techs’ proactive efforts and how you will change the talk to align more with the walk.

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

In this sixth article from his blog series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team, Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group,discusses how to get buy-in from supporting divisions.

The third item in our list of steps to ensure our success is getting buy-in from supporting divisions. There are a lot of interdependencies associated in delivering a service. For example, in the process of recommending a product or service, we may rely on a sales team that reports to another division to follow up on the initial inquiry and provide the customer with detailed product information, payback evaluations and the final proposal. And, in delivering a product or service, we may depend on another group within our organization to provide a specific part of it.

This can work well if everyone is aligned, but, unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sometimes the other departments don’t have the same interest or excitement about the opportunity or the same relationship with the customer. When this is the case, they may not treat the customer or the opportunity with the level of care and urgency that you would expect. If this happens, the customer may become disappointed and the field team frustrated.

By recognizing this, we can take proactive steps to address any misalignment and prevent these types of problems from occurring. There are several things that we can do. For example, we can speak with the management of those groups to get their commitment and the commitment of their team to support our efforts in the manner required, and we can set up a system to address any problems relating to any misalignment quickly and efficiently. We can also take steps to personally address any problems early that cannot seem to be corrected in the normal way.

Next time we will consider how what we say and do as managers, can impact our success.

Reflection

Thinking about your service of making recommendations, what are some of the relationships that you depend upon to perform this at the highest levels? As you work through this exercise, consider any interdependencies in areas such as:

• Completing the proposal
• Presenting the recommendations
• Delivering the service
• Specific areas within the organization such as:
  • Sales
  • Projects
  • H.R.
  • I.T.

Under each identified interdependency, identify the specific proactive steps you can take to ensure complete and seamless alignment.

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. After explaining the steps to define the service, in this fifth blog he looks at how to ensure the efficient engagement of the field service team.

In my previous blog, we considered the actions necessary to clearly define the service of our technicians making proactive recommendations. Now that we’ve defined the service we’re offering, it’s time to ensure that we have the support structures in place to ensure the efficient engagement of our field service team. There are a number of things to address here, so let’s consider three critical ones, processes, tools and training.

Processes

This is one that often gets overlooked, but we ignore it at our peril. Without a clear process, opportunities can fall through the cracks. When opportunities are not followed up in a timely fashion, this can cause embarrassment for the technician and send a clear signal that we’re not that serious about this new service of making recommendations. Some examples:

• How are opportunities captured?
• Who’s responsible for following up with the customer?
• What’s the tech’s involvement once the opportunity is identified?
• By whom and how is the technician kept informed of the status of an inquiry?
• Once a quote is issued, who is responsible for tracking outstanding quotations and inquiring into dormant ones?

Tools

What tools can be employed to help the field service team improve their efficiency? For example, what can be done to allow technicians to issue quotes in the field? How can opportunity status be relayed to the technicians so it’s readily available in a timely manner if needed? How can you alert technicians of outstanding opportunities so that they can follow up directly with the customer on their next maintenance visit?

Training

Most techs I know are comfortable engaging the customer in technical conversations, but fewer feel as comfortable talking about commercial issues. A tech that’s not comfortable discussing new opportunities with customers may avoid doing so. It’s important, therefore, that our technicians learn and gain comfort in conducting a conversation with the customer about products and services that will benefit them. A good training program and practice role plays can have a significant impact here.

Product and service training should also be considered. Often technicians have limited knowledge about their company’s capabilities beyond their own areas of expertise. If our techs don’t know about ALL of our products and services how will they identify an opportunity? And even if they have a general understanding of what we do, if they don’t have a conversational knowledge of a product or service they’ll likely avoid the conversation.

What hurdles stand in the way of fully engaging your field service technicians in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off?

How do your current processes and systems facilitate or detract from the implementation of your strategy to engage the techs in looking for opportunities to help your customers achieve their business goals?

Next time we will consider the interdependencies that we will rely on when making and delivering on our recommendations.

Reflection

Make a list of all the actions you can take to support your technicians’ efforts in making proactive recommendations that will help your customers to be better off. As you draft this list, think about each action’s impact on the following:

• How does this make the service easier for the technician?
• How does this minimize the amount of time required by the technician?
• How does this help improve the techs’ comfort level in completing this service?
• How does this help keep the technician informed?
• How does this prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks?
• How does this help ensure that every technician provides a comparable level of service?

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

Jim Baston, President of BBA Consulting Group, continues his series on “supercharging” revenue generation through the field service team. In this fourth blog he looks at identifying specifically what actions we need to take in order to define the service.

In my last blog, we identified the following list of possible steps we can take to ensure that our field service team is successful in generating new business opportunities:

1. Define the service
2. Support the initiative
3. Get buy-in from supporting divisions
4. Talk the walk
5. Tell our customers
6. Maintain focus

In this blog, we will look at the first step on our list – Define the service – and identify specifically what actions we need to take in order to do this.

Consider one of the maintenance services that you offer to your customers. Imagine for the moment that you left the details of what the service entails to each individual field service tech. What do you think would happen? One tech includes an oil change with every service. Another changes the oil every two services and a third does not change the oil at all. One tech makes certain adjustments and another doesn’t make any. In other words the service work completed (and therefore the service levels) varies depending on the tech that went to do the work.

Now think about how your customers will view your service offering. Will they be happy that the level of service provided would be determined by the person you send? Will they have confidence that they’re receiving “excellent” service? Will you keep them as a customer for long? Somehow, I doubt it.

So, if making proactive recommendations to customers is a service, then it’s important that we define what that service is, just as we would any other service that we provide. How are the proactive efforts of your field service team defined?

It’s best to start with defining specifically what we are doing. What is the service we are providing through the proactive efforts of the field service team? Why is this a service at all? What is the benefit for the customer?

Next consider what specifically we want the field team to do. Are there definite actions that we want them to take that will help them uncover opportunities to help? Are there certain questions that they should ask the customer? Are there any environmental factors that they should be on the lookout for?, etc.

What do we want them to do if they see an opportunity to help? Do we want them to bring it to the attention of the customer or simply record it on the work order summary for someone else to follow up? Will this expectation change depending on the size and scope of the opportunity? If they do bring it to the attention of the customer and the customer would like to explore the opportunity further, how is the opportunity captured so that nothing falls through the cracks?

And, remember to define the components of the service in terms of what the customer can expect. Can we be more specific about what the customer will receive? For example, our service might include an annual review of our performance with the customer. At the beginning of a contract, it could include a formal meeting where the key customer operational goals are identified and evaluate how we can contribute to these. Future meetings might involve reviewing the results of the proactive efforts of the field team over the past period, revisiting open recommendations and re-establishing operational goals for the coming year.

Reflection

Think about the product promotion efforts of your field service team. What can the customer expect when they sign up for this service? How will you describe it on your website?

Consider:

• Why is what you are asking your technicians to do a service (and not a sale)?
• Why are the field service team’s actions of benefit to your customers?
• What specific steps should all your field service technicians take to uncover and capture opportunities? For example:
  • Should they make a special effort to visit with the customer before the service begins? After the service is completed?
  • What questions should they ask?
  • Are there specific things that the technician should look for or listen for that might provide them clues for opportunities to help?
• When an opportunity is found, what specifically do you want the technician to do with the lead?
• How and where do you want the technician to record the opportunity?

Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive articles by Jim Baston @ www.fieldservicenews.com/jim-baston
• Connect with Jim Baston on LinkedIn @ linkedin.com/jimbaston
• Learn more about Jim Baston and BBA Consulting Group @ jimbaston.com
• Connect with Jim Baston directly by email @ jim@jimbaston.com

As we continue our serialisation of the 40-page eBook The Service Manager Handbook published by Advanced Field Services we now look at what obstacles you must overcome and what plans you must put in place if you are to achieve service excellence.

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

It’s a given that the customer is your number one priority. Typically, service is affected by a combination of factors that result in the customer not getting what they want, when they want it.

However, there are crucial failures we see in many companies that can hamper them from even beginning to build a coherent strategy for achieving service excellence. These can of course vary from company to company but some of the most regular culprits in blocking a customer service strategy from ever becoming more than a tick box exercise include:

• A lack of integrated, real-time communication between the field engineer and the customer service representative - your engineers are the gateway to your customers, they are the ones who can make or break even the largest of commercial relationships. As such,  give them both the tools and the training in order to not only just do their job but to do it brilliantly to ensure your customers remain loyal with you for the long term
• Poor visibility of current stock levels across multiple systems and manual entry – you can have the best engineers in the world, they can be experts in their field and fantastic customer service folks as well. However, if they can’t access the right part for the right job, right away, even they are going to struggle to keep your customers happy as they see their downtime escalating due to your company's inefficiencies.
• Time-consuming manual processes hindered by unnecessary paperwork make it difficult to respond with agility to customer requirements. Nobody likes red-tape, your customers hate it, your engineers loathe it – they just want to get on and fix things, and in today’s age of mobile computing, endless paper work is simply unnecessary and a waste of your engineers' valuable time.
  • At the same time your engineers should also have all of the tools they need at their fingertips both to do their jobs as effectively as possible but also to keep your customers informed throughout any repair.
  • Field service engineers without the ability to quickly see and advise customers in advance that a part may be delayed, or without the ability to order a part quickly and easily themselves whilst on site are likely to face an uphill struggle in today's business environment.

However, whilst problems like the above can grow to become significant issues for some organisations, the good news is that the technology is in place to help support your business, allowing you to avoid such issues and firmly become part of your clients' on-going business operations.

Here are six steps we believe are crucial to field service management in today's market…

Keep the lines of communication open

Whether you operate in the B2B or consumer/domestic markets, you’ll need to consistently meet basic criteria, such as responding within a set timeframe or appointment window.

A field service solution helps you to deploy your engineers with maximum efficiency and equip them to do a proficient job.

Technology gives you the option to send the engineer’s estimated time of arrival – and alerts on any unexpected hold-ups – by SMS or email to the customer. They are more likely to tolerate a delay if they know the reasons why, along with the new ETA.

Capture live data onsite

The information your engineers enter remotely through their mobile devices should automatically feedback to your control centre and back-office reporting and billing systems.

Customers can be sent up-to-date compliance certification within minutes of job completion. Sending an invoice promptly while the job is still fresh in the customer’s mind will also avoid queries and delays further down the line. While not strictly speaking a customer service issue, having fast efficient billing processes reinforces your image as a professional service provider and helps speed up payments and improve cash flow.

Collect and analyse customer feedback

Without bombarding customers with survey requests, you can collect their feedback using standard forms on the engineer’s mobile device or schedule a survey to be emailed to them after the job is complete.

You’re showing you value their views and it’s an opportunity to capture valuable insight into your customers’ thinking and identify possible opportunities to upsell the contract and services, where appropriate.

Create a unified, shared view of the customer

A customer relationship management (CRM) solution, integrated with your service management software, will capture and share information across your whole business, giving managers access to critical information at all times while managing your sales pipeline and opportunities.

You’ll gather intelligence on your customers during the course of doing business with them. This will enable you to offer better service while providing your teams with organisational knowledge, information and the expertise to make complementary sales where appropriate.

“Due to circumstances beyond our control…”

Timely, consistent service delivery is essential. If anything impedes this, capturing data on the spot with time-stamped photos will protect you from becoming open to penalties and demands for refunds.

Improve service with self-service through a web-based customer portal

Many service organisations now approach many of their major clients as strategic partners, working in collaboration with them to build a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership.

A customer portal gives authorised representatives in the customer’s organisation the ability to create jobs, view their service history, access contract agreements and run interactive reports on their KPIs.

This type of self-service access will ensure your clients are kept firmly in the loop, cementing your status as a preferred service partner without adding to the workload of your service administrators. In fact, you free your call-handling and back-office staff to focus on the queries, issues and exceptions that genuinely need their skills and experience.

Download the full 40 page ebook for free by simply clicking here and completing the brief registration form

Be social and share this feature