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Samir Gulati, Chief Marketing Officer with ServicePower joins the exclusive ranks of Field Service News associate columnists and in his first article explains why in a world of increasing customer demands field service delivery needs to be the platform from which you wow your customers...

Customers expect more from today’s service providers. In a service environment where consumers are connected to the internet and each other 24 hours a day, they expect the same connectivity and instant response from companies they do business with. Consider the popular pizza tracker technology.

We’ve seen the technology cheekily called a baby monitor for pizza. Who among us hasn’t watched the tracker move in the right direction, just to stall right before the pizza is due to be delivered, leaving us disappointed, anxious and hungry?

Though pizza has little in common with complex field service operations, the tracker concept is very applicable.

Though pizza has little in common with complex field service operations, the tracker concept is very applicable.Consumers today expect to have full access to your services. Field service technology with supports the entire service lifecycle, from entitlement to completion is so important in today’s environment given those expectations. Consumers expect to be able to schedule a service or maintenance event whenever, and on whatever device is convenient to them, just like ordering a pizza. Enabling your customers to digitally engage with you operational teams, faster and in a smarter way, is a critical first step to building brand loyalty and increasing future revenues.

Providing visibility, just like that pizza tracker, is also now expected by consumers. Digitally booking a service event, to your employed or contracted workforce, is the first step in a faster, smarter service experience for your consumers.

Providing visibility to the appointment, the tech’s schedule and his or her location on the day or service not only improves customer satisfaction by delivering complete transparency related to the service event, it reduces costs for your organization by eliminating phone calls that historically would have occurred related to the appointment. The latest field service management technology can also enable customers to do more. It provides the ability to review new services and product offers based on asset ownership and service history, while also enabling techs and consumers to communicate directly.

Better than the traditional call ahead while en route, or a dial on a screen showing location only, consumers can upload pictures and other information related to their service event such that techs are better prepared to arrive and complete the service event while onsite.

Pizza tracker technology delivers updates based on preprogrammed timing and a series of predefined events, with very little engagement from the actual delivery drivers. That’s not good enough in field service. Field service is complex. Better visibility for the consumer is great. It’s the first step in providing faster, smarter service. However, it’s only the last mile of great service delivery.

Smart field service technology better supports complex field service delivery models.The miles in between matter just as much.  Smart field service technology better supports complex field service delivery models. It enables technicians to be scheduled with the skills and required parts to complete a consumer’s service order on time. It provides the tech with product information, repair information, and access to expert resources, even AI-based digital assistants which can define how to fix a certain product using available information, versus having the tech swipe through pages of documentation on a device to find a solution.

Field service technology delivers a great customer experience because it enables your field techs to connect to your customers throughout the entire service lifecycle, delivering service in a smarter way.

For the operational teams, the pizza tracker seems to do little else than automate the order, eliminating phones calls to the store. In field service, complex operations require robust, often AI-based technology, to deliver great service beginning with entitlement. Field service technology is the foundation on which service delivery technology is built, enabling each to manage complex processes and engage employed or contracted technicians and consumers in a smarter way, to deliver faster, more complete service using a single field service solution.

AI schedule optimization drives productivity, no doubt. Unlike the pizza tracker which can take a single input, an order, and deliver a single output, the delivery status, AI can be used in field service to harness a multitude of inputs related to consumer requirements, tech skills, and other hard and soft constraints, while also incorporating the latest in mapping and location technologies, to deliver a schedule which reduces operational costs, but which also improves service delivery, ensuring techs arrive on time, with the parts and knowledge needed to complete the service event.

Integrated contractor management solutions can ensure a similarly seamless service experience using contracted labour. Mobile technology can support full onsite processes, ensuring smarter, faster on-site service delivery.

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Key Retirement Group (KR Group) have implemented FLS VISITOUR optimised appointment booking and scheduling software from Fast Lean Smart for their field-based advisors.

Results achieved have included attending appointments sooner, reducing mileage and travel, and increased capacity to attend more appointments per Advisor.

Darren Halliwell, Chief Technology Officer at KR Group explains “Our process for arranging customer visits was laborious and often made poor utilisation of Advisors time. Our key focus is to attend appointments in a timely manner that supports our customer needs via a two-stage face-to-face process; a first meeting and then follow-ups. For this to be achieved with the same Advisor often caused ineffective use of resources and delays to other potential customer visits.”

Selection of FLS and No-Commitment Trial

Darren continues “We chose to work with FLS as we had confidence in their offering and approach to proving the benefits with relatively low investment of both time and resource. They were initially recommended by a Microsoft Dynamics partner due to their expertise working with CRM and we were impressed with the feedback from reference customers they provided.”

The results were compelling and KR quickly decided to take advantage of the FLS offer of a SaaS “try before you buy” live system trial.Working together, KR Group and FLS completed an initial scheduling test using FLS VISITOUR and historical data to compare with their current process. The results were compelling and KR quickly decided to take advantage of the FLS offer of a SaaS “try before you buy” live system trial.

The agile implementation approach meant the trial could be live within 2 weeks. The trial immediately showed positive results and was extended from the North-West region to include London which had different travel challenges.

“Though the trial was not a fully integrated system, we quickly began to realise the advantages that FLS VISITOUR offered for cost and efficiency savings and, most importantly, in terms of customer convenience and satisfaction. The benefits achieved, including quicker response times, higher appointment availability and reduced travel costs, led to the whole business wanting to positively embrace FLS VISITOUR for our face-to-face Equity Release Advisors and with real potential for other areas of the business”.

FLS VISITOUR and Microsoft Dynamics Integration

Through the successful trial, KR Group had the reassurance of knowing their ROI and end results were as expected and the decision was made to deploy as soon as possible.

FLS worked with KR Group’s Microsoft Dynamics partner and within a few weeks the integration between FLS VISITOUR and Microsoft Dynamics was live and the solution rapidly rolled out to all users. The Call Centre was consequently able to operate purely with Dynamics to manage appointments while allowing team managers to use FLS VISITOUR’s advanced scheduling and route optimisation features.

Field-based follow-up appointment booking with FLS MOBILE

As a second phase of the rollout, FLS VISITOUR’s mobile app was put in place for field-based advisors meaning they could offer the follow-on appointment at the conclusion of the first, confident in the knowledge that their time would still be used efficiently with the least possible travel and cost, while meeting the needs of the customer they are with at the time.

The Results!

Darren concludes “The integration and implementation project was an excellent success and has delivered our objectives.

We have a more efficient team delivering lower cost appointments with increased flexibility for customer convenience and satisfactionWe have a more efficient team delivering lower cost appointments with increased flexibility for customer convenience and satisfaction. The VISITOUR technology does exactly what was proposed to us and we have built an excellent working relationship with FLS. I would not hesitate to choose the same solution if starting again.”

Chris Welsh, UK Sales Director for FLS comments “It has been very pleasing to work with Key Retirement and hear such positive feedback from management, call centre and field users alike. Optimised appointment booking and real-time scheduling is not just for engineers and this is a great case in point.”

 

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Asolvi have continued their expansion within the European field service management sector with two new key hires who have recently joined them from Xerox Norway.

The two new hires are:

Lars Løkkevik

Løkkevik has 25 years of experience from sales, management and business development.

Lars worked 11 years in Xerox in various positions in Business Development, Channel and Services. In his new role with Asolvi he will be responsible for further developing their partners more towards a consultative driven sales process where solutions with a service packing provide clearer differentiation and build new revenue streams.

He will work at Nordic level and with Asolvi's prospects, existing customers, manufacturers and dealers.

John Alfred Hustvedt

Hustvedt has a long experience from B2B sales of IT and IT. Has led several projects to win the majority of Xerox's major Norwegian contracts.

John Alfred has worked with the print service concept Managed Print Services (MPS). He is used as a lecturer on the subject, and is a member of the International Print Service Association (MPSA), a member of the Standards & Best Practices Committee, which deals with industry design and industry standards for the print service.

In his new role with Asolvi, he will work at European level and towards manufacturers, dealers, prospects and end customers.

These two key hires would appear to be further evidence of the ambition and rapid expansion of Asolvi, who recently rebranded from Evatic having acquired well respected UK based field service management solution providers Tesseract as well as Swedish firm WinServ who offer specialist field service management solutions tailored for the print copy market.

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Industrial Cleaning Equipment Ltd (ICE) is the UK’s largest independent provider of industrial cleaning machines and associated services. Five years ago, it began using Tesseract, Asolvi's longest-standing service management product. It was a move that caused ICE to undergo a complete operational transformation.

ICE specialises in the supply and maintenance of efficient, forward-thinking cleaning solutions and protecting clients from unplanned equipment downtime. It partners with leading manufacturers of industrial vacuum cleaners, scrubber driers, road sweepers, steam and pressure washers and combination machines to bring the latest in cleaning technology to the retail, leisure, transport and commercial sectors. An enduring commitment to service and innovation has won the company multiple awards.

A big contributor to its success is the elite company-wide service management system that underpins it: Tesseract. A big contributor to its success is the elite company-wide service management system that underpins it: Tesseract. “It’s the one database we use for everything,” says Mike Bresnihan, chief operating officer at ICE. “Our admin staff, field-based engineers, product specialists and finance teams all use Tesseract. And our customers can access it via the web or our new mobile app.”

ICE has in place the latest iteration of the Tesseract product: Service Centre 5.1. Customers notify ICE of any problems with their cleaning equipment by logging in to Tesseract’s Remote Customer Access portal. Remote Engineer Access lets field engineers generate live reports, order parts, close down maintenance jobs and raise same-day invoices from their tablets. Call Control is used to schedule drivers and engineers to collect, deliver and maintain equipment, and Parts Centre automatically manages stock levels.

A huge step up from the old system

Pre-Tesseract, ICE used a custom-built application to manage its planned and reactive maintenance work. However, the software’s functionality was extremely limited. The company couldn’t use it for invoicing, ordering parts or maintaining stock levels. Customers could log a call and write notes, but they couldn’t see how their call was being dealt with, so it did little to manage their expectations. ICE’s drivers and engineers had no access to the software; they had to fill in paper delivery notes and worksheets and post them to the office. This meant, after each job was complete, ICE had to wait a few days to update their records.

We had piles of paperwork to get through, an abundance of spreadsheets to fill in, and we often had to enter the same data multiple times“It was very chaotic,” says Liz Osborne, ICE’s HR manager and former service manager. “We had piles of paperwork to get through, an abundance of spreadsheets to fill in, and we often had to enter the same data multiple times in order to keep different departments within the company up to date.”

So ICE selected Tesseract to operationally transform the company. Today, thanks to Tesseract, ICE is virtually paperless. Its drivers and engineers use tablets, allowing Head Office to receive job updates and information in real time. Deployment is faster, manual stock-checking is a thing of the past, and accuracy of information along the service chain is vastly improved. Mike Bresnihan explains, “We’re all on one system, which means data can flow freely between each department and we have full visibility of everything that’s going on. By automating and optimising our service operation, Tesseract has given us the capacity to focus on our customers, rather than managing a system that is supposed to be managing us.”

No downtime

Tesseract is a cloud-based product that is maintained and continually honed and developed in-house by Asolvi. The biggest benefit of this for ICE is the in-built disaster recovery; if any part of the system goes down, Tesseract will seamlessly and automatically switch to another cloud environment.

Unlike the server-based system we had before, which could go down at any moment, there’s no chance of downtime with Tesseract,“Unlike the server-based system we had before, which could go down at any moment, there’s no chance of downtime with Tesseract,” says Mike. “We’re able to depend 100% on the resilience of Tesseract’s cloud and not worry about our office, our field engineers or our customers losing access to the system.”

Easier to grow

In the last two years, ICE has experienced a growth spurt. It’s acquired three previously competing companies, each of which had its own service management system. But these systems were old, driven by paper and disparate bits of software, with too many places their teams had to go to get information. As a result, all of their data was extracted and inputted into the Tesseract system, and Tesseract was rolled out across all of them.

Tesseract actually facilitated the acquisition process. Mike explains, “Tesseract gave us visibility of the new organisations really quickly, and expedited our integration with them. Inputting these companies’ data into the Tesseract system was easy, as was adding new users. Now every company in our group uses it as we do. In effect, Tesseract has made growing ICE into a leading player in the industry possible, and a far less daunting prospect than it could’ve been.”

The future: fewer silos, more integration

ICE is currently looking at breaking down remaining silos within its organisation and fully integrating Tesseract with its existing systems. There is already an interface between Tesseract and ICE’s financial software, removing the need for double entry accounting. Now the plan is to integrate Tesseract with its customers’ workflow management systems.

ICE is currently looking at breaking down remaining silos within its organisation and fully integrating Tesseract with its existing systemsAt the moment ICE updates a number of its customers’ systems with progress on repairs and service jobs. This is something it also does in Tesseract, so an interface between the two databases will save ICE from having to do it twice.

Also on the agenda is an interface with ICE’s asset tracking system, which allows them to monitor where, when and how equipment and company vehicles are being used.

“Our relationship with Asolvi grows stronger all the time,” says Mike. “At the moment we are looking at further automation and integration and we are working closely with Asolvi to achieve this. We know that with the system’s inherent flexibility and adaptability, virtually anything’s possible — and we look forward to what the future has in store.”

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO of Espresso Service about the improvements to their service delivery that they have seen come to the fore since the implementation of a dedicated field service management solution, in this instance Tesseract Service Centre, an Asolvi product.

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO of Espresso Service about how the implementation of dedicated FSM system has improved their service engineers workflows.

In this instalment of the interview, we look at the importance Espresso Service have placed on their engineers and the impact that implementing a dedicated Field Service Management solution, in this instance Tesseract Service Centre, an Asolvi product, has had on improving their workflows.

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FLS, Fast Lean Smart, a leader in field force appointment, schedule and route optimisation solutions, has recently announced the results of its annual customer satisfaction survey in the UK.

Jeremy Squire, FLS UK Managing Director comments “Outstanding customer satisfaction is what our customers strive to achieve from their field service operations and I believe we should be setting the right example”.

FLS customers include leaders in equipment maintenance, utilities/telecoms, healthcare, financial services/insurance claims, facilities management/property maintenance, engineering compliance inspections, retail home deliveries and more. In December 2017, FLS UK surveyed every live customer it supports directly with two key questions.

The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.The first question was very direct “How do you rate the service you receive from FLS support? (1 - 10)”. The result was an average score of 9.3.

The second was a Net Promotor Score (NPS) styled question “How likely is it that you would recommend FLS VISITOUR to a friend who has a similar scheduling requirement? (0 - 10)”

Using the standard formula for detractors (range 0-6), passives (7-8), promoters (9-10), there was no need for a complex calculation because every customer was a promoter for FLS VISITOUR scheduling solution, the NPS score was the maximum 100!

Best in class

Jeremy Squire reflects “I feel very proud of my team for the satisfaction they are delivering and the fact every customer would recommend us is possibly unique in this market. Our strategy will continue to focus on innovation and our customer on-going success using FLS scheduling software, and to build our business through recommendations.”

Jeremy concludes “This proves real-time scheduling and route optimisation solutions really can work well for a wide range of field service businesses, you’ve just got to choose the right technology and partner to work with”.

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One of the largest suppliers of equipment and consumables for the dental industry is all pearly white smiles after deciding to swap its predominantly manual service operation for an automated one: Tesseract.

Wrights Dental supplies both NHS and private dentists with everything from syringe tips and toothbrushes to dentists’ chairs, digital imaging scanners and suction systems. Much of its business revolves around the sale and installation of equipment, but in the last five years, a shift has occurred. Mark Pitts, Technical Services Manager for Wrights, explains,

“Now, the ongoing service and maintenance side of things is just as important as sales. This is because the industry has changed. Dentists are open longer hours, which means more service and support is required. As a result, we’ve had to expand our service teams and increase their skill sets, flexibility and working hours.”

Till now, Wrights has got by with SAP for billing and invoicing, and Microsoft Outlook for diary management. “This was fine for a small service team,” says Mark. “But as soon as we began growing our teams to meet the increased demand, we realised we needed something more substantial.”

One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and whereThe biggest problem with Wrights’ existing service management system has been its manual nature. A particular issue for Wrights was the movement of spare parts. As demand and the level of customer expectation grew, Wrights’ commitment to delivering the first-time fix became ever more important. There were instances when engineers would turn up on site without the parts they needed to complete the job, largely because tracking stock manually is arduous and prone to error.

This led Wrights to Tesseract, a comprehensive service management system from leading solutions provider Asolvi. Mark Pitts says, “We came across Tesseract on LinkedIn and it was obvious pretty quick that there were a lot of things it could do straight away. One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and where. Everything is live on the system, including the full-service history of the site. It’ll help make sure all our engineers have the parts and information they need when they arrive, improving the likelihood of a first-time fix.”

Another big benefit for Wrights is Tesseract’s Remote Customer Access (RCA) tool. Instead of phoning a helpdesk, Wrights’ customers can report issues directly through the system.

“This saves our customers time,” says Mark. “It also stops the information from getting diluted before it gets to us. A customer can report the issue directly rather than passing it to a receptionist to make a phone call, which can lead to misinterpretation. Also, the improved accuracy of the information helps us work out which jobs are emergencies and which aren’t.”

In general, Wrights expects to offer a higher standard of customer service via the Tesseract system. The automation and optimisation of scheduling and stock management will ensure four things: right engineer, right area, right tools, right time. In addition, Tesseract will reduce the number of customer queries Wrights receives because RCA lets customers see live information about billing, outstanding jobs and the terms of their contracts.

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks exclusively to Dan Sewell, COO of Espresso Service about the improvements to their service delivery that they have seen come to the fore since the implementation of Tesseract Service Centre, an Asolvi product.

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