Annual survey requires input from industry.



Research analyst firm, Strategies For Growth℠, has launched its 2020 Field Service Management (FSM) Tracking Survey and is looking for input from the service sector.

Last year, SFG℠ conducted the sixth iteration of its annual Field Service Management Tracking Survey, as well as its first Servitization and Remote Expertise Benchmark Surveys. The results of these three surveys have helped the research and consulting firm to expand the scope – but shorten the length – of its 2020 Field Service Management Benchmark Tracking Survey.

 

Targeted Survey

This year’s survey is a targeted, multiple choice questionnaire that should still takeless than 15 minutes to complete, the firm says with all responses will remaining strictly confidential, and will only be tabulated and reported in aggregate. However, if respondents provide their name, title, company and e-mail address, Strategies For Growth℠  will be happy to forward them a copy of the topline survey results in a complementary executive-level Analysts Take report to be published a couple of weeks following the completion of the data collection and analysis.

The results of the survey will be published as an executive report in Field Service News later on in the year.

To take part in the survey click here. 

 

Bill Pollock extrapolates some of the key findings from a survey focused on remote expertise. 

Participants required for Inaugural benchmark survey. 

Bill Pollock presents an analyst's take on IFS' recent acquisition of Astea International.

Sector insight required for Strategies For Growth℠'s 2019 Servitization Journey Benchmark Survey.   

Momentum is the missing ingredient that so many field service organisations overlook when planning for success writes Bill Pollock...

Field Service Management (FSM), just like any other major business initiative, requires a great deal of thought, time, planning, resources, energy, and money. But it also requires momentum to ensure that it maintains its relevance as the business evolves in an ever-changing marketplace.

That is why so many well-intentioned FSM initiatives tend to “fizzle out” over time, either in terms of commitment, use, or simply because they haven’t grown in functionality at the same pace as the business itself has grown. Whatever the reason, many organizations ultimately find themselves in a position where their FSM program just flat out isn’t as effective as it once was.

Many years ago, Fram oil filters utilized an advertising campaign that stated “You can either pay me now, or you can pay me later!” This referred to the fact that you could either check (and, if required, replace) your car’s oil filter on a routine basis (i.e., before a problem manifests itself), or wait until after a problem occurs, thereby costing you more money for a “fix” after-the-fact than it would have cost had you routinely changed your oil filter as part of a self-administered preventive maintenance program.

The same concept also applies to FSM: fixing (or correcting) your FSM program along the way will undoubtedly save your organisation much more time and money compared to the risk of having it stray off course over time. Experience has shown that once an FSM program strays off course – whether by alot, or a little – it is extremely difficult to easily get it back on track in terms of refocusing direction, reallocating resources, rechanneling team efforts, realigning processes, and in many cases, admitting that the program had gone off track in the first place!

For these reasons, it is critical to monitor the progress of any FSM initiative on an ongoing basis in order to avoid falling into a situation where you will need to make what NASA typically refers to as “a midcourse correction”. Taking the NASA example one step further, when a rocket is aimed at the Moon, sometimes a “mid-course correction” requires nothing more than a 10- or 20-second burst of steam released from the side of the spacecraft to ensure that its recalculated trajectory will send it to the desired landing spot on the surface.

In cases where the problem is identified well enough in advance, it may only take this 10- to 20-second effort to ensure that the rocket does not miss its target by thousands of miles. In relative NASA terms, this is neither a complicated nor expensive procedure to execute, and the return is enormous (i.e., avoiding a potential total failure, and ensuring that the original target will be hit).

However, in cases where a problem is not identified until much later, or other earlier attempts have been ineffectively executed along the way, the rocket may have to be entirely reprogrammed – literally, on the fly – possibly entailing a new trajectory that will require orbiting around the back side of the Moon several times, and selecting a new landing site – or worse – sending it out into space as a failed effort. While the former “correction” would save the entire effort at a relatively low cost, the latter would – at best – require a huge amount of resources (i.e., people, time, and money) for just the chance of being able to avoid failure.

We believe that the same alternatives also apply to FSM initiatives, and that planning in advance for the most likely “mid-course corrections” should also be a critical component of any FSM improvement effort. Hopefully, any required “mid-course corrections” will be “minor” (such as taking added steps to improve communications between internal customer support groups, improving management and process control, upgrading existing software to the latest releases, etc.).

However, some corrections may be more complicated, such as changing platforms or reengineering existing business processes midstream, or having to deal with other major FSM program-altering situations. Regardless of the level of correction that is required, one thing remains clear – an ineffective FSM program will provide – at best – an ineffective FSM solution! Further, while an effective FS≠M program can generally always be expected to provide a measurable return-on-investment (ROI), an ineffective program typically will not – regardless of the cost!

There are essentially six (6) key reasons why FSM programs fail. They are typically:

1. Lack of management vision and commitment – Executive involvement is critical to steer the project so that it is continually in alignment with the company’s strategic business objectives.

2. Lack of a complete business process analysis – Before embarking on an FSM solution program, there must first be a comprehensive analysis of the individual customer-focused business processes used by the organization – otherwise you will find yourself merely automating the existing “mess”, or still doing things incorrectly – only more quickly!

3. Selecting the software before the analysis is completed – Selecting software before the analysis is completed is a common – and oftentimes fatal – mistake. This is why melding the organisation’s workflows into the software’s functionality, in a customer-focused, streamlined (and possibly reengineered) business process is generally required before implementing an FSM solution.

4. Implementing a system without changing the way you do business – Simply applying a new FSM software solution over the organisation’s existing business processes will not get the job done. Many companies that have attempted to use FSM primarily as a tool for automating their historical business processes have seen their efforts lead to nothing more than a means for preserving their status quo while the marketplace evolves in another direction.

5. Not managing expectations – Managing expectations at all levels within the organisation is critical. Cultural considerations and expectations must be continually assessed, addressed and managed.

6. Becoming locked into a system that does not support the FSM initiative (Agile Adaptability) – Any organization’s FSM program must show quick progress and be able to adapt quickly to changing business processes. Only the built-in “agile adaptability” of the system will preclude the chances for failure.

The best way to avoid any of these eventualities is to address them head-on in your FSM program from the outset. All of your organisation’s major business initiatives should already have these types of contingency plans built-in – especially those that directly impact both the customer base and the bottom line (which is certainly the case with FSM)!

The key to ensuring that your FSM initiative has adequately addressed these issues is to create an ongoing process-monitoring and self-assessment mechanism that is well-defined and clearly delineated in the original plan; and to empower the appropriate internal teams to manage and monitor these functions effectively.

Some tips for ensuring that you are able to successfully avoid any of these potential FSM obstacles are:
• Incorporate internal and external communications as integral components of your FSM design, development and implementation plans.

• Develop “real” goals and metrics for evaluating and tracking performance over time.

• Build effective input and feedback processes (i.e., easy to use, properly managed, and responsive) into your FSM communications model that address all internal (i.e., employee), external (i.e., customers, prospects), and channel (i.e., partners, vendors, dealers, etc.) requirements.

• Build an ongoing monitoring, tracking, and assessment function into the plan, and designate an appropriate individual (and team) to manage it. Also, empower that team to conceptualize, articulate, and recommend appropriate corrective actions as needed. • Provide management with performance tracking reports on a regular basis.

• Keep current with the FSM community in terms of what platforms, applications, or functionality may be newly available; take advantage of your existing vendor’s regular upgrades, updates, and patches; and keep up-to-date on what some of the other leading industry practitioners are doing with respect to their own FSM initiatives (e.g., by tracking them on the Internet; networking; attending trade shows, seminars, and users groups; etc.).

• Plan ahead for tomorrow’s upgrades today by keeping a close watch on your present FSM system status; setting (and revising) your goals and targets on a dynamic (rather than static) basis; identifying alternative “what-if” scenarios for addressing changes in your customer base (e.g., growth), infrastructure (e.g., outdated hardware/ software platforms), or other organizational factors (e.g., restructuring, acquisitions/ mergers, etc.).

There are many ways in which an organization can forestall problems relating to their FSM initiative, or – hopefully – avoid them alltogether. However, in order to accomplish this, you must always plan ahead; address the most likely “what-if” scenarios in your contingency planning; monitor, measure, and track performance all along the way; and encourage and empower both your managers and their support staffs to get their jobs done effectively.

You regularly replace the oil filters in your car – don’t you? And you can always count on NASA to use numerous “mid-course corrections” to protect any of its space launches. Therefore, it should also make sense – both philosophical and economic – to ensure that your organization’s FSM initiative is always supported by these ongoing planning processes as well. 

Bill Pollock is President of Strategies for GrowthSM.

In an exclusive interview with Field Service News, Bill Pollock reflects on the key findings around Customer Satisfaction from the latest Strategies for GrowthSM benchmarking study and reveals that there is plenty of room for improvement...

A question was raised recently at the Field Service Summit held in Warwick where the theme for the conference was moving into an experience economy. It is a question that is often at the top of mind for Field Service Executives, particularly when they are surrounded by so many of their peers, who are all seemingly ploughing ahead with customer engagement programs.

The question went along the lines of “Whilst I can see the benefits of improving customer satisfaction for my customers, how can I translate that into something tangible that my board might actually buy into?’

One man, who has fielded this question many times both when speaking at such events as well as in his long and illustrious career as an analyst to the field service sector, including in his role as a columnist for Field Service News, is Bill Pollock, President of Strategies for GrowthSM.

“It sounds like an easy question, but the reality is that it’s not an easy question to answer at all,” he explains.

The reason for this Pollock outlines is because when in fact Customer Satisfaction (CX) is actually an end product and the net result of a number of other strategic actions or exercises that the services organisation takes. To put it bluntly, CX is not what you do first, there are a whole bunch of other, more tangible tasks that sit in the strategic line ahead of it.

“You don’t achieve customer satisfaction first and then take strategic actions to improve processes and procedures and policies, etcetera, and so forth. It works the other way around,” Pollock explains.

“Now that doesn’t mean to say that once you attain the desired levels of customer satisfaction that doesn’t lead to other things - it absolutely does. But think about how you’re doing business, it’s a journey, it’s a continuum. And if you look at customer satisfaction on that continuum it might be two thirds or three quarters or the way towards the end but it’s not the end onto itself, there’s more that follows.

“When you look at customer satisfaction, that’s mainly a dependent variable rather than an independent variable by which I mean if you update and streamline your service delivery processes, if you acquire a new and upgraded or more powerful and robust field service management solution.

“If you can take steps to eliminate silos and other bureaucratic obstacles within your own organisation that tend to slow down the time it takes for you to deliver services to your customers, and ultimately tick them off.

“If you can train your field technicians and provide them with the latest technologies and mobile tools. If you can provide your customers with portals whereby they can initiate work orders and track the status and order parts and escalate problem scenarios solutions... then you will likely end up attaining higher levels of customer satisfaction.” “So you take those strategic actions first. And then what happens is it leads to more customer satisfaction.”

One of the things that makes Pollock such a well respected voice in the industry is that he is able to draw extensively not only on his own experience but also on solid data that his organisation collects every year within their annual Benchmarking studies. Reflecting on such trends across the last few years he is able to forensically piece together a detailed picture of how field service organisations are behaving both in the US and in Europe.

“What we saw [in 2018] was a dip in customer satisfaction across the European continent, down to 78%,” he explains.

“This was down from about 82% or so the year before. In our latest survey, 2019, the customer satisfaction rating for the total respondents, UK, Europe and North America and the Far East, it’s gone back up from 81% last year to 84% this year.”

“Customer satisfaction is mainly a dependent variable rather than an independent variable..."

This would at first perhaps indicate a course correction of European companies who had started to let the increasingly crucial CX metrics slide. However, Pollock believes there maybe an alternative explanation.

“Last year appears to be a year of transformation, a year of recalibration, a year for stepping back, seeing what needs to be done and then starting to do it. And this year is the year that the fruits of that labour have begun to take place,” Pollock says.

“Now you look at something like that and you say, “Hey, well, that’s really good, it’s improved.” But you don’t want your auto mechanic or your brain surgeon to only have 80% customer satisfaction,” he says with a wry smile.

He is of course correct, as the old adage goes the enemy of excellence is good enough. So what steps does Pollock suggest for companies seeking to go from merely good to great.

“Once you take the steps that I talked about just earlier and you have attained higher levels of customer satisfaction, then the road forward from there gets even trickier, even muddier,” he explains.

“When we ask organisations, ‘Do you measure customer satisfaction?’ 67%, two thirds in our current survey, say, ‘That’s what we measure first.’ That’s two points higher than total service revenue and five points higher than total service cost. 

“They look at customer satisfaction before they look at anything else. And that has been the number one KPI that respondents to the surveys look at in every survey we have ever done. Field service, warranty management, reverse logistics, you name it, that’s number one.

“Now customer retention was only measured by 30% of service organisations last year. So 67% versus 30%. Why is there that discrepancy? Well, because it’s pretty easy to measure customer satisfaction. You get a good qualified third party objective to conduct the survey. They ask the right questions of the right audience, they tabulate it the right way, no errors, you’ve got customer satisfaction measurements.

“How do you measure customer retention? The easiest way is when your company goes out of business because it hasn’t had high enough customer satisfaction and you lose all your customers. You can say, ‘We had a high level of customer retention yesterday and it’s zero today.’ So there are many surrogates to measure retention, but it’s very, very difficult.”

There are of course, ways and means of doing so, particularly in this age of social media and customer sentiment analysis, but that is a topic for another time. After all, as Pollock suggests there is still plenty of scope for improvement in CX metrics first.

In a world of fast-paced ever shifting sands where great service quickly becomes standard, and what you did yesterday, can easily become not good enough for tomorrow, field service organisations need to be able to adapt, evolve and
transform when required. The key, Bill Pollock writes, is in Service Lifecycle Management...

Enaging today’s service enterprise means planning and coordinating service on a global scale. It means delighting your customers – and your shareholders. And it calls for new technologies and business practices designed specifically to solve the Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) challenge.

Based on these reasons, we believe that any field services organisation that strives to provide “bestin-class” field service in support of its customers must first implement a robust SLM solution in order to achieve its objectives. The benefits of implementing an SLM solution are many – and are fairly universal (that is, applicable for virtually every field services organisation, regardless of type, size, or geography served). Users typically identify the following five areas of benefits as the most compelling talking points in selling the
concept to management:

1. Reduced Service Costs
2. Streamlined Workflow
3. Improved Service Levels
4. Enhanced Quality and Growth
5. Increased Customer Satisfaction

Reduced Service Costs
Simply citing generic data regarding potential cost reductions does not generally entice management to look any further. In order to truly gain their attention, it must be specified exactly where the cost savings will be coming from – and to what extent (i.e., provide them with hard numbers). The good news is that a robust SLM solution can manifest quantifiable cost savings from several
specific areas including:

• Improved technician productivity
• Improved Inventory/parts management
• Optimized service delivery
• Reduced time in the “service-to-cash” cycle

These areas of cost savings will very likely peak management’s interest – as well as entice them to ask for more detailed cost-saving information. For example:

Improved Technician Productivity
Through SLM, improvements in technician productivity can be gained in a variety of ways including:

• Providing field technicians with realtime, direct access to customer service history, equipment repair records, product information, and inventory and parts availability enables them to provide the best service possible in the most cost-effective manner by eliminating time-consuming paperwork and forms preparation. As a result, the technicians are able to spend virtually all of their billable time providing customers with the highest levels of service and support, rather than simply collecting information and
filling out forms.

• Providing field technicians with specific service level information for each customer they serve so that they never unknowingly
provide their customers with anything less – or more – than those levels of service that are specifically covered in their respective Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

• Reducing overhead costs through the elimination of most paperwork, delays in communications, and the use of outdated systems that had previously required manual data entry or redundant data input. Empowered by the data and information made available through SLM, field technicians can also serve as the “eyes and ears” of the organisation with respect to identifying potential cross-selling or upselling opportunities for the company’s various products and services. By doing so, customers will not only look at their field technician as “the person who gets things fixed”, but also as a “trusted advisor” – or the one they can count on to both fix their equipment, and provide them with recommendations for acquiring new products and/or upgrading their service level coverage.

Improved Inventory/Parts Management
SLM can also result in “hard” cost savings through improved inventory/parts management, as summarised below:

• SLM enables services organisations to enhance their Equipment Asset Management (EAM) capabilities by allowing them to track
specific component/equipment relationships, and monitor their inventories for the purpose of automatic replenishment. By developing
– and following – tightly integrated inventory management processes, users are able to significantly reduce inventory size and related carrying costs.

• SLM also provides technicians with access to real-time inventory information, as well as the ability to order parts directly from the
field, rather than having to wait until they return to their home base, or gain access to a telephone connection. The ability to work
with real-time parts/inventory information provides both the technicians – and the customers they serve – with immediate access
to parts availability, while simultaneously updating inventory levels and triggering automatic replenishments.

"Citing generic data regarding potential cost reductions does not generally entice management to look further..."

Optimized Service Delivery
Optimized service delivery may mean different things to different people; however, the most compelling benefits of service optimisation, delivered through SLM are typically realized in terms of:

• Minimized time to dispatch (i.e., quicker response time);
• Increased first-time fix rates (i.e., fewer repeat failures and/or service calls); and
• The ability of customers to perform self diagnosis and problem resolution via the Internet.

Ultimately, each of these benefits is realized through improved response time, decreased need for follow-up/repeat calls, and less equipment downtime. Even so, there are still several other types of benefits that will also be of significant interest to company management.

Streamlined Workflow
Technology is the tool that assists services organisations in making their operations run more efficiently – but it is only a tool. However, SLM leverages best-of-breed field service management solutions with industry best practices already builtin, thereby allowing practitioners to benefit not only from the automation of their current processes, but also by allowing them to redefine and improve their processes to deliver optimum results. These results are typically manifested in the following ways:

Integrated Processes and Technologies
Only through SLM can the practitioner benefit from a completely integrated and seamless solution that provides an instant 360-degree web-based view of the entire business. For example, when Sales or Marketing require information from Service.

Operations to develop targeted promotions to maximize cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, a robust SLM solution can give them exactly what they want – when they want it.

Similarly, when Service needs real-time customer information from the Contact Center prior to making a call, SLM makes that information readily available.

Improved and Streamlined Processes
The end result of successfully integrating the organisation’s processes and technologies is improved and streamlined processes – in
other words, running the organisation more efficiently. These benefits are typically manifested in the following ways:

• Through an automated call management system based on CTI, IVR, dynamic scheduling and dispatch, and closure capabilities,
services organisations can rapidly improve and streamline their call management process, thereby significantly increasing
customer satisfaction and retention.

• With the ability to apply contract templates, initiate automatic contract renewals, and build structured workflow processes, users
can maximize their contract processing, resulting in more predictable revenues and improved productivity.

• The capability to track, monitor, and automate stock based upon user-defined rules, in conjunction with the ability to support multiple warehousing strategies, also leads to improved and streamlined stock management levels at reduced inventory
levels (also resulting in reduced costs).

Improved Service Levels
There are basically two ways to look at SLM – (1) as a tool for lowering the cost of doing business, and (2) as a means for improving existing service performance. While the cost savings may be very real, SLM can also be a significant contributor to the overall improvement in the levels of service performance for the organisation. Complete charge capture, and maximizing cross-selling and up-selling opportunities are just some of the ways that play to both perspectives on SLM

Complete Charge Capture of Service Delivery
SLM enables the complete capture of all parameters involved in delivering service (e.g., parts, T&M, expenses, ancillary services, extended warranties, etc.) ensuring that no billable charges are ever lost or overlooked, and ultimately improving invoicing
accuracy. Through SLM, as soon as the technician closes a call and captures the customer’s electronic signature, that data can instantly be transmitted to the central billing system, thereby significantly streamlining and compressing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

Maximized Cross-Selling and Up-Selling Opportunities
Through the capability of leveraging a Web-based customer self-service portal in conjunction with a dynamic self-learning knowledgebase, users gain the ability to offer new products/services at every customer interaction, resulting in increased
revenues without increasing costs. A state-of-the-art SLM solution that embeds intelligent automation along with a robust product information management repository can arm all of the employees in the field with first-rate cross-selling and up-selling capabilities by prompting/alerting them of any potential sales opportunities (e.g.,contract/warranty expirations, aging equipment, ancillary accessories, add-ons, etc.) at the specifictime of interaction with the customer.

Ability to Leverage Service as a Competitive Advantage
Through SLM’s Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities, users can identify, monitor, and track opportunities to offer customized and global service agreements based upon each customer’s unique usage levels.

By doing so, the customer benefits from having its service needs and requirements fully met, and the services organisation can maximize its total revenues in the field. SLM also supports the services organisation’s ability to deliver proactive rather than
reactive personalized service – at an affordable price– empowering it to exceed customer expectations and generate repeat sales.

"SLM enables the complete capture of all parameters involved in delivering service..."

Enhanced Quality and Growth
While most of the benefits described thus far focus primarily on transitioning from the past to the present, enhanced quality and growth clearly looks to the future of the organisation – and this is where SLM excels. The three main components of these forward-thinking benefits may best be summarized as follows:

Ability to Deliver Consistent Service Globally
The most effective SLM solution is one that is truly global, able to support customers using all summarised below:

Ability to Anticipate Customer Service Requirements
SLM provides users with easy-to-use functionality, an intelligent knowledgebase, and a comprehensive customer repository to track problems and potentially identify many other problems before they occur. With this valuable information at their fingertips, users can offer more efficient scheduling or preventive maintenance (or implement an IoTpowered Remote Diagnostics / Remote Monitoring
platform), and minimise the need for on-site visits and repeat service calls, wherever possible. As a result, customer satisfaction is increased, and costly unscheduled service visits can be minimised

Improved Responsiveness to Customer Calls and Service Delivery
SLM empowers Contact Center and field personnel with visual alerts, automatic escalation, scripting, and question trees, so they are able to respond to customers’ inquiries quicker and more completely. Through SLM, they will also have a full range of corporate knowledge stores readily available to optimize the customer interaction process.

In addition, the integrated, multi-channel inbound/outbound capabilities facilitated by SLM provide for unparalleled customer support in all areas, including placing and tracking an order, updating records,making payments, receiving remote support, and scheduling a service call.

Making It Easier to Do Business - Making It More Profitable
In today’s increasingly fast-paced business environment, customers have very high expectations, and they will take no excuses for poor customer service. They expect fast, relevant, and accurate information from the companies they do business with, and they will accept nothing less.

The self-service capabilities offered through SLM provide customers with all of the information they need – when they want it, anytime, anywhere.

This, in turn, ultimately results in improved customer satisfaction and strengthened loyalty throughout the user’s customer base.

Bill Pollock is President at Strategies For Growth