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Chris Beling, Commercial Director at Zafire, looks at the connection between ‘empowering field service engineers’ and customer satisfaction and some of the business benefits those organisations, who have already made the connection, are experiencing...

Hands up if your customers don’t expect exceptional service anymore they demand it, if they expect you to exceed SLAs and not just meet them?

Fierce competition and evolving customer expectations mean that meeting SLAs, fixing assets and simply turning up on time don’t really do the job anymore.

Why empower your engineers? 

We are now seeing more and more leading service organisations shifting focus from product to service and, by equipping their engineers with the right tools and knowledge many are seeing year-on-year improvements in customer satisfaction, which as you would expect, reflects in contract renewals, client retention and positive noise about the company and the brand.

According to recent reports published earlier this year the number one compliant made by customers is ‘technician was unable to resolve the issue’.

The key reasons for failing to resolve an issue include things such as; lack of knowledge about the customer or asset, incorrect skill set, wrong tools, no parts – these are not new issues so I’m sure you know how the story goes in terms of business impact – multiple customer visits leading to poor customer satisfaction ratings, increased costs and ultimately a reduction in client retention and new business generation.

 

Communication between back office and field service engineers via mobile devices and software applications has been around for years. The step change we are seeing comes from providing the engineer with real-time insight.

So rather than simply firing a job out to an engineer with the focus of arriving within the agreed SLA, service organisations need to ensure that the engineer not only gets on site with the customer on time but also has the parts, skills, and information to resolve the issue.

Of course it’s not just about engineers receiving data, it’s about enabling them to collect insight whilst on-site and feed that back into a central database allowing other areas of the service organisation to leverage that information and also provide added value for the customer.

This could be an update to asset information, not only identifying but also generating quotes or processing purchasing orders whilst on-site, with the customer or having direct access to parts suppliers.

How do you empower your engineers

Today, top service management solutions will provide enhanced engineer planning and optimisation tools that can automatically plan a job based on any number of parameters including SLAs, customer opening times, skill set etc.

They will also have the ability to auto plan multiple engineers to a single job whilst allowing the capture of individual times on site and eliminating double entry of data.

All aimed at getting the jobs/work orders allocated to the right engineer as quickly as possible.

Once allocated the engineer needs the right parts. Automatic stock replenishment for the mobile workforce means spares can be ordered to a designated ‘Pick up Drop off’ (PUDO) point eliminating the need for engineers to return to the main warehouse to replenish stock.

 

More specifically top service management software providers understand the need to keep mobile solutions simple whist actually providing more functionality to support on-site real-time insight.

Key areas such as on-site quoting, allowing engineers to quote for, and customers to authorise work within a few quick steps eliminates the need for office staff to follow up on quotes, improving both first time fix rates and customer satisfaction.

At the risk of getting overly technical, direct system interfaces play a big part in ’empowering the engineer’.

For example, systems are now linking directly to 3rd party parts suppliers to provide ‘Live Part Lookups’ which means engineers can view the entire parts database, search for and order parts, and manage the requisition-to-receipt process from end-to-end allowing on-site ordering and receipt directly from the mobile device.

The ability to be reactive on site by using ‘Live Checklist Lookup’ functionality means that if the situations changes on site, engineers can reflect this in the paperwork they raise, decreasing time spent altering or changing job details or forms.

So the introduction and adoption of mobile solutions to empower your mobile workforce is not just about saving paper, reducing errors generated through manual processes or improving the speed at which a work order is processed.

It is also about giving your engineers the tools to adopt a truly customer centric approach on every job they attend.

And that customer centric approach will also lead to improved ‘first time fix rates’ and will help  reduce downtime and loss of productivity for customers – things your customers really want their service organisation to deliver.

 

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Big Data remains a big topic of conversation in field service but is it really all that different to business intelligence? Dan Barber of service management software providers Zafire gave us his thoughts as we caught up with him on his stand at this years Service Management Expo.

 

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With over 20 years’ experience in the industry Chris Beling looks at the connection between ‘best-in-class’ service organisations and the use of business intelligence.

True or false? The importance of turning data into meaningful business intelligence has never been so critical for the service management industry as success criteria and the ability to deliver ‘service excellence’ continues to move further away from the ‘wrench’ and more towards a customer centric focus.

Recent reports published earlier in 2015 suggest that ‘best-in-class’ service organisations are reaping the benefits of such an approach with figures showing higher customer satisfaction and customer retention rates as well as a year-on-year increase in service margins. So why isn’t everybody adopting this approach?

One of the main challenges faced by the wider market is progressive technology. So what do I mean by this? I’m referring to the pace at which technology and service management software advance and the ability, or lack of, for service organisations to adapt and adopt these advances successfully to help drive business growth.

The service environment varies greatly, whether you’re a service centre handling thousands of repairs every day, or a service provider with a large team of field engineers managing a hugely varied portfolio of assets all over the country (or all over the world for that matter) . Consequently ‘out of the box’ solutions don’t always match organisations’ exact requirements

 

Disparate systems, legacy data, complex assets and growing customer demand all add to the challenge of providing ‘service excellence’ in the complex world of service management. So even if you know that customer satisfaction, an increase in contract renewals, improved service margins, workforce efficiency drives, moving from reactive resolution to a PPM based approach are all essential for business growth and maintaining a competitive advantage, how do you provide service excellence without impacting current performance?

Here’s how? With a service management solution that provides a comprehensive end-to-end process engine and the flexibility to match your exact requirements, keeping you in complete control of operations, whilst at the same time providing management with a holistic view across the organisation and not just delivering data but revealing business intelligence.

Leading organisations are now looking at service as a ‘profit centre’ in its own right with management embracing the concept of a ‘customer centric focus’ in order to excel at service operations and drive revenue.

With a central system receiving data automatically and simultaneously from multiple parts of the business - at the point of job creation through the service desk; from engineers in the field via mobile technology; direct from assets with M2M capabilities to name but a few – business intelligence doesn’t just report on the number of calls completed ‘on-time’ but the provides insight into what it took to close those calls and how they could have been prevented the in the first place.

It’s reported that 41% of service jobs are now Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM) visits within best-in-class service organisations which indicates greater control of resources, planning and cost allowing them to optimise their workforce, increase productivity and improve margins. This single shift in approach from reactive to predictive can have a huge impact on margins with fewer reactive calls, an increase in ‘first-time fix’ rates, improved asset up-time and, of course, enhanced customer satisfaction.

 

In any business, and this is nothing new, it’s more costly and resource intensive to generate new business rather than nurturing existing customers. Service management is no different. So, if we find ways to achieve ‘service excellence’ and in turn improve customer satisfaction, it would be fair to expect to see an increase in contract renewals, customer retention and customer referrals.

The expertise of service management software providers, their ability to provide comprehensive solutions and their ability to work in partnership with their customers to understand requirements, are all essential for the successful implementation of a ‘service excellence’ strategy within any business. After all, you only get out of a system what you put in – so if business intelligence is the required output you must be able to input, capture and monitor the data in the first place.

The ability to connect and optimise assets, contracts, customers and workforce using one central system that can provide real-time visibility to operational performance and turn a myriad of data into meaningful business intelligence seems like a game changer to me. Investing in, and building on, solutions that offer that business intelligence will be what separates those organisations at the top of their game from the rest of the field.

 

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