The benefits of remote service (part one)

Mar 09, 2021 • Features • Digital Transformation

Field Service News in partnership with RealWear, and OverIT have worked together to produce a detailed 22 page Essential Guide to Remote Service. In this first in a series of excerpts from that guide we will look at the benefits of an effective remote service solution...

The benefits of introducing remote-services into a wider service portfolio and why remote-service should be viewed as far more than a temporary solution to overcoming the challenges of the pandemic.

Improving Health and Safety

One of the most critical areas of responsibility a field service company has is a duty of care to its employees, contractors and communities within which they operate. This, of course, is a mantra that has been magnified and reemphasised since the pandemic, but it is a concept that is absolutely at the core of field service management.

Since the pandemic hit, an additional factor has undoubtedly been added to this equation. Field service organisations must also consider how they can limit their engineers’ face to face interaction with others, both for their own and their customers’ protection.

Indeed, improving health and safety aspects of field service delivery and minimising risk is one of the most critical areas in which modern remote service tools such as augmented reality and head-mounted computers can bring clearly identifiable benefits.

The first of these is that by enabling the technician on-site to work hands-free, we are instantly enhancing their ability to work both more efficiently and also more safely. However, the potential for improving health and safety via such tools goes far beyond this.

For example, we can see the introduction of digital safety advisory processes being introduced; this allows the engineer in the field to connect with a health and safety expert in real-time to access advisory support when needed. Not only does this place the safety expert where they are needed as soon as they are needed, but it also allows for the service organisation to refine the safety team in terms of size, structure and effectiveness.

Another method that can improve the health and safety aspect of field-based service work introduced when using such systems is to introduce a digitally enabled risk management solution.

"As we factor in the pandemic’s impact, the ability to dial in expertise is crucial as it means that service and maintenance can be delivered in a limited or even zero-touch manner, reducing the human-to-human contact required in issue resolution..."

Cameron Stevens, a Chartered Health and Safety Professional, Safety Technologist and Solutions Engineer at RealWear, Inc. has been working with global field service teams to help them conduct remote audit, assurance and critical risk activities. Stevens suggests that “real-time risk information offered with enterprise wearable assisted reality computing has the ability to step change safety performance and can digitally enhance all elements of a health and safety management system”.

Doing this allows the field service engineer to conduct health, safety and environmental field audits and assurance activities hands-free and generate real-time reports.

Software solutions such as SPACE1 can even be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), automating processes vital to ensuring the engineer’s safety are followed every time. This also enables work processes to be analysed to uncover rich insights that have the potential to further improve future operational safety performance. Such an approach is crucial when we reflect that all too often, the most dangerous threat in an engineer’s day to day work is complacency.

Finally, as we factor in the pandemic’s impact, the ability to dial in expertise is crucial as it means that service and maintenance can be delivered in a limited or even zero-touch manner, reducing the human-to-human contact required in issue resolution.

Perhaps most importantly though, remote video collaboration in the work environment enables supervisors and managers to regularly check in on the mental health and well being of the field service workforce as they go about their jobs in relative isolation, dealing with the fatigue and uncertainty resulting from the pandemic.

Increasing Geographical Expansion Opportunities

As many field service management professionals will attest, the most significant impact on the service P&L is invariably always the truck-roll. As the old adage goes, if you have to send a service engineer -once then you are breaking even.

Every time you then send an engineer back out on the same job you are losing money.

For many companies, this fact means that geographical expansion can often be too cost-prohibitive to undertake. Ultimately getting expertise on the ground in a new territory can involve significant travel and accommodation overheads.

Alternatively, training up a local field service team with the necessary skills can be even more costly. Of course, it also takes time for such a new team to develop the experience required to stand on their own two feet.

However, when we start to look at some of the advanced tools for remote service delivery used by best-in-class companies such as Honeywell, Volkswagen and Mars, we can see an excellent opportunity for field service companies to bypass much of the cost of getting this experience on the ground.

Instead of the subject matter expert being required to be on-site, they can remotely guide a less experienced local engineer.

AR allows the remote expert to guide the on-site engineer step by step with annotations, information slides or hand gestures that appear ‘on-screen’ merged directly with what the on-site engineer sees in front of him. Add a head-mounted computer into the mix, and the remote expert can guide the engineer, with a clear view of what the on-site engineer is viewing, while that engineer has both hands free to undertake the work required.

Such solutions are the single most effective means of communicating and transferring knowledge and expertise in real-time. As such, it opens the doors for geographical expansion for service organisations which wouldn’t have been possible prior to the introduction of such technological advancements.

Reducing the time it takes to get new engineers out into the field

Another pervasive challenge we face in the field service sector is the ever present issue of an ageing workforce. This is a challenge faced by field service companies in all corners of the globe and all industries. It is quite simply one of the most significant challenges our industry collectively faces.

As the baby boomer generation enters its final decade of being within employment age, there is a veritable tsunami of workers heading for the exit door and ultimately not enough recruits coming in the other direction to replace them. We must also factor in the time it takes to move new recruits from the classroom to the field, which further adds to the severity of this potential crisis.

Again, the sophisticated tools used within remote service delivery can have a significant impact here. Indeed, the benefits can be seen in four distinct ways.

Firstly, with more engineers retiring than are being recruited, we will need our engineers to be more productive. Technician utilisation and first-time fix rates have always been essential metrics in the field service sector. However, they will become critical in an age with a dwindling supply of engineers By using tools such as AR and Head-mounted computers, a field service organisation can take their leading subject matter experts out of the field where the amount of customers they can help is limited by their travel time, and into a role where they can deal with far more issues from one remote location.

Additionally, these subject matter experts can be focused on providing insight where it is needed most, increasing first-time-fix rates even on more complex issues.

"By transitioning the experienced engineer from a life on the road to one of a remote expert, based in a central location, or even working from home, the chances of keeping that engineer in the organisation for longer are greatly improved..."

Secondly, such subject matter experts are more likely to be found within the older and more experienced population of a field workforce. For a more experienced engineer, the attraction of constant travel and time away from home may well diminish over time.

This is, as many in the industry will acknowledge, a significant factor of employee churn.

By transitioning the experienced engineer from a life on the road to one of a remote expert, based in a central location, or even working from home, the chances of keeping that engineer in the organisation for longer are greatly improved.

Thirdly, by being able to provide younger, less experienced engineers with an adequate support network, where a subject matter expert can be readily on hand to offer guidance and support whenever, and more importantly wherever needed, service organisations can dramatically reduce the time it takes to get new engineers out of the classroom and into the field where they are actively bringing value to the organisation.

Finally, one of the critical advantages of using technology in this manner is that each call can be recorded and archived. This allows for the ongoing contribution to a knowledge base featuring a wealth of practical learning material. The potential application of such a knowledge base can then be further magnified when paired with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution.

By aligning AI to remote assistance recordings, engineers can be automatically guided to the relevant support documentation and recordings of previous calls that outline resolution quickly and effectively, freeing up the subject matter experts even further.

Additionally, AI can identify and manually tag visual elements within the recording for classification and then use these tags to find correct supporting material in the knowledge base to help improve on-site triage. It is even possible to translate the call into foreign languages to allow for the roll-out of such a dynamically growing knowledge base across multiple regions.

All of which can help lead to a far more effective support network for new engineers, allowing them to leave the classroom and get into the field a lot quicker.