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Steve Meyers, Field Service Director, Vivint Smart HomeHaving been in Field service related industries for 30+ years; there have been a number of technology changes that have transformed the approach to completion of service. One fact remains consistent—service happens.
The opportunity to deliver a world class customer service experience is an opportunity that is created every time the service exchange happens; to seize that opportunity, those in the field service space must adapt and advance with technology transformations. Everything from the tools utilized by field service personnel to the very technology dependent on the service space your business occupies.
As we all know, communication today can be instantaneous; if a field service representative is onsite with a customer and experiences an opportunity or needs a question answered, that representative can call, text, instant message or video chat with a support staff member anywhere in the world! Additionally, field service representatives can experience educational related materials relative to their industry or service that can be delivered as they are developed and create a library of knowledge stored mentally or electronically for future reference through the use of communication technology.
"The successful field service experience is a relationship between people, tools and technology"
Of course, customers want service delivered with excellence; they also want service delivered in a timely manner. If you have a product in your home or business and that product is not working as expected, that can be costing you a loss. It could be a loss of performance, time, or money. So, the ability to know where your service representatives are and where your customers are and then marrying those pieces of information using technology can create the opportunity to deliver faster service times when needed.
There are a number of technology applications that are available in the field service arena to identify both your team’s field service representatives location and your customer’s that have requested service and the seamless transition of putting those two “together” is a key to delivering faster service response times to customers.
Imagine, you have a field service representative in a certain part of the world and within a 15 minute drive from that representative’s current location, a customer has reached out to your company requesting a service appointment. That request is delivered to your closest service representative with the schedule capacity, knowledge and inventory to complete the service call and/or depending on your compensation model, there could be an incentive for that service representative to complete that call!
Better yet, imagine the use of technology that is proprietary or third party that can predict when a customer may be in need for product servicing before the customer knows they are in need of a service event. And while you are onsite with the customer and creating a great experience that the customer didn’t know they needed; take the opportunity to enlighten the customer on the recent product developments your company has available and you have on the truck to sell and install today at a reduced price since you are already onsite!
Finally, the field service experience is measured through the use of a “voice of the Customer” product that is easy to respond to and targeted with its measure of the experience the Customer received, and responded to if needed; often times, Customers simply want to be listened to, heard and respected with a response!
The successful field service experience is a relationship between people, tools and technology whether you are diagnosing the performance of a jet plane engines or making a pizza; the experience the customer journey’s through is expected to be what they expected it to be.
