ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘customer-satisfaction’ CATEGORY

Ericsson has been selected by Swisscom, the largest telecommunications service provider in Switzerland, to enhance the consumer experience for its subscribers through deployment and integration of the Ericsson Expert Analytics solution into its existing big data ecosystem.

Ericsson’s solution will deliver data analysis and actionable insights for the service provider’s 5.3 million 4G mobile broadband subscribers using video and other OTT applications on the nationwide mobile network.

Daniel Staub, Swisscom, says: “Delivering a superior experience to our customers is at the very centre of Swisscom’s strategy, and Ericsson Expert Analytics will help us to pursue this vision even further by providing us with end-to-end visibility of our services across our 4G mobile broadband network. With this solution, we will now be able to monitor and proactively optimize our service level performance, as well as take action on any issues we see."

Arun Bansal, President and Head of Ericsson Europe and Latin America, says: “Satisfied customers are loyal customers. Not only will Ericsson Expert Analytics enhance the customer experience and improve network quality for Swisscom, but it also paves the way for smoother entry to 5G, IoT and cloud services with the solution’s advanced capabilities. We will continue to provide Swisscom with the most advanced network technologies and support as they move rapidly toward commercial availability of the next generation of connectivity.”

Swisscom is a pioneer for 5G services with Ericsson as its strategic partner. The two companies have already achieved a number of significant milestones in making 5G a commercial reality, highlighted recently by Europe’s first end-to-end, multivendor 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) data call on 3.5 GHz band. Swisscom was also the first announced customer for Ericsson’s strengthened end-to-end mobile transport solutions.

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The UK’s largest provider of fridge and freezer trailers has launched a new 24-hour emergency service specifically for the care home industry to provide extra storage space ahead of Christmas.

Coldtraila has just launched the unique service for care homes across the whole UK in desperate need of extra space to store meats and other produce in the build-up to Christmas, whether that be due to their freezers malfunctioning or just running out of space.

Ross Pushman, Managing Director of Coldtraila, said: “This new Christmas service will ensure care homes won’t run out of storage space this winter.

“We know how vital this time of year can be for care homes as they look to keep residents warm, comfortable and well-fed in the harsh winter months. That’s why we decided to offer a bespoke 24-hour emergency service to ensure they can provide more than adequate space for their turkey and geese ahead of the big day.

“If a trailer is needed, our new service will ensure it will be delivered and set-up within 24 hours of contacting us. That’s the Coldtraila promise.”

Coldtraila recently acquired two new trailers exclusive to the UK market; the Chill-Tow and Freeze-Tow.

The trailers’ heavy-duty chiller capabilities, which include surplus cooling power and rapid temperature recovery, offer the most cost-effective solution to storing frozen produce.

They also come equipped with a special multifunctional digital display unit that can manage and control the temperature of produce being stored.

For more information on the new service, call 01684 311811. Alternatively, for more information on Coldtraila, please visit https://www.coldtraila.co.uk/.

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Bill Pollock, President of Strategies for GrowthSM gives us five questions that we need to be able to answer if we are to meet our customers’ service expectations...

Help build the next Strategies for GrowthSM analysis report by participating in their current benchmarking research project by clicking this link and taking their current Warranty Chain Management survey... 

The margins on hardware, software and services revenues continue to compress due to increasing competitive pressures, and as customers are becoming more knowledgeable about the growing number of support options available to them.

As a result, customer service is now an even more important factor in establishing and maintaining a strong position in the overall services community.

Every day, more services organisations are relying on customer service to differentiate their otherwise commodity-like offerings in order to bring customers in, keep them happy, and make them loyal. However, while it is not “rocket science”, any services manager can look like an “Einstein” if he or she embraces the rudimentary aspects of customer service throughout all phases of services marketing and promotion, sales prospecting, writing the contract, and managing the customer account over time.

"Every day, more services organisations are relying on customer service to differentiate their otherwise commodity-like offerings in order to bring customers in, keep them happy, and make them loyal..."

While there are many ways to go with respect to defining and establishing a strong customer service mentality within the organisation, the most direct path to determining whether your organisation is on the right track is to test yourself on a number of questions that will indicate how well positioned your organisation is from a customer service perspective.

The basic questions that any sales, marketing or customer service professional should be asking, and a corresponding set of guidelines for addressing each of them, may include:

Does your organisation have a formal customer service or customer care department? Does it have a well-defined customer service mission or charter? Is it adequately staffed and empowered?

Surprising as it may seem, some services organisations have no formal customer service or customer care infrastructure. Even in cases where other departments may be “managing” portions of the company’s customer service activities (e.g., handling complaints, responding to inquiries, etc.), there may still be no formal company-wide procedures or processes for managing customer service. As a result, any customer service activities provided are probably not being performed in a consistent manner. Further, in cases where customer service is performed essentially as a “secondary” activity to the department’s otherwise self-defined “primary” activities, lack of adequate staffing, empowerment and accountability may become major inhibiting factors.

Is there a formal process for handling customer service activities? Are specific responsibilities defined and assigned? Is there accountable ownership?

All functions within the organisation require formal processes to ensure effectiveness. Documented processes are even more important when they involve customers and other external parties (e.g., vendors, dealers, etc.). But processes, in and of themselves, do not get the job done. They must be followed by specific personnel, with specifically defined roles and responsibilities, in order to be effective.

The capability to track who actually has “ownership” of each customer service activity as it is being performed will be critical in measuring overall company performance, as well as providing an ongoing record of success (or failure) in meeting the company’s customer service goals and objectives.

Does your company management promote and encourage customer service? Are there incentives for doing it right, or sanctions for doing it wrong?

Regardless of where your customer service personnel get their primary inspiration, they must still be fully supported by management at all levels. However, this is clearly a case where actions speak louder than words. Management must do everything possible to articulate and communicate its philosophy of customer service throughout the organisation in order to empower its customer service personnel to get the job done – and reward them for being successful at it.

How interactive is your organisation with the customer base? Does it communicate with them enough? Does it provide them with a means for giving their customer service input and feedback?

A one-way street for customer service is never adequate. A services organisation’s customers must also be able to articulate and communicate their concerns to the organisation, and they will need to know how to do so. Accordingly, the organisation should have a formal process in place for soliciting and receiving customer service input and feedback from customers. The process should be well-documented and promoted, easy to access, user-friendly and sincere. Most importantly, all communications coming from the customer base must be quickly and satisfactorily answered. It is generally also a good idea to summarize some of the customer feedback and related company responses in a communicated format such as a company newsletter or Blog, or on the company Website (e.g., FAQs, Customer Service Update, etc.).

Are your customer service personnel properly trained? Do they have all of the necessary tools to get the job done?

Just because certain individuals are “good with people” does not necessarily mean that they are fully equipped to handle all types of customer service situations. It may mean that they have the “right stuff” – but they will still need to receive the “right training.” Even with the proper training, a customer service representative is often only as good as his/her ability to get the job done. This requires access to all of the necessary customer service and support tools, such as guidebooks and procedure manuals; software systems that allow them to log in calls, and track how and when corrective actions are taken; and state-of-the-art mobile communications capabilities.

As you can imagine, there are dozens of additional questions that will still need to be answered before you can be certain that your organisation is addressing all of its key customer service issues. However, these five questions should be at the head of your list in order to make an initial assessment of exactly where your company stands with respect to its customer service philosophy.

Visit Strategies For Growth SM website @ https://pollockonservice.com/

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Oftentimes field service directors and managers can see the importance of investment within a dedicated Field Service Management (FSM) ahead of their colleagues in the boardroom. In this series of articles Kevin McNally, Sales Director, Asolvi outlines how to build a case for investment to drive your field service operations forwards.

In the first instalment in this series, we looked at how FSM systems can deliver easy Return on Investment, in part two we explored how investment in FSM solutions can help you achieve better staff retention and in part three we explored how the implementation of an FSM solution can improve worker health and safety.

Now in the final part of this series, we look at the benefits an FSM system can bring to Customer Engagement as well as offer some concluding thoughts on the series...

Is building a case for investment in FSM a key topic for you?! There is a full white paper on this topic available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to get fully up to speed!

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Customer experience and customer engagement have become buzz phrases of recent times amongst senior executives within almost all organisations and the good news for field service professionals is that this shift of focus on service has meant an increased importance on ensuring field service management teams are able to deliver their service programs as efficiently, and effectively as possible.

Service indeed has now become the core differentiator within industry and field service is an excellent opportunity to make your service standards shine.

By investing in an FSM solution you're enabling your field service engineers to be true brand ambassadors of your organisation. By investing in an FSM solution you are giving them the tools they need to understand the specific needs of the customer they are visiting/history/asset history etc.

By investing in an FSM solution you are giving your field service engineers the tools to deliver the service excellence that will keep your customers loyal.

However, customer experience can also be enhanced through the implementation of FSM solutions in other ways than by empowering the field service engineer...

For example, many modern FSM systems also allow you to provide dashboards to your customers to offer greater visibility into how their assets are performing and how your service organisation is performing against any set SLAs.

Such transparency is very much valued in today’s digital economy where such metrics are becoming increasingly less of a USP and more of an expectation.

Indeed, many of the aspects of automation that an FSM can bring to your service delivery such as automating creation and delivery of work reports, messaging updates on engineer arrival times or even invoicing will improve both the efficiency of your service delivery and the levels of customer satisfaction you are able to achieve.

Conclusions: Avoiding a Competitive Disadvantage

For a long time, the key sales point for investing in an FSM solution was to gain competitive advantage.

However, we must now acknowledge that this is a maturing market and that maturation has been increased by the development of the Cloud-based systems.

So the question now is how much of a competitive disadvantage will you be in if you don’t implement a modern FSM solution – whether that be moving away from manual processes for the first time or upgrading to a new solution from a legacy product.

Investing in an FSM solution can improve your ability to meet health and safety requirements and protect your staff, make your customer’s happier, reduce field service employee turn over all while paying for itself within a relatively short time frame.

The question is no longer if you should invest in an FSM solution, but how to identify the right solution provider for you.

Want to know more?! There is a full white paper on this topic available to fieldservicenews.com subscribers. Click the button below to get fully up to speed!

Sponsored by:

Data usage note: By accessing this content you consent to the contact details submitted when you registered as a subscriber to fieldservicenews.com to be shared with the listed sponsor of this premium content who may contact you for legitimate business reasons to discuss the content of this content.  

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The customer experience is a crucial differentiator between organisations and that experience needs to be consistent across the whole customer journey, Samir Gulati explains why this is so vital...

Today’s field-service customers demand responsive support, especially digital natives who are used to getting what they want when they want it.

But even though these customers expect field service to be speedy, it pays to slow down and examine the customer journey to better understand their expectations. Field-service providers then know what elements are worth measuring and can, therefore, leverage software solutions to direct their technicians to respond appropriately in real-time.

So let’s take a look at the five stages of the field-service customer journey, as well as the key metrics worth tracking at each step.

#1 The Service Request

The customer journey starts with the creation of a service request. But even a simple request carries the opportunity for deep insight so long as field service providers measure the flexibility of their engagement with the customer and their access to the servicer.

Can users submit such inquiries through multiple channels? Fewer and fewer customers want to communicate through a call centre. Instead, they prefer self-service online portals and machine-to-machine service requests generated automatically by their smart appliances.

But just as customers need access to technicians, technicians need access to customers - namely their service agreements. Automated registrations and entitlement checks, using preconfigured warranty information, allow service providers to assess maintenance options and confirm services instantly.

#2 Scheduling Service

Once a service request is submitted and subjected to the automated entitlement check, it’s time for scheduling. At this stage of the customer journey, scheduling options and response times matter most.

Customers should be able to easily book truth-based appointments, which reflect your technicians’ skill level and actual bandwidth based on a combination of real-time and historical data.

This ensures that the right technician is sent out to the right job, which increases first-time-fix rates.

That same information should populate estimated arrival and completion times so customers can plan for their field-service slots and appointments accordingly. Users can then utilize self-service scheduling to reschedule their service calls, at which point they have access to updated information regarding technician availability.

#3 Tracking Technicians

Modern customers value visibility and expect field-service companies to offer real-time tracking, much like Uber, for two reasons.

First is compliance with scheduling - simply, will the right technicians be selected, and if so will they arrive and complete their work on time?

This is as important for customer satisfaction as it is for maintaining a tight schedule and limiting unnecessary expenses. Second is real-time updates. If a technician finishes a job early or gets stuck in traffic, will the next customer in the queue receive a notification?

Furthermore, if a customer has extra information they’d like to communicate to the technician, can they send it directly to him or her without routing the message through a call centre?

Even simple messages that tell technicians, for example, what the code to a locked gate is or that the dog in the backyard is friendly can make all the difference in the timeliness and quality of a service call, but only if field-service providers open a direct line of communication between the customer and the tech.

#4 On-Site Repair

Once technicians arrive on-site, there are several key metrics that they and their employers ought to track:

• Preparedness: Does the tech have all the right information (and parts) necessary to complete the job on time?
• First-time-fix rate: the percentage of service requests resolved with a single technician visit.
• Time-to-repair: the average period of time it takes for a technician to repair a malfunctioning product.
• Time-on-site versus estimated: the difference between the estimated time-to-repair measurement and the actual repair time.

Field-service providers can use these measurements to assess the productivity and efficiency of their technicians as well as the effectiveness of their appointment workflows.

They can then fine-tune their processes and improve their service.

#5 Post-Service Engagement

Post-service engagement is the crucial last step in the field-service customer journey, which includes payment, customer satisfaction surveys, the ability to re-open a ticket, if necessary, and backend reporting.

By tracking order to cash (OTC), field-service companies can reduce the complexity in payment channels complicated by contract work, warranties claim management and sourcing parts.

And in a world where nearly 7 out of 10 customers leave reviews after purchasing products or services, channels for tabulating repeat services and gathering immediate feedback on services rendered can further provide valuable insight that field-service companies can act on immediately.

Samir Gulati, is Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower 

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Manuel Grenacher discusses why Automation is set to play a crucial part in the two key pillars of field service success, operational effectiveness and customer satisfaction...

As part of the fourth industrial revolution, manufacturing factories are undergoing digital transformations, and not just on the factory floor but also business-wide – specifically regarding automation.

Research firm Gartner defines intelligent automation services as “a variety of strategies, skills, tools, and techniques that service providers are using to remove the need for labour, and increase the predictability and reliability of services while reducing the cost of delivery,” and Gartner predicts that automation will reshape managed workplace services over the next few years, providing a higher customer experience at a deflated cost.

"More than 50% of job responsibilities of today’s global labour force can be automated by adapting contemporary technologies..."

Less than 5% of occupations are likely to be affected by full automation, thus curbing job dismissals – which are often cited as the main risk of the automation trend. Instead, industry experts are discussing the “partial automation potential” concept and estimate that more than 50% of job responsibilities of today’s global labour force can be automated by adapting contemporary technologies, amounting to over $15 trillion in wages.

In the field service management (FSM) industry, to keep up with customer demands, field service organisations are refining, expediting and automating service processes, using automated dispatch and scheduling software to adjust and balance resources and manage the growing number of jobs, technicians and customers.

Dispatchers work closely together with the system, leading the more face-front work and leaving the technical, tedious work to the automation-enabled software – and this results in the following benefits and outcomes.

Finding the Perfect Fit

With the help of automated dispatch and scheduling, service providers can review historical customer information at-a-glance and send out the best-fit technician with the proper skill set and tools, resulting in the quickest match and an excellent experience for all partners involved.

Having a technician on-the-job without the proper equipment and expertise can damage the relationship between the customer and technician, and can lead to many inconveniences when chasing down the potential solution. Field service organizations can deploy the automated system for both short-term projects, as well as long-cycle projects, which requires a complex calculation and organization of specific resources over an extended period.

"Automated dispatch and scheduling projects enable the best possible utilisation of all available resources, resulting in simplifying the dispatching process..."

Automated dispatch and scheduling projects enable the best possible utilisation of all available resources, resulting in simplifying the dispatching process, increasing first-time fix rate, and elevating efficiency and productivity (which translates directly into a sizable return on investments).

By providing relevant details to technicians in the field, while they are in the middle of scheduling future appointments and managing various projects, field service organisations will notice smoother and swifter operations.

Flexible Mobility and Real-time Results

Customer satisfaction extends far beyond the purchase of machines and devices, as the increasing shift towards a mobile-enabled, connected world has conditioned end-users to expect delivery of products and services in realtime.

People do not have time to wait around for a technician set to arrive sometime within an 8-hour time-frame; with the help of up-to-date, automated status reports via mobile devices (including phones, tablets and more), customers are supported as conveniently as possible.

An automated system also benefits the technicians, as they can receive real-time information on their schedules, directly to their mobile device. If a colleague is unable to perform a project or task, the automated software dispatches the adequate person to the assignment and eliminates the tasks of heading to the back office to get assignments or manually checking the best route to appointments.

Before automation, administrative staff were dependent on a labour-intensive process and inefficient combination of spreadsheets and geographic expertise of schedulers to get engineers where and when they needed to go.

Automated dispatching and scheduling gets the right people to the right place, on time, and with the parts they need – and enables organizations to transmit critical information much faster and more efficiently than before.

This leads to improved field service operations on a local, national and international scale, which results in the ultimate goal: an enriched customer experience.

Manuel Grenacher is CEO, Coresystems

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Samir Gulati outlines four key technologies that are forming the bedrock for twenty-first century field service...

Twenty-first-century technological advancement has transformed how businesses everywhere communicate and interact with their customers.

Gone are the days of the occasional customer service call. Mobile technology has forever changed how people connect with product and service providers.

Field-service businesses that have yet to embrace digital customer engagement methods and tools must work quickly to do so. Modern consumers don’t like losing whole days waiting for calls from service personnel. They expect field service companies to use the latest technology to streamline the customer experience, create visibility into appointments and reduce hassle.

But which technological innovations should field service providers focus on? Here are some of the key technological tools gaining steam among the customers of the connected age.

Customer portals

Because of the pervasiveness of mobile technology, customer portals are everywhere.

Although the quality of these web-based assets varies from business to business, there are a couple essential components that creators of customer portals will always include:

• Information-rich, personalized dashboards allow users to view critical service data.
• Payment and account management give customers transparency into their past service requests and a place to pay for services rendered.

With tools like these, customers can serve themselves, which 67 percent prefer over speaking directly with a customer service representative. That said, direct communication tools such as instant messaging are still valuable, especially if they connect a customer with their personal technician or central dispatch.

These features not only meet the high standards of connected customers. They also simplify field service operations and reduce the likelihood of miscommunication between the provider and the customer.

Internet of things:

The internet of things is perhaps the most powerful innovation transforming business-to-consumer interaction today. At the moment, more than 11 billion IoT assets are active worldwide. By 2020, that figure is expected to jump to around 20.4 billion, a good number of which will likely be part of connected field-service operations.

In the field-service industry, asset-based deployments are common. Sensors embedded in equipment or appliances leverage internet connectivity to notify owners or even field-service providers when maintenance may be required, accelerating the repair process. Technician facing IoT workflows are also common and use geolocation to track service teams and route them to customers in need.

Smart home technology:

Even though web-enabled smart home technologies have received a lot of buzz in recent years, relatively few homeowners have adopted such solutions: In 2017, only 10 percent of families across the had any connected home solutions.

But smart home adoption isn’t unlikely to remain this low for long. Consumers are beginning to understand how much time and money smart home tech can save.

Field-service companies in the utility sector are catching on to the building momentum behind these innovative hardware and software solutions. Smart thermostats, for example, give customers greater visibility into—and control over—their electricity and gas usage. They also give technicians a better way to leverage data in order to provide personalised service and communicate effectively with the customer and the manufacturer.

Augmented reality:

Reality, augmented by real-time data, delivers benefits to connected customers by giving their technicians all the resources they need to perform perfect maintenance.

Field-service companies of all sizes are leveraging these tools to revolutionise on-site operations. Many are equipping technicians with augmented reality headsets that allow them to view updated product operating instructions or best practices while performing maintenance or repairs. Others are using these tools in training exercises so new technicians can ramp up quickly.

Summary: Embracing Innovation:

Field-service providers without these technologies may still be tempted to hold off on adoption. Perhaps they find these solutions too expensive or too complicated to deploy at the moment. It’s up to the decision-makers at these companies to decide what’s viable and what isn’t.

But these leaders should not underestimate the power of creating a bold new strategy for technology. It can lay the groundwork for excellent service effective operations in the age of the connected customer. As technology moves forward, so do consumers.

Field-service enterprises would be wise to recognize this reality and put into place up-to-date hardware and software that meets the needs of those driving the modern marketplace.

Samir Gulati, is Chief Marketing Officer, ServicePower 

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Jan Van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, continues his series of articles looking at how service organisations can drive revenue from their services by harnessing the IoT...

Solve bigger customer problems

In the previous issue of Field Service News, I wrote an introduction on the topic “How to Monetise Services and IoT”, covering the dilemma of many business leaders in manufacturing.

In this article, I will elaborate on the first of the three critical steps which often make the difference between success and failure:

• SOLVE BIGGER CUSTOMER PROBLEMS
• Articulate the value
• Build internal momentum for monetisation

Common mistakes in the industry

One of the common mistakes is focusing on the smaller problems and making only small incremental improvements to services or solutions.

"One of the common mistakes is focusing on the smaller problems and making only small incremental improvements to services or solutions..."

These are typically the standard next step improvements most competitors bring to the market as well. Although these are also necessary improvements – adding features to your solutions - to sustain your market position, they are unlikely to bring about significant growth or opportunities required to monetise. For example, think of new features that car manufacturers introduce to their new models or weekly computer software updates that occur without paying more.

Another common mistake is focusing too much on only the availability and use of the equipment. In most situations, the extra value is having a broader impact of the value creation process for our clients. In most industries, the purchase, financing, and maintenance of equipment is a small portion of the overall budget.

Truck manufacturers as an example

As an example, while the sale of trucks was shrinking dramatically, leading truck manufacturers like MAN, DAF and Scania discovered that discounting the trucks did not have that much of an impact. One of the biggest challenges for truck operators was reducing fuel consumption. The leading truck manufacturers took this challenge beyond aero-dynamics and engine efficiency, and developed data-driven services to reduce fuel consumption by improving the way truck drivers drove the trucks.

Discovering the bigger customer problems

The ideal practice is to:

• Solve the bigger problems in a significantly better or more efficient way for clients, or
• Solve any new significant problems for our clients

Before developing new services and solutions, it is crucial to have a deeper understanding of the challenges and problems that your clients face. The following activities will prevent any bias from long-standing experience and business norms:

• Reframe addressable customer needs with your team and colleagues who are involved. The aim is to have a broader view and scope on customer needs. Explicitly ban objections against the idea of servicing those needs.
• Focus on actual “jobs-to-do” for your clients and areas where they are struggling or could improve. For example, improving uptime may not be that relevant for clients with a low utilisation rate. Whether you carry out professional customer research or not, it is always good if various colleagues have frequent open conversations with different stakeholders about views on the industry, trends, challenges etc. Sharing the following simple diagram during such conversations is helpful for you and your clients to keep the dialogue open.
• Explore how your clients are solving problems and what suppliers are helping them.
• Also, explore the needs and challenges of the customers of your customers. This will give more insight into your customer’s needs.
• Explore what needs you could/should be addressed now and in the future. With these insights, you can extend and enhance your vision, strategies and roadmap for innovating your services and generating new revenue streams.

The Benefit

Manufacturers that solve the bigger problems can better articulate the value for customers and staff, have higher momentum for change and monetisation, generate new revenue streams and differentiate themselves more from the competition.

"Manufacturers that solve the bigger problems can better articulate the value for customers and staff, have higher momentum for change and monetisation..."

]They perform better and have more resources to keep innovating their business, enabling growth in a sometimes disruptive world.

Monetisation of services and IoT – Impulse Session

If you want to accelerate the monetisation of your (new) services and IoT, join our upcoming Impulse Sessions on “How to Monetise Service and IoT”. These are full-day interactive meetings with like-minded peers during which we will exchange our experiences, insights, and challenges.

Book your seat @ http://fs-ne.ws/1pMC30lpssC

Essence

Great offerings and solutions won’t sell themselves!

It is various colleagues together that drive the value perception and sell the solutions, because of their eagerness and passion to perform, learn, develop and make new things happen, as well as avoid unnecessary obstacles that cause internal conflicts of interest and reduce confidence.

Jan Van Veen, is Managing Director, moreMomentum, 

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It’s been several years since the official end of the Great Recession and we finally see organizations beginning to switch from a cautionary mindset to one of business expansion. However, business and revenue expansion initiatives need to be built on an infrastructure of growth, an area where organizations haven’t invested significantly in the previous 5-10 years. The desire for growth needs to be matched with investments in knowledge, technology, and innovation.

Sumair Dutta, Chief Customer Officer, Service Council explains why he anticipates that the next twelve months will be a period when service leaders begin to transition into new revenue models.

The Voice of the Service Leader:

In The Service Council’s annual trends survey of 2017, service leaders indicated that their top initiatives were focused on the improvement of customer management, the enhancement of service operations with the aid of business data, and an expansion of knowledge management across the enterprise.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued. In several industries, we also noted that organizations were balancing the demands and needs of various customers within an organization.

2018 initiatives are similar to those planned for 2017 and we don’t see a major deviation for service leaders. The push is to continue to drive operational efficiencies and business capacity with the aid of data, information, and technology. In parallel, organizations are looking to continue to ramp up their customer experience initiatives. As these initiatives get more mature and move from the listening phase to the customer understanding phase, organizations are hoping to use customer insight and data to support revenue generation efforts.

In discussions with service leaders, it seemed like most were looking to get closer to their customers via better voice of the customer and listening initiatives to truly understand what these customers valued.Voice of the customer efforts have been popular for several years and were championed by those in business to consumer industries.

In serving a larger number of customers and customer transactions, it was essential for these organizations to get a pulse of customer sentiment tied to service transactions and business relationships. The effort from these organizations was to improve operations to support better loyalty and retention.

Some would argue that the intent of these organizations is now shifting to ensuring a greater use of purchased product and service features, akin to the customer success model.

In enterprises that work directly with other businesses, the volume of transactions and interactions might not be as large; nevertheless, these interactions can have a high degree of value or impact attached to them. Historically, organizations were happy to capture feedback from their customers, but customer listening wasn’t a prioritized activity.

That has changed; as over the last three years, we have seen more organizations invest in voice of the customer and customer surveying programs.

More so, service leaders have also sought after resources to map customer journeys and identify key pain points in the service delivery ecosystem.

These customer experience activities have led to a handful of initiatives that strive to assuage frustrated customers, increase visibility into the service process, and reduce the effort required to access the service organization.

We now believe that organizations are fairly well equipped to deal with direct customer feedback but now need to dive deeper to truly unearth customer value.

Deciphering value requires a deeper look at customer feedback. Customer complaints and outreach are typically a channel for customers to share their expressed wishes. Answering expressed needs and wishes is essential to maintaining customer satisfaction, but addressing unexpressed needs is the key to differentiation.

This requires the ability for service teams to dig deeper into the reasons for a customer contact and what that specific customer might be looking to accomplish with the delivered information.

Addressing constraint:

The delivery of improved experiences must occur in a constraint heavy environment. The biggest constraint faced by organizations is the capacity of the service workforce.

This capacity isn’t solely tied to the quantity of service tasks that must be met, but in the quality of service interactions that must be supported by service personnel. In organizations with field service groups, there is a major focus on replacing retiring service workers and in retaining and replicating their knowledge for future generations.

Several industries are having major issues tapping into the next generation of service workers. Yet service requests continue and customers require a higher level of service.

Technology might seem like the best answer to addressing capacity issues, but the real solution comes from a better understanding of available service data. This explains why service leaders are looking at their major sources of data to identify:

• Inefficient service delivery processes
• Opportunities for automation and elimination of manual intervention
• Opportunities for enhancement of service worker output and coverage

The data that is available at the service leader’s fingertips can come from multiple sources. It may come direct from the product being serviced, and this mode of data communication continues to gain traction. Yet reliable data is already available from:

• Customer requests, complaints, and claims
• Point-of-service systems tracking work completion and resources required

Once operational improvement opportunities are identified, it makes sense to inject technology solutions to address these opportunities.

For instance, portals can be created to offer customers an easier path to service information or to the creation of a service request as compared to a traditional 1-800 call queue.

Routing technology can be used to directly connect customers to higher-level technical support. Video solutions can allow for assisted service resolution or improved diagnosis prior to dispatch. And just-in-time content can be sent to technicians to ensure that their service visits are successful.

We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.We would recommend that service leaders also analyze and review data tied to the customer experience as much as they use data to prioritize operational improvements.

If customers indicate that the ease of access to service personnel is a priority for them, or that other areas in the service delivery ecosystem need improvement, then these could help service leaders rank needed changes.

The growth plan:

Operational and customer-focused initiatives are being paired with those that focus on business and service revenue. In discussions around service’s impact on the business, TSC has previously highlighted two revenue buckets that are directly enhanced by service.

• Service-Impacted Revenue – Revenue generated as a result of positive customer satisfaction, typically tied to up-sells, cross-sells, renewals, new purchases, and referrals.
• Service Revenue – Revenue generated from the sale of service products such as service parts, time & material work, or service agreements.

In pursuing growth in 2018, service leaders continue to support the first bucket of revenue typically driven by other parts of the organization but are taking aim at enhancing their overall service revenue contribution.

This expansion is typically supported in two ways:

1. Understanding customer use of current service products
2. Uncovering appetite for new service products

For those organizations with service agreements in place, it’s essential to understand which customers are covered by these agreements and which ones are coming up for renewal. Better visibility into coverage and renewal opportunities can uncover millions in revenue opportunities.

Once visibility is established, it is essential to identify why customers chose to stay away from service agreements or other products. This might uncover awareness or sales opportunities for the service enterprise.

In addition to actual coverage and renewal, service organizations must understand how customers are utilizing products and services. Awareness of customer adoption and usage will allow for improved account management opportunities. It might also yield ideas for net new services that can be valuable to customers.

Summary/Conclusion: the need for service innovation

While organizations are navigating what it means to be a digital business, they are also looking to new collaboration models with their customers to ensure longer and more profitable relationships.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.In innovation-focused research conducted by The Service Council in 2017, less than one-half of organizations highlighted that their service businesses received as much focus on innovation, as did the other parts of the business.

For organizations to be more innovative in service, an internal transformation needs to occur around business leadership, around business measurement, and around the technology in place to support a new service business.

Service leaders must develop and fuel a culture that welcomes and accepts new ways of doing business, even at the cost of cannibalizing existing revenue streams. The promise of innovation is ripe at service organizations; it’s now time for service leaders to execute on this promise.

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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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