Using Technology and Data to Make Your Service Department Smarter and Faster

Field service departments at the largest organizations now have a global reach. Some companies service customers and assets across every continent, spanning multiple cultures and languages. Although this development is representative of the far-reaching abilities of the field service sector, it also creates challenges.

In recent years, most field service organizations have worked to make their operations both smarter and faster. This can be accomplished by eliminating data silos across the organization and bringing teams together via a single platform.

But there is also a growing impetus to work smarter in the field service sector, especially by creating customer experiences that are more uniquely targeted and personalized. When successful, building a unified customer experience can eliminate barriers between the organization and its customers and create context-based paths and touchpoints.

However, accomplishing this requires both new processes and technologies, as well as a heightened awareness of operational complexities among service departments across the world.

Delivering Better Outcomes and a Stronger CX with Technology

Customer experience (CX) consistency is a good starting point for most service departments hoping to deliver faster and smarter services. By unifying data across the organization under a single source of truth, service departments can deliver a standardized level of service to every customer. This also opens new opportunities to implement automation into service operations, so teams can deliver services faster.

But consistency shouldn't be the finalization of the organization's CX initiative. Customer context is becoming increasingly important, and organizations that cater to their customers' unique needs in real-time can generate better customer outcomes.

In a recent WBR Insights and Field Service Europe report entitled "Optimizing Field Service Experiences for a Diverse Customer Base, researchers found that 29% of field service leaders rate their organizations' CX initiatives across geographies, cultures, and languages as only "moderate." They've invested in the tools and technologies to unify data and drive the customer experience, but they struggle to meet the unique needs of their customers.

Still, it's through technology deployments that field service organizations can communicate effectively across cultures, help customers serve themselves, generate real-time insights about customer needs.

The study found that 56% of the respondents had implemented Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and smart connected technologies to draw data and insights from their deployed assets. This is becoming a core capability for field service organizations, and not just from a CX perspective. IoT sensors enable organizations to develop new, more proactive business models, such as Outcome-as-a-Service. They also enable them to deliver more prescriptive service outcomes and resolve issues with deployed assets faster.

IoT sensors and smart connected technologies are the only digital tools a majority of the respondents had implemented at the time of the survey.

However, 98% of the respondents had implemented (43%) or were planning to implement (55%) knowledge management software to record, transfer, and proliferate knowledge internally and among their customers.

Effective knowledge management can improve efficiency, but it is also essential for improving KPIs like first-time fixes (FTF) and Net Promotor Score. Capturing and organizing both implicit and explicit knowledge allows the organization to create feedback loops for improvement, share essential knowledge about customers, harness useful data to deliver outcomes.

The respondents were asked to describe a service scenario in which digital knowledge management tools helped resolve an issue or produce a positive result. Several respondents responded that knowledge management tools were particularly useful during the pandemic, either through direct applications of that knowledge via technology or by assisting customers via self-service.

"In the current pandemic, quite a few of our experienced technicians were affected," said a director of field service management at an information and communication technology company. "It was down to the ones with limited experience, but the storage of knowledge made them handle situations in the best possible manner."

Other respondents said that their knowledge management tools assisted them in challenging client situations. For example, one respondent said data experts helped his team resolve a situation that had escalated from service technicians to the management level. Another respondent said that their client wouldn't accept a certain solution, but they managed to resolve the situation by providing the client with detailed information about the solution after an in-depth analysis of the data.

Using Communication Tools to Resolve Issues Faster

The same WBR Insights and Field Service report also revealed that field service organizations are focusing on communication tools and self-service technologies to improve customer outcomes and resolve service situations faster.

For example, 63% of the respondents said they had already deployed chatbots to improve customer self-service. These tools are in widespread use in multiple industries. When attached to a knowledge base, automated chatbots can provide customers with answers to frequently asked questions, provide important documentation about assets, and respond to general inquiries.

Indeed, 48% of the respondents said they were leveraging FAQ pages and knowledge bases to assist customers. Over one-third (35%) said they were providing remote customer access to device manuals and documentation. Meanwhile, 50% of the respondents said their customers had a dedicated account portal to use for self-service.

All these tools may not be relevant in every service industry, but they can provide customers with much higher levels of connectivity and a means by which to resolve issues faster. Status updates, for example, can take the form of simple automated messages sent to a smartphone or email address, enabling customers to access the same information about deployed assets as the manufacturer.

Don't Miss the Next Field Service Conference

Delivering faster, smarter field service results for customers is becoming easier thanks to the technologies available to service departments. But many organizations are still struggling to integrate new solutions into their workflows.

Accelerating digital transformation is set to be a key topic at the next event in the Field Service conference series. Don't miss the Conference for Leaders in Customer Success, Service & Support happening from November 16^th to 18^th at the JW Marriott in Palm Springs, California.

Download the agenda today.