How Live Video Is Transforming On-Site Maintenance

By Jim Dempsey, Panasonic Mobility Enterprise Business Development Manager

Most field service technicians aim to successfully complete all service calls on their first visit each day. For a majority of their calls they are expert at doing what’s necessary for the products they service. But those calls during which the equipment is less familiar or the repair is more complex, can cause delays, require return visits and overall added expense, not to mention reduced customer satisfaction. A growing trend to addressing this challenge is to connect field technicians to remote product experts using mobile video and audio conferencing on field service purpose-built tablets or handheld devices.

Video communication is now common in the consumer world where services like Google Hangouts and Skype let individuals and groups use the cameras and screens on any of their connected devices to talk with and see each other. And businesses have adopted the same technologies to create collaborative meetings in which the participants can see everyone else in the meetings.

Field service organizations are recognizing the potential advantages available and are increasingly moving toward implementing live video connections for their technicians. The Service Council reports that 18 percent of companies responding to its survey are building business cases for deploying “real-time video capture for live resolution support,” and an impressive 38 percent of companies are considering the technology for future deployment within five years.