The Field Service Disconnect

By Sumair Dutta, chief customer officer, The Service Council, www.theservicecouncil.com, sd@theservicecouncil.com

Organizations struggle with balancing strategic ambitions with on-the-ground execution.

The goal of field service organizations has traditionally been focused on cost containment and productivity enhancement. As such, these organizations have always looked to optimize their operations to enhance productivity metrics while keeping a strict eye on cost. However, as service organizations are now increasingly focused on customer satisfaction and revenue, these objectives are filtering down to the field force. Or so they should. Here is where our research points to a significant disconnect between goals set for field organizations at the strategic level and the improvements being sought at the field execution level.

Nearly two-thirds of organizations recently polled by The Service Council indicated that they had conducted a field service process review over the previous 12 months. While this number might seem low given the significant impact that field service has on the business, the proportion is higher than in years past and we expect more organizations to be focused on frequent field service process and performance reviews in the future.