The Emerging Field Service Officer

On October 3-4, 2006, analyst firm AberdeenGroup held its inaugural Chief Service Officer’s (CSO) Summit in Boston. The summit addressed the growing concerns of effectively managing aftermarket service, and a growing trend of companies establishing a service executive – the CSO. While the number of companies employing someone with the official title of CSO is still low, there are plenty of companies with VPs and directors of field service. Appointing a senior-level executive to oversee field service operations is a smart move. Aberdeen’s own September 2005 study, The Emergence Of The Chief Service Officer, states that “companies reporting having director-level or higher positions overseeing service outpaced those companies with no senior service management in such areas as percentage of overall revenues derived from service.”

At the CSO Summit, more than 150 service executives from top companies (such as Xerox, Avaya, and Siemens Medical) gathered to share their best service practices for increasing service profits, overcoming logistical challenges, and implementing technologies in workshops and panel presentations. I spoke with several of the attendees, including Terrie Campbell, VP of managed services for IKON Office Solutions; Lisa Jensen, VP of Xerox Services, New England Operations; and Richard DeFelice, director of aftermarket services, RF Power Amplifier Group, Andrew Corp. All three said they’d learned something from at least one of their peers that they could use to address a problem or improve a process within their own operations.

If you weren’t at the summit, you can still benefit from the stories and strategies presented by these industry leaders in Boston. Click here to view case studies of select companies that presented at the summit, and click here to access Aberdeen’s summit findings, collected and compiled through the duration of the summit.