Predictive Intelligence: Reactive To Proactive To Predictive Service Excellence

By Aly Pinder Jr., sr. research analyst for service management, Aberdeen Group, www.aberdeen.com

Why the link between a customer and a solution is becoming even more important.

To react to or predict future failures? It is a lot easier to be right about an event or outcome if you have the luxury of “forecasting” events that have already occurred (i.e., a weatherman who only needs to give yesterday’s forecast). Unfortunately, field service organizations do not have this luxury of waiting until after a failure to support customers. Service organizations must be right every time and ready to service customers in a time of need. In order to deliver a high level of quality in regard to field service, organizations must coordinate technicians, dispatchers, parts, vehicles, equipment, and even the customer ensuring that they all work together to get the right answer to the problem the first time. Making this even more difficult, oftentimes these resources aren’t where they’re supposed to be within the service network.