Why You Should Focus More On The Customer Experience

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies

Service organizations must leverage technology to improve customer service, not just drive cost out of their operations.

Measuring the success of a field service automation project has traditionally relied on key metrics like first-time fix rates, work order completion, fuel cost reduction, and other cost/productivity indicators. Increasingly, though, customer satisfaction has been the leading driver of field service improvement programs.

According to a recent Aberdeen report, Evolution of the Field Service Business: Optimizing the Field Service Chain, 68 percent of survey respondents cited customer satisfaction as the most critical metric that defines service success. First-time fix rates were a distant third at 38 percent. Overall service cost ranked even lower, with just 28 percent of respondents listing it among the most critical metrics.