According to Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being green” – or is it? For many businesses, being “green” can have an unexpected economic benefit.
There is an increasing trend for service organizations to utilize third-party subcontractors as either a supplement or extension of their field service workforce. A recent study reported greater than 75% of responding organizations use third-party networks for field service support. This is likely related to many organizations trying to operate with a reduced service workforce while simultaneously seeking improved efficiency and satisfied customers with increased service workload volumes.
Nothing constructive can occur on a sustainable basis without field service engineers who operate with passion. Field service is a rewarding but hard business. A leader’s ability to generate organizational passion through a mobile-based workforce is based on strong leadership skills as well as organizational structure, development, and technology.
Field service can sometimes feel like a thankless job. Customers are often unhappy from the outset of a service engagement because the job of the field service professional is to fix something that is broken. Customers no longer view their relationship with your company as a single transaction, but as an ongoing relationship. Today’s service professionals are faced with a bit of an uphill battle.
I’ve witnessed significant progress among field service organizations this year. If asked to summarize what’s happening, I’d conclude that in 2018 field service has become more strategic. Born from the recognition that field service can be a profit center versus a cost center, companies have begun to realize that being more intentional about how they’re delivering field service can truly transform their business.
We’ll be featuring lawncare company TruGreen for an upcoming Field Technologies’ cover story, discussing how the company has been on a mission since 2014 to put technologies in place to transform its operations and better serve its customers. While I was talking with Ken DeWitt, CIO of TruGreen, for the article, he spoke about how one of the keys to success with a customer-centric approach is to have a solid strategy that guides every aspect of your tactical approach.
In this user conference interview, Sarah Nicastro from Field Technologies Magazine shares the evolution of customer service to customer experience and how field service organizations are using technology to make this fundamental shift.
On the enterprise level, Field Service Management (FSM) software continues its march towards a state of relative maturity. Mobile penetration is near 100%, making the barrier-to-entry for powerful, lightweight tools lower than ever. Technology, of course, is never finished, so the question becomes: What’s the next frontier for service management? Routing and order is solidifying; service excellence is becoming the norm, so now is the time to optimize.
We rely on the “work order” to complete the call transaction and capture service data. Work orders are important and recognized as the nucleus of field service operations. Leaders today, however, have other business drivers ranging from selling services to technician recruiting and retention on their mind as they learn to think beyond the work order. The Mobile Digital Mission (MDM) is the business process and technology architecture that goes beyond work orders and addresses major service business objectives.
It’s time for businesses that already use an EMM (enterprise mobility management) or MDM (mobile device management) solution to circle back and conduct an assessment. And it’s long overdue for many non-users to evaluate and introduce EMM for the first time.
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