For many years, countless companies have traditionally thought of field service operations as simply part of the “cost of doing business.” And it was costly and fraught with problems. Technicians all too often arrived late, causing customers to disrupt their schedules. They often came without having the right parts to fix the problem.
That led to one or more additional visits, increased downtime for the unit to be repaired and unhappy customers. Today, however, that’s changing, and the movement to turning what once was a cost center into a profit center is well underway. For a growing number of businesses, the catalyst of this transformation is mobile technology.
How do you go about transforming field services operations into a true profit center? First, you need to redefine the role of your field services personnel from strictly repair technicians to de facto customer representatives. With access to the right information, your workforce can offer new products and services that provide additional value to customers. In this capacity, they help increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, while garnering new revenues for the business.
Second, you must provide your field services workforce with the tools they need to make the most of their new customer relationship opportunities. That’s where mobility comes in to play.
Mobility-Driven ROI
It’s well understood that the cost of retaining existing customers is significantly lower than acquiring new ones. Since field service professionals are most likely the workers who have the most contact with customers, they are best positioned to keep current customers happy. But to decrease service costs, increase first-visit fixes and provide value-added products and services, they need the right tools. Foremost among these are reliable mobility solutions that will offer an excellent return on investment (ROI) for your organisation.
People and Parts Management
What are your assets? Who are your assets? Where are your assets? A powerful mobile solution can streamline field services asset management – whether the assets are workers or technology or both.
With real-time mobile communications, workers can receive work orders throughout the day, allowing dispatchers to route them to the nearest customer and reducing both response and idle time. They can also send workers to customers they already have established good relationships with from past service calls. In addition, your mobile solution can help you manage parts more efficiently – significantly reducing the number of calls that cannot be resolved on the first visit because of unavailable parts – resulting in more efficient workers and more satisfied customers.
Ending the Paper Chase
The bane of streamlined field services is manual processes. In a paper-based field services environment, work orders, invoices, warranty information, customer comments and other data must be filled out on forms and then returned to the office and manually input into spreadsheets, databases and enterprise management systems. It’s time-consuming, inefficient and susceptible to inaccuracies and can cause delays that trigger penalties in service contracts.
A mobile field services system eliminates manual processes and allows workers to receive electronic work orders, capture customer signatures and accept payment – all on their mobile devices. Mobility time savings increase dollar savings by allowing workers to make more calls each day, improve single visit repair rates, reduce billing errors and enhance customer satisfaction.
Access to Business Information
Field service mobility systems also maximise the availability of business information for field service representatives and business intelligence for the entire enterprise. In the field, workers can look up customers’ historical data including the products they are currently using.
This information can make it easier for them to diagnose problems and know which parts they’ll need – reducing the likelihood of repeat visits or risk of customer dissatisfaction.
Access to contract and product information on their mobile devices also makes it easier for representatives to increase revenues by performing preventive maintenance as well as cross-selling and upselling. The result is greater customer loyalty and retention.
Enhanced ROI
For a growing number of businesses, field service strategies are changing rapidly as tech-savvy management teams redirect their strategic focus from cost center to profit center. For these companies, deploying mobile field service solutions increases ROI by being more customer-oriented and by doing business more efficiently and cost-effectively.