Skip to main content

no one told you when to run


From the clients perspective, what is the perfect service call? "To interpret my field conditions and apply a solution which resolves the issue immediately and ensures trouble-free long-term operation. Delivered by a professional, courteous, empathetic, appropriately skilled, years of experience, materials required for repair, a good listener, and one that treats me as if I am their only customer; amen"!



As you might expect the perfect service call is really a blend of attitudes, attributes, and capabilities. The trick is, while we all may agree that these aspects make the perfect service call, endeavoring to achieve these results is becoming increasingly more difficult. Our customers, with their visibility and awareness of our activities, raise the bar regarding the level of service that we need to provide. Let's unpack a few of these elements:



  • Appropriately skilled:  haven't we all had this discussion in the past?  My workers are all highly skilled, just look at their credentials (union and nonunion have the same vague responses). How exactly do you send the "right skilled worker" when the client calls you with a problem of "too hot"? The only way that we are going to get appropriately skilled workers is to understand exactly what's going on in the field, preferably long before the customer.  In order to achieve this you should have on your roadmap the ability to ingest, interpret, and take action on device information (IoT).
  • Years of experience:  are we all facing this massive challenge. Our worker communities are constantly changing and experience in the future will need to come from an individual as well as artificial intelligence based models that you have put around your service business. Start today because the information required to feed algorithms and learning models is significant.
  • Materials required:  you've heard me say it in the past, it is time to dump the work order management systems. Today we need asset management to really help us understand when we need to do service and maintenance. Naturally connected to assets are materials required, which should be able to communicate requirements before you send your worker to the job site. 



The service company of the future, that is the one which has not been completely commoditized, will prepare now and embrace these elements for years to come.  Did you miss the starting gun?  Good luck!



-----

Next post:  how do you qualify field workers?

-----
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In$pired

As the steam from Avid Andy's coffee fogged his glasses on this crisp January morning, he reflected on last year and thought enthusiastically about the year ahead.   Sometimes the noise of business is deafening, we rarely take the time to contemplate our moves, instead are often thrown one direction or another.   Hey, face it, if you are reading posts to gain perspective you fall in the group of folks who pride themselves as obsequious hoop-jumpers.   We live to help others and expect that all of those around us feel the same way.   I just love Influential Irene.   Okay, it is out in the open, she is an inspiration for me and so many others.   Irene reminds folks every year, without fail, these three statements which she fondly refers to as "the punchline" (although this is no joke).   Businesses, of any size, will be successful if they remember that it is people that make a company.   Put this advice into practice, today: Sincerity |...
Post a Comment
Read more

expert at everything...not a problem

Well... I would say sometimes there certainly is a perceived notion that one person is an expert at everything. For the worker "everything" may be defined as the specific area in which you were hired or are constantly scheduled. Our opinions are frequently influenced off of past experience, or information we've received from their coworkers. Unfortunately this only gives us partial insight to that workers expertise and often is limited to their most recent history. Narrowly focused accounting is made of the skills that this individual possess. Come on, can't we figure out a way to leverage all of the skills of a particular worker? One of the challenges has always been that relationship between the activities which need to be accomplished and the myriad skills of individuals within your workforce. In addition, even if you could inventory and get a pretty good handle on the skill sets, they are constantly changing (with any luck) and thus the ineffective process of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Single Point of Entry

Cloud platforms, with all of their interconnected tools and functions, are perceived by some as overwhelming.  Sure change is hard, yet it meets considerable resistance when the worker must deal with too many factors, such as: their anxiety related to computing having too many choices Both of these, along with many others not mentioned, make it too easy to revert back to comfortable habits.  This is the reason that so many organizations stop at email and file management on their transformation journey.  One solution to be considered is allowing the workers to get comfortable with a single point of entry (SPoE).  That is a single application that can serve as the launching pad for all digital tools.   A well executed SPoE provides value for the office and remote workers alike.  Imagine that you had just one business application, a single place that you would travel to and jump in to meaningful digital tools.  Sound familiar?  Sure, f...
Post a Comment
Read more