Skip to main content

Didn't you double check?


Apparently a battle ensued last night between Influential Irene's hair and pillow as her golden locks now looked as if she had just stuck her finger in an electrical socket.  Business travel was not Irene's favorite; however, she understood how important it is to get out of the office.  A nice hot shower, that would get everything back on track.  Much to her dismay only cold water flowed from her shower nozzle.  Torn now between frustration and empathy, as all service companies know that electro-mechanical equipment fails.  Hotels highest profile items, hot water, power, and no bed bugs should be checked and double-checked.  Now the actions, or in this case lack thereof, will likely cost this organization immediate and long-term costs.



As Irene made her way downstairs the roar of complaining guests filled the lobby.  How is it possible that this happened?  Conscientious technicians typically correct these errors during their testing or observing phases.  Her thoughts bounced back and forth just like a ping-pong ball between the left and right sides of her brain.  Irene started to run through some possibilities:

  • In a hurry and / or careless?  possibly a late night call after a full day.  Remedy | checklists, digital or paper and the discipline to run from top to bottom
  • Lack of skills?  often a convenient catch-all; however, many times simply BS.  Remedy | product documentation at site, FAQ's posted, leverage of BOT (see previous posts)
  • Tech does not give a crap?  the longer a service manager has been in their position the higher likelihood of using this cop-out.    Remedy | while the aforementioned may be true the root cause is often traced back to your organizations culture.  How does that saying go about throwing rocks in glass houses?



While no technology can solve all of these challenges, augmented reality shows promise.  Once you believe folks are trying to do the right thing, your world will open to many possibilities.  For me, if sensors and logic can assist someone when they need help, without compromising them amongst their peers, bring it on!



-----

Next post:  who's data is it?
----- 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Speaking AI (artifical intelligence)

You're talking but I can't hear you.   Everyone can certainly understand this condition; the "Peanuts" parents who sounded exactly like your own, your significant other while you watch your favorite game on TV, or most importantly a work colleague or partner which you are attempting to communicate a thought or vision.   All of these, and many other examples, have plagued our organizations long past the childhood game of telephone (passing your words to another, and on to another, etc.).   So what?   What has changed?   Besides the velocity of products hitting the market, the requirements that we have for our business now needs to be interpreted by data scientists, yet another abstraction layer from the field conditions.   Think about this example; TODAY :   we often think in binary terms, if "x" happens do "y" …   take a sales person seeking potential leads by searching a system for the last time we made contact TOMMOR...
Post a Comment
Read more

months to aquire, moments to lose

It is just hard to imagine that one of the most common reasons maintenance contracts are lost is because people don't show up and don't pay attention to the details.   In many cases maintenance is an investment to keep the life of your asset running for a protracted period of time. However the length on many maintenance contracts is not even close to the life expectancy of that equipment, so if you don't really have any idea what maintenance is being performed then how do you really know if it's being done to your specification? Thus, it really boils down to business elements, assuming that you are actually performing the work, our focus needs to be on how you are differentiated. Let's take a look at a couple of the most common business-related reasons why people lose maintenance contracts. Not showing up ; managing contracts can be complicated between the sites, number of assets, and the frequencies at which items need to be maintained, can a...
Post a Comment
Read more

is seeing comprehending?

Oh yeah, visual inspections are why God gave us eyes.   There is not a single machine learning, IoT, computerized environment that can match the skills a human's brain can assess and deliver based on visual feedback. The trick is making sure that the person connected to those eyeballs actually knows what they are looking for!   Face it, aren't the best workers those that can recognize an issue long before it becomes a problem? So instead, is the challenge really not that they can visually see, but instead that they can comprehend and correlate potential challenges? While we have many different definitions for "wisdom" in context of this topic, I think about it as those individuals which have had the most experience, both good and bad. Coincidentally I am a firm believer that the best service people are those that make the most frequent mistakes. When I was in the field I had lots of experience screwing things up. The difference is that I would always check and tri...
Post a Comment
Read more