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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!



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Next post:  how do you qualify field workers?

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