If you are wondering how you can achieve a 22% increase in service revenue and a 14% decrease in service costs, then the secret can be found in being obsessive in the flawless execution of these key components on your field service journey.
If your warranty claim process is largely manual, it is more than likely this will lead to ‘warranty leakage’, where you ‘inadvertently’ provide a warranty service that falls outside the scope of your warranty program.
This is generally caused by a lack of visibility of accurate warranty data, both from a management viewpoint (i.e. where warranty costs are most likely to occur) and from a field service engineer viewpoint (i.e. what is covered by warranty).
The implementation of technology and business insights can make relevant warranty information available to key employees when needed.
Thinking about how you segment your customer markets, the value proposition you offer to each segment and how they then consume your products can help identify new target service markets.
Remember, in today's connected, always-on world, your customers business expectations bleed over from their personal experiences as a consumer.
Every positive interaction with a customer is an opportunity to up-sell, but for a customer service agent or field service engineer to do this, they must be empowered and enabled to identify the opportunity.
Whether it is selling additional products during a service visit or selling an extension or improved warranty package, your employees must be able to see what products are available and recommended, have stock to hand if it is a physical item and be able to transact at point of sale directly with the customer.
With the improved integration of commerce platforms with your customer service platforms, this can be easier than you think!
Put simply, the quicker you enable your field engineers to close and approve a customer work-order, the more you can speed up cash flow.
To achieve this, all field engineers must be equipped with mobile devices that enable customer approval and closure or work-orders, but more importantly, these devices should be fully integrated into your accounts receivable system to automatically generate customer invoices. Again, with the improved integration of commerce platforms payments could be taken there and then.
Inventory management is two-fold - firstly, ensuring you have the right parts on hand, or having visibility of nearby stock on another van, improves ‘first time fix’ rates. Secondly, understanding which parts are fast moving or failing more allows you to centrally stock the right levels.
Having the business insights to your overall part consumption, by job or by product is essential to reducing inventory levels.
The more Field Engineers you employ and the shorter the service calls, the more likely your business needs to optimise its service schedules.
Typically, plus 40 field engineers, with service calls less than 2 hours can reap large benefits in both headcount and fuel costs when routes are optimised. Furthermore, the implementation of on-the-fly scheduling engines allows you to respond to real-world scenarios like cancellations, urgent appointments, delays and traffic to maintain a high level of efficiency and customer satisfaction.