The Connection Between Customer-centric Field Service and Revenue

 
Picture how your field service looks through the eyes of a typical customer. In this example, you operate a rooftop solar panel installation firm. Your customer wants to take advantage of free energy but she’s nervous. She’s worried about damage to the roof, aesthetics, grid parity, etc. She had to use up her personal time at work to be home for the installation. On top of that, she’s worried about when the technician will arrive and how that interaction will go. By the time the tech arrives, she’s on pins and needles.

If her experience with the field service technician goes well, everybody wins. However, if there is a significant delay or a problem, this story will end very differently. In the age of social media, it only takes one bad customer experience to tarnish a brand, as companies like Uber, Starbucks and Amazon have discovered recently.

The Financial Impact of Mobile Tech for Field Service

The good news is that you can gain greater control over the customer experience by providing your field service with the right mobile tools. Research by Aberdeen showed that market leaders are those with a better mobility strategy for field service, which pays off in several ways.

Best-in-class companies relied on a well-equipped mobile field service to secure an 11-percent advantage in customer satisfaction over mobile laggards. That improved customer experience translated into a 9-percent advantage in service revenue, a 7-percent advantage in service contract renewals and a 3-percent boost to net promoter scores. When field service has access to more accurate customer information on mobile, they can provide a more satisfying customer experience.

3 Ways to Take Control of the Customer Experience

If you want to post financial wins like these, it’s not enough to simply know whether your field service technician arrived on time. According to Aberdeen, these are some of the transformative actions that help best-in-class companies take their customer experience to the next level:

• 44 percent invested in data-rich mobile tools to provide technicians with better access to information in the field.
• 41 percent used data to improve their forecasting of service demand and plan more accurately.
• 37 percent dialed up the frequency of training for field service technicians.

From the moment they arrive until the job is finished, field service technicians represent your brand. Think of your field service agents as an extension of your customer success team. They must strive to fully understand and deliver what was promised to the customer on the front end.

A Customer-centric Field Service Strategy

Take a closer look at your own current mobile solutions for field service. How will you use mobile to develop a more customer-centric organization? The best way to get started is to rewrite your field service strategy from the customer’s point of view. Make it a top priority to give field service the most accurate, up-to-date information about the customers. That way, field service agents can prepare for customer concerns. Through better planning and execution, you can take ownership of the customer experience.

The key is a powerful field service management application for your mobile workforce, delivered inside an intuitive, elegant UI. That’s what Skedulo does for you. Skedulo streamlines field service communications and logistics. Your company can develop a reputation for delivering services flawlessly – at the right time, in the right place and by the right team member.

There’s no question that an improved reputation in field service directly correlates to benefits like customer loyalty, referrals and brand lift. Skedulo already helps companies all around the world transform the way they manage and schedule their mobile workforce teams. Your company could be the next market leader in customer experience thanks to Skedulo’s native integration with Salesforce, the world’s leading CRM and business application platform.

Mobile has evolved and brought customer expectations with it. Now is your chance to get out ahead of the curve. Call for a free demo and discover what’s possible when you transform the way you manage and schedule your mobile workforce.