How Field Service Automation Can Better Your Customer Service
Retaining customers is a challenge for most industries, but more so in the field service industry. Unlike other desk-based professionals who have complete access to customer history at the click of a button, field service technicians often have to remediate on-site with limited data. Add in unrealistic customer expectations, and it becomes a genuine struggle for field service professionals having to balance it all.
But the reality is your customers don’t care about the problems your field technicians are facing or how outdated your operating systems are. All they are bothered about is an excellent customer service experience. In a Salesforce survey an overwhelming 91% of polled respondents said they would make a repeat purchase after a positive customer experience. This shows that if you want to thrive in the field service industry, providing a positive customer experience is crucial.
A customer-focused approach based on advanced field service automation solutions gives you a distinct advantage over your competitors. To avoid losing your customers and risking a loss of revenue, you can use automated technologies to build up the customer experience, right from a speedy resolution of issues to providing live updates on-site and more.
Why Field Service Automation?
Using an FSM solution is an excellent way to ensure customer loyalty. Gone are the days when you managed field service employees and customers using outdated systems that led to slow response times and disgruntled customers. When your field service is automated, your deskless staff can access information about customer history in real-time and be provided with the right tools, allowing them to complete the work at hand to your customer’s satisfaction.
Your field agents are most probably the only people from your company with whom your customers interact on a personal level. To maintain a good customer relationship, it is, therefore, necessary that you equip your technicians with the latest technical know-how to perform their job to the best of their abilities. A robust FSM breaks down the silos in communication, improves response times, and provides a bouquet of personalized services to customers that keep them hooked to your services.
How Field Service Management Improves Customer Experience
Read on to know how your field service company can use field service management technologies to deliver an extraordinary customer experience.
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Speed Up Response Time
An FSM platform provides deskless workers a simple route to customers’ histories, so they have all the vital information at hand necessary to complete their work effectively. The FSM integrates with the CRM, ERP, billing, and payroll systems and imparts critical customer needs data. When your technicians’ mobile devices are connected to your system, they receive real-time information, which allows them to attend to the customer’s needs more efficiently in a shorter period. With less time spent digging up customers’ histories, field staff can devote more time to providing top-notch services and building long-lasting relationships with customers.
Deliver Personalized Support/Touch
Today’s customers are a pampered lot, and they expect personalized service from the brands they engage with. 52% of customers expect customized offers; however, 66% feel they’re treated like numbers. Customers crave the human touch, and if you can do that, then well, there is no stopping you. Through the FSM, your service agents can access customers’ order history and better understand their pain points. By including customer preferences, you can offer services tailored to an individual customer’s needs.
Streamline tasks while on the job
Having access to customers’ data is vital if your field employees are to do a great job. The FSM platform collates customers’ details and syncs them to the field technician’s device. This integrated approach gives technicians access to the work order and history to identify recurring bottlenecks. Further, field agents can make available on-site work updates in real-time and send them to the office staff to monitor the job’s progress.
Capture Vital Information On-Site
Sometimes, field workers may collect vital information when interacting with customers on-site that could be crucial for future interactions. Manually noting down the information can be time-sucking. Instead, technicians can use their mobile app to feed data into the FSM platform via the cloud. It does away with errors and ensures the complete noting down of information. Doing so will provide the proper context for workers assigned to that customer at a later date.
Optimize Scheduling
On the face of it, you may feel scheduling is not that important, but it is a fact that below-par scheduling can cause time-lags and derail your relationship with your customer. Yet, a Verizon survey revealed that 25% of field service organizations still use whiteboards and spreadsheets for job scheduling. The right FSM platform streamlines job scheduling and dispatching to ensure the workflow is suitable for customers and technicians. Thus, field technicians are only allocated jobs that fall on the same routes, while customers only get to select appointment slots compatible with field employees’ routes.
Improves communication
In today’s digitally connected age, customers expect real-time updates and fast turnaround times. Interfacing with customers from start to finish is key to success in the field service industry. The FSM platform sends automated and real-time alerts to customers of technicians’ arrival times and informs them of unexpected delays. In addition, customers can proactively interact with customer portals to know the status of their queries. Offering customers several touchpoints to connect and keeping them in the know of things will further cement your relationship.
Conclusion
In a world obsessed with instant gratification, all customers care about is having their problem solved FAST. They don’t care whether you are busy or whether your field agents have the bandwidth to solve their problems. What they expect from you is a speedy resolution of their issues. Adopting advanced FSM technologies enables you to serve your customers better, keep them happy and increase your profit margin.
