How to Improve Customer Service in Field Service

Providing field technicians with in-depth information and field service training can have a significant impact on your customers’ experiences. It can also lead to higher employee satisfaction and ease the talent gap pain that so many businesses are now experiencing.

What is Field Service Customer Experience?

In brief, a company’s field service team performs in-person services for a customer. Technicians with field service experience use it for everything from performing maintenance on hospital machines to fixing office cable connections.

From first contact to job completion, you can use traits and qualities like expertise, speed, communication, empathy, and proactivity throughout the customer journey to build better, more long-lasting customer relationships.

Why Field Service Customer Experience is Important

Customer field service has many elements, but it largely comes down to empathizing with and understanding fully what a customer is experiencing. For while customers rely on you for a quality product, they also want to be able to turn to you for help any time they need it.

The best field service programs focus on three points:

1. Being prepared. Technicians who are clear about scheduling and know what needs to be done ahead of time make customers more confident about the service call. By tracking on-time percentages and first-time fix rates, you ensure your technicians have everything necessary to arrive on time and perform the correct service.
2. Engaging. No matter what field service work is being performed, the focus should remain on the customer, thereby demonstrating the company is responsive to their needs and understanding of their problem.
3. Communicating. Customers thrive on transparent and empathetic communication. Whether in-person, by text or call, or through customer portal messaging, if field technicians can share relevant and useful information with customers, it enhances the entire experience.

Field service also helps put a face to your business and helps you make a good impression, particularly with customers whose only interaction with your company is through field technicians.

Different companies approach the field service customer experience differently, but by providing employees with the proper resources and support they need, you’re assured of delivering the support your customers appreciate and keep coming back to.

Customer Field Service Management

Field service management covers everything needed to manage field resources, including employees and equipment. It can encompass managing third-party contractors, ensuring parts availability, dispatching workers, empowering field service mobile workers, and updating customers in real time. Efficient field service management helps your organization gain a competitive edge by delivering seamless and memorable customer experiences that lead to increased customer loyalty and greater business growth.

Adopting a field service knowledge management approach simplifies information delivery to field service workers and delivers valuable insights that benefit all stakeholders. Benefits of an AI-driven field service management solution include:

• Automated scheduling. Real-time location tracking and appointment setting let you quickly and easily analyze and address employee whereabouts, a job’s urgency, and canceled projects. You can also use it to delegate job assignments to the most appropriate technician.
• Increased productivity. Field service technicians can spend a lot of time on paperwork. Field service knowledge management means you no longer have to pressure workers to hand in notes, manual receipts, or work orders. Technicians can input work and materials descriptions, log timing, and more. The data’s stored in the cloud and easily retrieved from anywhere, at any time, on any device.
• A better employee experience. Most field technicians prefer to spend minimal time on paperwork and maximum time on helping customers. Knowledge management empowers them to do just that. It can also reduce employee stress levels and boost job performance, positively affecting employee morale and customer satisfaction.
• A complete data view. With everyone on the same system accessing the same data, silos are broken down and teams can freely share expertise within a centralized database.
• Field service optimization. Using AI and automation in field service management streamlines operations and give field workers the information they need via their mobile phone or tablet.

While digital field service management benefits support agents, dispatchers, contractors, field workers, and contact center managers, it’s a bonanza for customers with high field service expectations, as you can use it to let them schedule appointments and get real-time updates on the channel of their choice.

Using Knowledge Management to Measure Field Service Customer Experience

Leveraging knowledge management for field services ensures:

1. Delivery of consistent customer experiences across companies, sectors, and channels. No one wants to start fresh each time they interact with your organization. When everyone has access to the same central repository, issues like data silos and fragmented content are a thing of the past.
2. Effective collaboration, as knowledge sharing helps technicians improve efficiency and eliminate second or third visits. It also shortens waiting times for customers.
3. Implicit information is simplified and organized. Most explicit data, such as manuals, memos, and instruction videos, are easy to document and access. Tacit knowledge, however, is more complex and can include things like customer relationship patterns and the company’s rapport with the customer.
4. Mitigates the effects of employer turnover by recording information in a centralized location where it’s accessible to everyone, including new hires.
5. Successful improvements drawn from a powerful analytic engine that delivers in-depth, useful insights into work practices and resource usage.

Ultimately field service knowledge management is the link between efficiency and customer service excellence. It enables your entire field services team to work together to deliver genuine value to your customers while helping you achieve your field service customer service goals.

Today, being able to diagnose a problem quickly, find the correct solution, and resolve an issue on a first visit has never been more integral to the success of field service performance. To ensure you’re getting it right, it’s essential to track these six crucial metrics.

1. Time-to-site. The less time it takes technicians to reach a site, the more time they spend doing their work, which helps win customer trust.
2. Jobs per day. This metric is a good measure of efficiency and can help confirm the right people are people assigned to the right jobs.
3. First-time fix rate. When technicians can finish jobs in one visit, it improves efficiency, cuts costs, and increase customer satisfaction.
4. Call volume. High call volumes can indicate a booming business, but they can also highlight issues in service delivery. Self-service portals, FAQs, and remote assistance can reduce support calls.
5. Customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are your number one barometer of success. Knowledge management software offers a complete view of your customers and helps field service technicians customize the customer experience.
6. Employee turnover. Field service is known to have high employee turnover, often due to manual processes and eroding worker morale. Optimizing field service with automation improves team spirit and satisfaction.

Enhanced productivity, greater job satisfaction, and excellent customer service are just a few advantages of adopting knowledge management for field services. There’s simply no faster and easier way to diagnose problems, find answers, and resolve issues, all of which are integral to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Contact us to learn more about how an AI-driven knowledge management solution like KMS Lighthouse can help your business improve customer service in field service.