Field Services Management Remains a Big Focus Area for organizations

There is an increasing focus among field service organizations to optimize their service order truck rolls (a situation wherein a technician is required to be dispatched in a truck to a customer’s location for service, such as to install, move, or reconfigure an item of equipment or perform some other form of technical service). It is important to understand here that organizations incur significant expenses every time a technician is dispatched to a customer location. According to a report released by the Technology Service Industry Association, the cost of a service order truck roll exercise is upwards of $1,000 – this clearly indicates that service order truck rolls are an expensive proposition because it involves technician wages, unbillable travel time, administrative cost, vehicle fuel, vehicle maintenance as well as challenges such as technician unavailability for revenue-producing activities.

Clearly, there is a pressing need for efficient field services management. Efficient field services management holds the key because it can get frustrating for field service organizations when they have to deal with No Fault Found (NFF) dispatches – for example,if there is any issue fixed by technicians in less than five minutes it is nothing but a waste of an organization’s time and resource.

Another hassle for field service organizations is the low first-time fix – in fact, a study conducted by Aberdeen Group 25% of all service order truck roll calls require at least one additional visit to resolve customer needs, often owing to the dispatch of an unqualified technician, the absence of the right part or tools, or failure to account for special conditions in the service area, such as lack of access, etc. Field Services Management is surely a high priority area for organizations.

Efficient field services management can go a long way in addressing the larger issue of negative customer experience. Too many customer inquiries over service order truck rolls can create a poor customer experience – after all, unhappy customers are not never a good thing for field service organizations – imagine customers waiting for days without internet service or a working washing machine.

There will be a need to drive enhanced efficiencies given the challenges posed by the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) for service order truck rolls. According to a forecast by Business Insider, there will be $34 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, up from $10 billion in 2015. This effectively means that there will be an even bigger requirement for more and more service order truck rolls as there will be more customer demand for installation and configuration of the new technology. And there is a cost pressure for field service organizations, in terms of sending a technician on a maintenance call as prices per device decrease given dropping manufacturing costs and rising competition rises.

The road ahead for field service organizations is a tough one.