Service organizations are operating in a continuously changing environment where technology is helping them turn challenges into competitive differentiators. To keep up, though, the technicians and engineers who perform installations, repairs, and maintenance need the right information to succeed. From a service delivery perspective, organizations focus on tracking the execution of work, but very few have developed an on-demand, digital knowledge platform to help technicians troubleshoot issues in the field. The experience a customer receives from a well-run service organization is the face of a business and therefore, it’s critical for service leaders to prioritize the success of their technicians.
A day in the life of a service technician
Imagine you’re a new field technician and a customer is having a problem with one of their assets. After connecting it to a diagnostic machine, an error code appears you’ve never seen before.
What do you do next? Do you have access to a service manual or mobile app to help troubleshoot this issue? Are the tools at your disposal intuitive and user-friendly? With other tasks piling up, how much time can you afford to spend flipping through a manual looking for a solution? Meanwhile, your customer is getting upset because the machine is down, and your manager is asking for an update.
Unfortunately, this is the reality for many technicians and their customers across all service industries. Service organizations waste time, money, and resources without an on-demand platform that connects issues with solutions and guides field workers through the repair process. Ask yourself this – the last time your car was making a funny noise, was your first thought to open a service manual, or did you go straight to Google or YouTube?
Supporting the new workforce with digitalization
Economic, business, and technology trends are causing a dramatic shift in the modern workforce. While attrition rates for newer employees are skyrocketing, service organizations are seeing their most experienced employees retire. If new employees don’t have the right tools and support, they are more likely to leave for other jobs that better enable them to succeed in the field.
High attrition rates can directly impact your margins due to the increase in costs associated with hiring, onboarding, and enablement. Moreover, low employee morale, high turnover rates, and customer experience issues can damage your company’s reputation, leading to lower profits and revenue. Service organizations need a streamlined, on-demand, digitized solution that empowers new service employees for success and improves customer satisfaction.
Mitigating risk
While advanced technology allows businesses to rapidly change their products and services to gain a competitive edge, employee knowledge bases are often unprioritized. Not providing technicians with the most up-to-date product information poses significant risks.
Without the most up-to-date information, your field service technicians may use inefficient processes and suboptimal parts when maintaining and repairing equipment and other assets. As a result, your business will face increased repair and maintenance costs due to poor asset management, ultimately affecting your profitability.
When field service employees can’t access the information they need, they’re more likely to use on-demand platforms such as Google and YouTube for on-site guidance and help. Without consistent repair processes across your entire workforce, you risk increased repair and maintenance costs, longer repair times, lower satisfaction rates, and negative customer experiences.
An intelligent technician enablement platform can address these challenges by ensuring the right employees access the right information at the right time. Combining service manuals with a parts catalog adds context to your knowledge base, creates the best experience for your techs, and increases first-time fix rates in the field.
Planning for the future
Many service organizations have started exploring solutions that leverage artificial intelligence and augmented reality to better enable their techs in the field. While this might be the future, most businesses have not structured their data in a way that can be used by this technology. The data transformation journey needs to be prioritized today to use the solutions of tomorrow.
Syncron’s technician enablement solutions provide immediate value to the workforce today while also establishing a framework to promote data quality. Data quality remains the largest hurdle for companies to overcome on their journey to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Rather than taking on the direct cost of structuring data within the company, leverage Syncron Parts Catalog and Service Knowledge to realize benefits today and enable innovation in the future. Learn more about what Syncron can do for you by talking to a service enablement specialist today.