How to develop a field service team you can trust
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If one of your company’s challenges is installing or servicing technical equipment in the field, I know at least one thing that’s been interfering with your sleep more often than usual.
That one thing is staffing. More specifically, being able to respond to your customers’ needs for providing service at their locations. Trying to figure out how to deploy some new technology across 23 states in less than a month. Wondering how to fix every circuit board in business-critical devices throughout North America. Or whatever debacle you’re currently wrestling with.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a simple solution? Like someone you could just email and things got done without you having to do it? If you could create the field service team of your dreams, what would it take to keep you sleeping soundly night after night?
First, I’m guessing you’d want it to have a broad reach, be consistent and predictable, and deliver only ideal candidates. That makes sense. You never worry when Curtis from Spokane is headed to a customer’s office, but that Tyler in Scottsdale isn’t exactly a people person. So you want to make sure you have access to people who are technically competent and nice to other humans. Plus, you need them to be everywhere. Tonopah. Topeka. Two Harbors. And Toronto, to name a few.
How would you know you could trust those technicians to do the job right and treat your customers well? Three ways. First, you would vet them and their skills thoroughly. Second, you’d make sure they knew exactly what they’d encounter and what they’d need so they were prepared to handle everything on their first visit. Third, you’d develop a relentless system for accountability, measuring everything from their performance to what your customers say about their soft skills.
A key part of that accountability is knowing what to measure. The most common measure for companies counting on field technicians and others to deal with customer issues is what’s known as first call resolution. But while it may be the most common, we don’t think it’s the best at telling you how well your team does at keeping customers happy. That’s why you’ll probably prefer a more exacting statistic known as first run rate (FRR), meaning the customer’s service need is handled to their complete satisfaction the first time. FRR is how we measure our team’s performance.
Why do we think you’d prefer FRR? It provides an excellent snapshot of the realities of field service. After all, service visits generally involve some kind of interruption, delay, or gap in productivity for your customer. Maybe you’re waiting for something to be installed. Maybe an existing system needs a critical update. Or maybe something just isn’t working. Your customer cannot return to normal productivity until the situation is resolved.
If your technician arrives on time, has everything needed to accomplish the task, and takes care of it as quickly as promised, you’ll have a happy customer. But if the technician is late or lacks the ability or resources to do what needs to be done, that customer will be frustrated or even furious. We’ve found FRR is the best way to verify that the technician arrives in the right place, at the right time, with the right knowledge and resources to get the job done to your customer’s satisfaction. (How do we do? An Aberdeen study found that “good” field service terms achieve an FRR or 88%. Our team’s is 97%.)
The other thing you’d likely want for your field services team is clear communication that keeps you and your customer connected with the technicians who perform your work. That way, everyone knows who is going to show up, when they’ll get there, and how long the work is likely to take. If the technician encounters an unexpected complication, you’ll want them to share the details with you so you can get to the root cause and take steps to keep it from happening again.
The other aspect of communication is encouraging feedback from your customers about how the process was handled and any suggestions for improving things in the future. You can share that feedback with the technicians so they know how they’re being perceived — and just as important, so they can see their expertise and manner is appreciated.
Bringing it all together, if you wanted to establish the field services team of your dreams, you’d need to find an extensive, highly vetted staff, develop accountability measures that provided useful information for every service call, and create a communications infrastructure that kept everyone working together. Or you could simply call me.
Jeff Medley is the CEO and founder of Netfor, https://www.netfor.com/