Member Article

Enabling Customer Intelligence: 5 Traits of Service-Savvy Companies

By Mark Forrest, General Manager of Trimble Field Service Management

The success of your company hinges on many things, but one of the most critical is how your team performs in customer service. It is the customer experience that determines sales, profits and ultimately business success. According to Aberdeen’s State of Service Management: Forecast for 2012, companies with a 90 per cent or greater level of customer satisfaction reported higher retention, loyalty and profits compared to companies with less than 50 per cent customer satisfaction. Despite these findings, many businesses still remain sceptical about spending money to improve service, because they don’t see a direct relationship with return on investment (ROI).

So what does service excellence mean? It means efficient scheduling, punctual arrival, fixing the problem the first time, and employing front-line staff that are excellent ambassadors for your company. Trimble, a leading provider of fleet and field service management solutions, recently commissioned an independent study to survey directors and senior managers operating large field-based work forces in the UK about their concerns and goals. The report, entitled The Road Ahead: The Future of Field Service Delivery, found that 93 per cent regard the field-based workforce to be the ‘company face’ and see improving customer service as the top priority. These companies want customers to want to come back to do business with them.

Findings from the report revealed several traits that set service-savvy companies apart from their competition and the following five factors outline how you can take service from good to great.

1) Achieve business excellence from the top-down

A major success factor for businesses is underpinned by business leaders’ involvement and understanding of what services are important to their customers. But how many CEO’s and senior managers know how long it takes to answer a service call, or if their workers inform customers when they are going to be late? A determining factor in customer satisfaction is how your company, as a whole, treats each customer. Involved leaders need to know the right level of resources and competencies to provide to help their staff succeed and ultimately improve their competitive edge.

2) Promise against expectation, deliver more and communicate

We found that customers are more disappointed by unmet promises than they are by no promise at all. A study recently commissioned by Trimble and which surveyed 1,000 British adults revealed that effective delivery is critical to a positive service experience, but many companies are not meeting their customer’s needs. Tardy arrivals, missing deliveries and the inability to specify a time and date for arrival are the key contributors which have left consumers feeling let down by field service delivery staff. It is no longer acceptable to say “anytime during the day” as a delivery slot. In fact one third of the respondents have to take annual, sick or unpaid leave to wait in for a delivery or service, an unacceptable figure given today’s busy, demanding consumer.

Service-savvy companies set realistic expectations and then exceed them, and if they cannot meet the expectation, they let the customer know as quickly as possible. These expectations apply to every level of staff, from the call centre to the field staff. For a company to be truly successful, everyone must be aligned in supporting the company brand.

3) Ongoing training is the key to success

A business is only as good as its employees and to achieve best-in-class customer service, successful companies hire top performers and give them consistent training and coaching to ensure that they do their jobs well whilst promoting company values. Nearly half of those surveyed in the Road Ahead report hold regular customer service training sessions and a further 31 per cent meet frequently to discuss how to interact with customers. Simple things like sharing behavioural codes of conduct (33 per cent) and providing a uniform/dress code (23 per cent) also proved important when portraying the company image.

Additionally, providing an employee with the training and tools necessary to communicate easily with fellow field workers is a key element to instilling the right culture, as it provides a sense of community and sharing. Messenger services and social media are emerging instruments that businesses are starting to use to address the need of giving mobile workers a sense of belonging by providing an instant, informal way of reaching a group or individual with updates, information or advice.

4) Foster a service culture

Ensuring an employee has a good understanding of company values and how to portray a positive image out in the field is only half of the battle to achieving frontline success. Company culture goes hand in hand with this and can only be achieved if the employee maintains a positive working attitude. In a time when products are so evenly matched in terms of quality and price, the key to a customer renewing or switching contracts often comes down to the positive experience they receive in service. Successful companies create a customer-centric culture based on service excellence, and when a company exceeds those expectations, it’s clear that its employees understand company standards and will go the extra mile to make sure they meet them.

However, managing a mobile workforce is not an easy task and in order to achieve a positive status quo, fleet, service and operations managers must be able to maintain contact with their employees and keep them engaged in the business. The latest Trimble study revealed that over two thirds of those interviewed agreed mobile workforces must be made aware of company campaigns and values if they are to reflect a positive corporate brand out in the field.

5) Optimise workforce productivity

Productivity is a critical component to managing a well-run, field-based operation. Service-savvy companies know that placing increased strategic emphasis on employing solutions that offer real-time visibility and control allow businesses to react to changes during the working day leading to a more informed, productive workforce.

The need for technology investment was highlighted by the Trimble Road Ahead report with just 14 per cent of the field service directors able to strongly agree that their current systems are fit for purpose and 41 per cent saying they were forced to rely on ‘old-fashioned’ technology. This suggests that many organisations do not realise the full potential of modern technology to increase workforce efficiency, a crucial factor in achieving field service excellence.

All businesses have the potential to achieve customer service excellence through applying the right focus and resource. Obtaining the intelligence to make real-time informed decisions and communicating effectively with customers is of the utmost importance to maintaining brand reputation and delivering service excellence. And once you get a company culture in place that positions the customers at its heart and empowers the workforce with the right tools and ethos, this positivity will resonate throughout the field to create a positive customer experience leading to improved customer retention and ultimately better profitability.

About Trimble Field Service Management

Trimble’s Field Service Management Division provides visibility into field and fleet operations so businesses can streamline efficiency and increase productivity. The Field Service Management suite includes fleet management, work management and scheduling, worker safety and mobility solutions that transform the effectiveness of work, workers and assets in the field. The cloud-based portfolio allows Trimble to offer customers industry-specific, enterprise-level solutions for exceptional performance and ease of use.

Visit: www.trimble.com/fsm.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Cameron .