Majority of Field Service Engineers or technicians are considered to be indirect users of IT Tools when it comes to Field Service Automation in developing economies. While, I say this, I admit that there would be disagreements and exceptions and people will also site logical reasons for this kind of industry practice. However, the fact still remains unchanged and today; we are going to discuss the impact of the indirect automation of field service activities.
While field service engineers or technicians are highly active and direct users of automation tools in the entire field service operations of a company in the advanced or developed economies, the story is very shabby in the developing economies. Field service engineers have little or no control on field service activities. They highly rely on service centers & customer call center for most of the communication happening between the customer and the company representatives. All this results into under utilization of field service resources, delay in customer service, communication gaps, dissatisfaction amongst customers, high percentage of un-productive calls, loss of AMC Opportunities, and many more service related revenue loss.
Field service engineers who may not have actually contributed to the trouble faced by customers due to delayed service, miscommunication, etc are left with no options but to face the customer rage. Thus, they also get de-motivated and lose faith in their employer and probably think of shifting loyalty in the near future. Ultimately, it is a double loss to the principal or the parent company which on one hand has dissatisfied customers and on the other hand de-motivated employees. A good way to explain all this would have been to bring a real-life example on the board, describing each step and scrutinizing them on merit. There is nothing to worry because I am going to do that soon in my next post and clearly explain how empowering the field service engineers with the right tools can substantially improve the service efficiency. Before I sign-off, I would like to ask you a question which shall also help me to bring forward more business challenges faced in the field service industry in my future discussions and also present better ways to address the problems keeping in mind the best practices in the service industry. Here it goes – >
Do you think that a right mix of good educational background, relevant skill-set and industry experience are must-haves for good field service engineers considering rapid upgrades and automation of the services processes directly related to the day-to-day field service activities (KRAs) of the engineers?
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