Living in an era of risk and instability, it is more important than ever to ensure that the business can adapt to change, whether this is done through organisational structure, technology or transparency – or indeed a mix of all three.

As we bring to an end this series of excerpts from the Field Service News Think Tank Sessions Executive Briefing ‘Defining Customer Success’, Marc Tatarsky, Senior Vice President Marketing, GPS Insight/Fieldaware offers his reflections on the discussions and guidance for field service organisations seeking to deploy a customer success model to service delivery. 

“One of the most exciting and challenging aspects for service organisations, in contrast to, for example, a software firm like ourselves, where we have a dedicated team that’s focused on customer success, is how do you organise yourself? How do you instil a customer’s success programme? One that can be rolled out at scale for the organisation?” Tatarsky asks.

“I think, listening to everyone and as we talk through this, there’s much work to be done in identifying the drivers for each customer, understanding the needs of different users and stakeholders within the process, and understanding what they value, and then defining what can you do to help to define success for them.

“For most service organisations, the technician is the primary contact. That’s a heavy lift for that role to have to take on another thing to take a look at. Customer satisfaction is something that generally is in operations; it’s a by-product of what we’re measuring in operations already; however, customer success is a more deliberate approach to managing the customer as a whole.

“I think it takes something of an organisational change management approach to be able to drive this through the organisation; it’s certainly not something that can just be done in isolation.

“Certainly it is important to start getting that understanding of what the critical customer drivers are, but then you must also make sure that whatever structure you have within your service organisation, there is a complete and system-wide mind shift, and an awareness of the process shift that needs to take place.

“So it takes more than just the statement and objective but actually setting a vision, having someone that’s driving that vision throughout the organisation, educating and training. Then ultimately there must also be a process of measuring and rewarding, on elivering that customers success for your teams.”

Want to know more? Field Service News subscribers can access the full 17-page Executive Briefing report from this Think Tank Session on the link at the top of this feature. 

This edition of the Field Service ThinkTank Sessions is sponsored by FieldAware