They cannot expect the person they are guiding to have the knowledge they do, so they mustn’t lose patience. Yet, at the same time, they shouldn’t lecture down to those they are helping, as this can drive subtle hints of frustration and even alienate those they are supposed to be helping – which of course, doesn’t lend itself to either good customer experience or good internal cooperation.

Pride in Being the Best:

One final aspect that may be overlooked is the importance of establishing the remote service team as the pinnacle of knowledge and expertise within the organisation.

To successfully capture the best of the field service engineering workforce and translate their expertise into a team that can support far more customer challenges per day, it could be advisable to position the remote service team as an elite group of service technicians.

There is a specific personality set that could be sought within those you are looking to transition from field service engineers to remote service engineers.

You want your remote service engineers to have an inherently strong work ethic, to be the type of people who love being able to solve the problems that others could not, while simultaneously being prepared to immediately take that solution and share it both with the field service engineer or customer in front of them on the call, and also if possible, with the broader organisation either through a recording of the live call or with an article crafted for a knowledge bank.

Ultimately, you want a remote service team that prides themselves on being the best technical experts within the organisation and who takes great satisfaction in knowing that their work is driving the entire organisation forward into a new era of customer service excellence.

While these individuals may be few and far between in your early team analysis, for these are very much the diamonds within the rough, rest assured they will be there. Many field service engineers and technicians have all the natural traits that are the foundation of such attributes.

They are genuine problem solvers, can work independently, and inherently want to make things work as efficiently as possible – whether that be the machines they service or the processes they work within.

By defining a straightforward ethos early within the development of the remote service team, by creating the collegiate approach of a team working together towards a more productive future for customers and colleagues alike, it is possible to develop a culture where pride in the job done can become a natural bi-product of the teams’ output – and it can develop far faster than many might think.

Each Organisation is Unique:

Of course, these are just some initial ideas of what could form the DNA of great remote service technicians.

Much depends on the team you have at your disposal, and as we’ve touched on earlier in this paper, defining the vision of what remote service as a default would mean for the organisation.

However, precisely as per the discussion around the value perception of the customer, the organisation that sees the adoption of remote services as merely a cost reduction exercise, where the role of remote support is viewed as a cheaper alternative to direct on-site service delivery in the field, is almost certainly destined to fail.

Whereas those who take the position that remote service as a default is a business-wide service strategy that will both drive profits and improve the service delivery given to customers, just as Konica Minolta has done, will likely go on to flourish.