ThinkTank Reflections: While the strategic goals of field service companies are evolving, so to are the expectations of our customers
ThinkTank Reflections: While the strategic goals of field service companies are evolving, so to are the expectations of our customers
The wealth of digital innovation we are experiencing across all industries, particularly in the field service sector, opens up new ways of thinking and allows us to completely re-invent many processes in our service operations.
However, such innovation is also a double-edged sword as customer expectations are rapidly increasing as the lines between business-to-business and business-to-customer service delivery are getting blurred.
This was a common theme in many of the different threads of conversation in the November 2022 iteration of the FSN Think Tank sessions.
“I recently read a study coming out of Harvard that talked about the number one purchasing decision impacting customers today,” commented Holland Winfield, UKI Service Lead, Lenovo as the conversation of customer and employee expectations was raised.
“You would expect it to be what it’s always been for the life of the human population, price.
“However, according to customers, across all fields, the number one factor driving their next purchase is no longer price. For the first time in history, it’s changed. The expectation coming out of the customers has one hundred per cent changed because it’s just become more and more reasonable to expect quicker and quicker resolutions,” Winfield continued.
“It’s reached the point where if you have any downtime with your phone, it’s too much. If Netflix lags for five seconds as you’re streaming a movie, it’s too much. If Amazon doesn’t deliver next business day, and you have to wait two business days for the product that you ordered from the other side of the world, it’s too much.
“So of course, it naturally follows that this mindset, is going to also apply to every service customers have,” he concluded.
“Customers have that expectation of the consumer market now,” added Ged Cranny, Senior Consultant, Konica Minolta BEU.
“Years ago, when I started, the business market dictated what the consumer market did, and then a little company called Apple came along with a tablet and changed the world.
“Now everything’s in your hand, everything’s expected to happen now. And if it doesn’t happen now, then your customer is probably starting to look for somebody else,” he reflected.
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"In general, we tend to assume a lot, but we ask too little and don’t ask the right questions. So yes, as an industry, we can do a better job in that regard." - Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum
“There are two elements we need to consider when identifying where the customer sees value in the services we provide,” suggested Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum.
“Firstly, there are the tangible values. What is the problem you’re solving in their business operations by providing and maintaining their assets? This is the one most service organisations are usually able to identify quickly and easily.
“The other element is more of the intangible perception, and in general, we tend to assume a lot, but we ask too little and don’t ask the right questions. So yes, as an industry, we can do a better job in that regard,” he continued.
“Let’s take an example of the tangible value around remote service. Often this means, ‘I help you to fix your machine’, which means the customer will have to spend time doing so even if a remote technical expert guides them.
“The question is, do your customers want to have that continuously going on after COVID? Now, this, as we have seen in this discussion, is a choice influenced by both the complexity and criticality of the asset. Of course, it also depends on the people’s workload and how expensive they are – and again, internal and external factors are at play,” Van Veen explained.
“I know, for example, in medical laboratories, it is not desirable to have lab specialists to be playing around with instruments to do troubleshooting with somebody on the phone, plus they also have some redundancy in the instruments in terms of required uptime – so they can wait half a day or a day for the engineer to arrive, so that is still where they see the value. They don’t want to be involved in the maintenance of the assets themselves in any way, and the value they see is in that being entirely handled by the service organisation.
“So we have to check and test what remote service means for customers? What should they do as part of a remote service? Is it nothing? Is it quite a lot? Is it critical? Is a risk involved? We have to know.
“We also must be careful with the perception on all sides of our service thinking. If a customer states they expect an engineer on site, we also have to ask why they are saying that. Is that because of this workload of their personnel? Or do they not trust your processes remotely? Perhaps in their eyes, when the engineers are on site, the customer believes they will have more control regarding what’s going on with the records, so they have more trust in a process they can see and touch,” he mused.
"Find the piece in your business that customers are afraid of or offers a way of getting into safety. Humans are always either running away from danger or living in safety. So show them the place of safety you bring them and wrap a value around that." - Ged Cranny, Senior Consultant, Konica Minolta BEU
“If that is the case, then maybe you have to update your remote capabilities, so they can start trusting them.
“It is a situation where there are no silver bullet answers other than there are a lot of facets to the situation and we have to research it for what does it look like now and how will that be three years or five years and start developing towards that direction,” Van Veen concluded.
“Find the piece in your business that customers are afraid of or offers a way of getting into safety,” Cranny advised reflecting on the important and sometimes juxtaposed ideas being discussed.
“Humans are always either running away from danger or living in safety. So show them the place of safety you bring them and wrap a value around that.
“That value won’t last forever, but as soon as you wrap a value around it, start thinking of the next value proposition you can bring for your product and how you can work your products into the customer’s life. Think about how you are helping your customer’s customers and how you are constantly improving the customer customers experience across that chain.
“If you can do if you can do that, then you can find ways that you bring value to the customer,” Cranny concluded.
All members of the Field Service Think Tanks are speaking from their own personal opinions which are not necessarily reflective of the organisations they work for.
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