How can Field Service teams benefit from Technology-driven Collaboration?

For many businesses, there’s one major ‘C’ word they’re always focused on and that is the ‘Customer’. Customer-centricity is a goal that has led many organizations to move away from establishing transactional relationships with their customers to building more qualitative and engaging ones – and the move is paying off.

Take Wells Fargo, for instance. For a bank that focuses on leveraging existing customer relationships, “nearly eighty percent of Wells Fargo revenue growth comes from selling more products to existing customers.”

However, there’s another ‘C’ word that must exist within an organization to enable this customer-centricity – and that is ‘Collaboration’. This is especially crucial for organizations that employ a field service team that routinely interacts with customers, and is viewed as an organization’s brand champion.

These teams rarely get a chance to embed themselves into their respective office environments and take part in face-to-face sessions involving exchange of knowledge and best practices. However, these teams stand to benefit the most from such interactions because this has a direct impact on the quality of service delivered, or on sales engagements.

Technology like a field service management solution built for mobile devices can help geographically spread-out teams to stay in-sync and work together in spite of distances. Here are two specific benefits that your field service team gains by leveraging technology to improve collaboration:

Increased first-time fix rate

59% of best-in-class service providers have systems and processes in place to provide field service workers with access to remote expertise while at a customer site. This means that on-site field service personnel can connect with experts and peers in the organization’s network to either ask a question or access information that will make solving the challenge faster and more easy. This contributes to a higher first-time fix rate.

Stronger and more profitable sales and service alliance

More informed and empowered field service management teams have the know-how to spot opportunities to deliver quality service and identify cross-sell as well as up-sell opportunities. For instance, if a field technician finds that a certain spare part is no longer available because of a halt in production, or the part might cost more than a new model, then he can recommend a newer, popular replacement that has appealed to other people like the customer. If the customer is open to this idea, it’s important for the sales team to pick up where the service team has left off.

By collaborating and exchanging information about the customer and their specific requirements in real-time using message boards or broadcast messages, these teams can identify what’s best for both the customer and the organization and take action. 57 percent of Best-in-Class companies insist field technicians to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for the sales team.

By leveraging the right technology that enables and inspires collaboration between field service teams and those back at the office, your organization can move one step closer to delighting customers at every opportunity. After all, collaboration inspires higher employee empowerment and satisfaction, which shapes their relationships with customers.

Does your field service team use technology to collaborate better and lead your organization down the path to customer centricity?