By Sarah Nicastro, Creator and Editor in Chief, Future of Field Service

Across countless service organizations worldwide service teams are closing deals, solving complex problems, and driving customer loyalty every single day – yet all too often the function is still treated like an afterthought in strategic planning meetings.

Walk into most boardrooms, and you'll hear passionate discussions about sales pipelines, product innovation, and market expansion. But when it comes to service strategy, some businesses have refused to see beyond the perspective of cost management. This disconnect can cost organizations millions in preventable churn, missed revenue opportunities, and burned-out field teams who feel invisible despite working miracles for customers.

Fortunately, there’s a growing number of companies that see service for exactly what it is – and what that can mean for their businesses. This recognition is due in part to leaders like Matt Tice, VP of Global Services at QuidelOrtho, who joined last week’s episode of UNSCRIPTED to share how he flipped the narrative.

After nearly two decades with the same organization, during which he’s navigated a spinoff from Johnson & Johnson, a private equity restructuring, an IPO, and ultimately an acquisition by Quidel, Matt has learned what it takes to position service as the strategic engine that retains customers, drives lifetime value, and creates competitive moats that sales alone cannot build.

His insights aren't theoretical. They're battle-tested across multiple organizational transformations and backed by measurable results: higher retention rates, stronger customer relationships, and an organization where commercial teams now say, unprompted, "We're all in service."

If you're a service leader struggling to get a seat at the strategic table, feeling like your function is perpetually underfunded, or watching your best people leave because they don't see a future in field service, Matt’s insights can likely help you. But before we get there, it’s important to reflect on why this tug-of-war exists in the first place.

The Bigger Picture: Why Service Leaders Battle for Organizational Attention

In many companies, service is still fighting a perception problem – one that's been baked into how most organizations think about business for decades.

The traditional playbook goes like this: sales wins the customer, marketing attracts them, product delights them, and then service... well, service manages the fallout. Handles complaints. Keeps things running. It's the operational equivalent of customer life support – necessary, yes, but not exactly glamorous.

This framing is reinforced by how we measure success. Sales gets credited with revenue. Marketing gets credited with pipeline. Service gets... a cost per ticket metric and a customer satisfaction score that's been "green" for three years running.

The deeper problem is that this siloed thinking costs companies enormous amounts of money. Industry research consistently shows that acquiring a new customer costs anywhere from five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one. Yet how many organizations are allocating their strategic resources proportionally? How many boards are celebrating retention wins the way they celebrate new logo acquisitions?

Matt encountered this exact dynamic early in his career, and it motivated him to build a fundamentally different approach. The challenge isn’t around service’s value – it’s around helping the broader organization connect the dots between exceptional service experiences and bottom-line business outcomes.

The lessons Matt shared during our conversation act as a playbook for making that connection undeniable, visible, and strategically aligned.

#1: Expand Service’s Positioning Beyond the ‘Problem-Solving’ Function

The first insight sounds deceptively simple, but it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations think about service. "Fundamentally, service is all about how we retain customers," Matt explains. "That customer experience becomes the glue that holds customers to our business. And we have hundreds of thousands of interactions every year with customers and really every single one of those is an opportunity for us to bind that customer to us."

When service is positioned as a reactive, post-sale function, it naturally gets treated as a cost center. Leaders ask, "How do we deliver service more cheaply?" rather than "How do we use service to keep customers from leaving?"

When service is positioned as the retention pillar, the conversation fundamentally changes. Now the question becomes, "How do we ensure customers feel so supported, so valued, and so dependent on our relationship that they can't imagine leaving?"

At QuidelOrtho, this reframing had a cascading effect. Matt didn't just tell people that service drives retention. He started highlighting specific retention wins, showcasing customers who renewed because of exceptional service delivery, and making visible the correlation between service quality and customer lifetime value.

What happened next was remarkable. The commercial organization began to understand service not as a separate department, but as a critical part of their own mission. Instead of viewing service as something that happened after the deal closed, they started seeing it as something they were directly responsible for. As Matt describes it: "For the first time ever this year, I heard, 'We're all in service because it has become such a critical part of the entire commercial operation here.'"

How to Apply This Action:

• Stop measuring service primarily by cost-per-incident. Start measuring by retention rate impact and customer lifetime value contribution.
• Create a "retention wins" showcase; monthly highlights of customers who renewed specifically because of service excellence.
• Involve your commercial leadership in service strategy discussions. Make them co-owners of the retention mission.
• Develop a clear narrative that ties service quality directly to customer growth and repurchase probability.

#2: Combine Storytelling with Data to Unlock Executive Support

One of Matt's most valuable insights came from his 18-month tenure in the finance organization – a deliberate career move he made that shed light on the inner workings of the business.

During his time in finance, Matt observed something fascinating about the leaders who successfully secured major investments: they didn't rely on either storytelling or data alone. They combined compelling narratives with bulletproof analytics, emotional resonance with intellectual rigor.

"When they walked in the room," Matt recalls, "they checked their bias at the door. They checked their emotions at the door, and they came in with really great storytelling. And it wasn't just storytelling; it was backed with robust datasets. It was really hard to argue the initiatives that they wanted to invest in because they had done all their homework."

This may be where many service leaders stumble. Some have strong relational skills, intuition about customer needs, and a natural ability to tell compelling stories about why service matters. But they might lack the financial rigor to back up those stories with impactful data.

Conversely, data-driven service leaders can build impressive dashboards and analytics but fail to create the emotional urgency that drives executive action.

Matt learned firsthand the importance of the combined approach. When pitching for investment in service improvements – whether that's technology, staffing, or process changes – he partners with finance to build the data story and with HR to gather employee metrics. But he frames it all through a narrative lens.

For example, instead of pitching "We need $500K for a new field service management system," Matt might pitch it like this:

"Our customers tell us that reliability is mission-critical to their operations. Seventy percent of their clinical decisions are based on our equipment. When we improve first-time fix rates through better information access for our technicians, reliability increases, which directly impacts customer retention. Our data shows that every 5% improvement in reliability correlates to a 12% improvement in renewal probability. Here's what this means in lifetime customer value across our installed base..."

Notice what just happened: storytelling (customer mission, emotional stakes) combined with data (the 70% statistic, the correlation between reliability and retention, the lifetime value calculation). The executive can feel the importance and see the numbers that validate it.

Another critical insight from Matt's finance time: focus on the metrics that matter to executive thinking.

Most service leaders pitch against EBITDA or revenue – metrics that won't show service's true value in every instance. Instead, Matt learned to pitch against lifetime customer value, a metric that tells the story service leaders need told: "If we invest in this service improvement, it doesn't necessarily drive revenue this quarter, but it keeps our customers in the fold for ten years longer, which is worth X amount of future value."

This reframing required strong partnerships. Matt deliberately cultivated a close working relationship with his finance partner and his HR partner, knowing that cross-functional credibility would make his case unassailable.

How to Apply This Action:

• Build a finance partnership. Sit down with your CFO or finance business partner and ask them to help you understand lifetime customer value, cohort retention analysis, and the economic impact of customer churn.

• Partner with your HR team to gather insight into attrition trends, time-to-productivity, engagement scores, and internal mobility. If your investment improves the employee experience, quantify what that means in reduced turnover costs, faster ramp times, or improved customer coverage.
• Benchmark relentlessly. Know how your reliability, responsiveness, and customer experience compare to competitors. Executives respond to competitive gaps as well as competitive advantages.
• Practice neutral delivery. As Matt observed in finance, successful leaders check bias and emotion at the door. Passion is important, but objectivity earns trust.

#3: Build a Customer-Centered Commercial Strategy

One of the most pivotal moments in QuidelOrtho’s journey came when leadership intentionally decided that service could be the company’s identity, not just a supporting function.

But that required clarity.

When the organization became a standalone company, service as a differentiator wasn’t yet fully formed. The turning point came when leaders asked a simple but powerful question:

If service is going to differentiate us, differentiate us on what?

The answer did not come from internal brainstorming sessions. It came from customers.

Matt and his team conducted a broad fact-finding mission to understand what customers valued most. What attributes were truly mission-critical? What could they not afford to lose?

One answer stood out: reliability.

Customers shared that up to 70% of the clinical decisions made in their hospitals were based on QuidelOrtho’s diagnostic equipment. That meant downtime wasn’t an inconvenience – it was a risk to patient care.

That insight became strategic fuel.

The team built a customer excellence scorecard around those critical attributes. Reliability wasn’t just a service KPI anymore; it became an executive-level metric reviewed monthly. Leaders across the organization began asking:

• How are we performing on reliability?
• How are we performing on time in full?
• Are we meeting the expectations customers told us were non-negotiable?

This alignment did two powerful things:

1. It connected service performance directly to business outcomes.
2. It elevated service metrics into company-wide strategic conversations.

Instead of service reporting in isolation, it became embedded in commercial strategy.

How to Apply This Action:

• Conduct structured customer interviews to understand the top 3–5 attributes that matter most.
• Build an executive-facing scorecard around those attributes – not just internal operational metrics.
• Ensure frontline teams understand how their daily work ladders up to those strategic priorities.

#4: Refine KPIs to Drive the Right Behaviors

Every service organization tracks KPIs. The difference between good and great organizations lies in how intentionally they evolve them.

When Matt stepped into his current role, he inherited a traditional scorecard: first-time fix, responsiveness, NPS, and other familiar measures. Many were green. On paper, everything looked strong.

But green can be deceptive.

Instead of focusing only on the reds, Matt examined the greens. Some metrics had been green for years but weren’t necessarily driving continuous improvement. Targets were being met, but perhaps not stretched.

First-time fix, for example, had remained comfortably above target. By re-baselining the measure closer to industry standards and raising expectations, the team unlocked additional improvement. That improvement tied directly back to reliability and customer retention.

The same scrutiny applied to customer feedback. Transactional NPS scores were consistently above 90%. Impressive, but lacking signal. The team began shifting toward customer effort scores and satisfaction metrics to gain more actionable insight.

This reflects an important philosophy: KPIs are not static. They must evolve with strategy.

Matt’s team reviews and sets KPIs annually alongside the operating plan and monitors them monthly. They’ve had periods of times where they were tracking too few metrics and too many. Today, the goal is clarity without oversimplification:

• Operational excellence metrics (cost, productivity)
• Responsiveness metrics (speed)
• Effectiveness metrics (quality and resolution)
• Customer-experience-aligned metrics (reliability, satisfaction, effort)

For service organizations in transition in terms of their identity within the business, there can often be real tension between productivity metrics and experience metrics. Overemphasize jobs-per-day, and you risk undermining quality and relationships. Ignore cost discipline, and sustainability suffers.

The key is intentional alignment: measure what customers care about and what drives business outcomes, not just what’s easy to track.

How to Apply This Action:

• Review your “green” KPIs. Are they driving continuous improvement or just preserving comfort?
• Limit frontline KPIs to a focused set that balances operational and experiential goals.
• Regularly assess whether any KPI is driving unintended behavior.

Remember: metrics shape culture. Choose wisely.

#5: Invest in the Frontline Experience

You cannot position service as a differentiator without a workforce capable – and willing – to deliver it.

The field service landscape has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Long-term, 25-year field careers are unicorns rather than the norm. Expectations around flexibility, autonomy, and growth have changed.

Matt shared that QuidelOrtho responded by:

• Expanding remote work options where possible.
• Hiring talent from broader geographies.
• Maintaining in-person culture where it adds value.
• Building apprentice programs to create bench strength.
• Adding career progression layers within field service.

Compensation remains important to today’s talent, but it’s important to realize that it’s not the sole driver.

Data from industry organizations like Service Council shows that frontline satisfaction hinges on multiple factors:

• Work-life balance
• Technology usability
• Autonomy
• Reduced administrative burden
• Clear growth pathways

That’s why Matt ties many service investments back to employee experience. When pitching to executives, he connects technology upgrades not only to customer outcomes but to reduced attrition, improved time to value, and stronger engagement.

Perhaps most critically, Matt emphasized the importance of frontline leadership.

Promoting a strong technician into management can be effective, but not always – and only if supported properly. Technical excellence does not automatically translate into the capacity for people leadership.

QuidelOrtho has broadened its leadership pipeline by:

• Developing internal talent intentionally.
• Bringing in leaders from IT, R&D, and quality.
• Investing in leadership development to avoid setting new managers up for failure.

How to Apply This Action:

• Build structured apprenticeship or bench programs.
• Ensure your leadership promotions are capability-based, not just tenure-based.
• Quantify attrition costs and include them in business cases for investment.
• Ensure career progression is visible and attainable.

#6: Use Technology to Elevate the Relational

Matt’s philosophy on technology is clear, and one I happen to agree with: technology should complement the human relationship, not replace it.

In healthcare diagnostics, relationships are built over years. Field service engineers often become embedded in customer operations. Introducing automation carelessly risks eroding that trust.

Instead, Matt says QuidelOrtho is leveraging AI in ways that follow the advice of Elizabeth Dixon: to automate the transactional so humans can elevate the relational.

Examples include:

• Voice-to-text transcription and automated call summaries.
• AI-driven knowledge search across thousands of documents.
• Reducing manual documentation burdens.

The goal is simple: free technicians and remote agents from low-value tasks so they can focus on empathy, problem-solving, and partnership.

How to Apply This Action:

• Map frontline workflows and identify friction points.
• Prioritize automation that removes frustration—not customer interaction.
• Frame technology investments as relational enhancers, not headcount reducers.

Stay the Course

Positioning service as a differentiator is not about rebranding. It’s about disciplined execution across multiple fronts:

1. Reframing service as the retention engine.
2. Combining storytelling with data to secure investment.
3. Building customer-centered strategy.
4. Aligning KPIs to drive meaningful behavior.
5. Investing deeply in the frontline experience.
6. Leveraging technology to elevate human relationships.

None of this happens overnight. It requires intention, cross-functional trust, and sustained leadership focus.

But when it works, something remarkable happens.

You stop hearing, “Service is a cost center.”

And you start hearing, “We’re all in service.”