joanna.darby@ifsworld.com, Author at Future of Field Service

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I was recently chatting with Rangika Ekanayake, Sr. Manager of Software Engineering at IFS, and loved her insights around creativity. While she’s looking at creativity primarily through the lens of how to impact and improve UX in design, the principles she shares are applicable for anyone and any industry in need of thinking about how to further nurture creativity in an effort to innovate and maintain competitive edge.

In the world of service, we see an opportunity to grow revenue by offering a unique and differentiated experience or outcome to customers. The inception of that value proposition, however, requires a level of creativity that doesn’t always come naturally to every leader and every organization. The good news, according to Rangika, is that you have every opportunity – as individuals and as companies – to cultivate more creativity to fuel innovation.

Rangika is a self-inspired UX enthusiast with a deep passion for UX Research and UX Design and an enthusiasm for inspiring and helping others. She started her career at IFS 15 years ago as a Software Engineer and today is a Senior Manager of Software Engineering where she works with the R&D Projects leadership team to support continual improvement of software delivery within Projects and alongside contributing to the UX team in UX research. She has spoken on several SLASSCOM (Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies) webinars on the subject of UX Design and UX Research and has created a non-profit website, Journey2UX.com, to act as a repository of resources for industry newcomers. Here, Rangika shares her thoughts on how best to foster creativity.

Sarah: I think there can be an assumption that you’re either born “a creative” or not. Do you feel someone can be “born” creative? For those that aren’t, can creativity be learned?

Rangika: To quote Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Most people believe creativity is a trait an individual is born with – either they have it or they don’t. But I consider this a myth. I’m a strong believer that creativity is an attribute everyone has within themselves when they are born. But, because of socialization and formal education, some of us lose this creative impulse on our journey to adulthood.

For example, if we give set of blocks to group of children and ask them to build something, everyone will grab few pieces and they will start creating imaginary buildings, animals, etc. While at the task, how about we stop them and start to teach them to build a certain item in a specific way? Then there will be some who start doing it the way they were taught, and some will still prefer to do it in a way they imagined. Then, what if we punish some of them for doing it differently or if we tell them what they created is wrong or useless? Of course, some of them might stop what they are doing altogether or will start to build it in the exact way that we taught them, because of the fear of either getting judged, being wrong, or looking stupid. Then, consider the situation if we continue to do this for years and years. Day by day, some of these kids will lose their courage to become creative and some will still continue to carry it. When they become adults, society will categorize the people who still have the creative impulse as creative and others as noncreative.

But, can we boost up the creativity within these people who consider themselves as noncreative? Of course, we can. Because it is still within them, and we only have to retune their creative muscle. This is what’s referred to as helping them rediscover their creative confidence.

Sarah: How would you define “creative confidence?”

Rangika: “Creative confidence is believing in your ability to create change in the world around you. This self-assurance lies at the heart of innovation.” according to brothers Tom and David Kelley in their book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential within us all.

Creative confidence is an individual’s belief that he/she is creative. When we were kids, we were often bold, inspired and acted daringly. Those days we were imaginative, curious, and endlessly creative, and we possessed endless capacity for innovation. So, in other words, creative confidence is our own self-assurance that we can regain that kid.

Sarah: As an individual, how can leaders foster their own personal creativity?

Rangika: According to Tom and David Kelley of IDEO, any individual can restore their creativity or creative confidence by overcoming their fear of failure, taking frequent doses of inspiration, and by stopping procrastination and starting “doing.”

Instead of fearing failure, start to learn from it. In schools, we were mostly being taught to avoid making mistakes and it is the same story in most workplaces. Therefore, we often avoid it at all cost. But as it turns out, failure can be one of our greatest teachers. Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” So, we need to flip our mind to learn from failures rather been afraid of it.
Take frequent doses of inspiration to life. As our schedules get busy and responsibilities increase, it is hard to find time for inspiration. But inspiration is the fuel for creativity. So, how do we get fueled up? Be curious. Try to look beyond the obvious. Try to schedule daily space in your calendar to think, take a walk, or daydream. Keep some form of idea notebook to capture things that cross your radar. Practice empathy. Also, one of the best ways to get inspired is to step out of the context — look at something you might never expect to be helpful or relevant to the task at hand.
Stop overplanning and just start. Even though we have a creative idea, acting on it can be daunting. Therefore, to minimize the risk impact, adults spend lot of time on strategy and planning. But there are times where the best you can do is just get out there and take action — stop focusing on the huge, overall task and find a small piece you can tackle right away. Because creativity and creative problem solving is rooted in action. Studies show that teams who test five or more ideas at the same time are 50% more likely to launch successful solutions than those who explore a single solution.

Sarah: What’s your best advice for making time for creative thinking when facing many day-to-day pressures?

Rangika: As said earlier, try to schedule daily space in your calendar to think, take a walk, or daydream. It does not have to be a long duration – 15 minutes would do. No matter how packed your schedule might be, if you are willing to find some time, there will be a way. You can utilize the time you travel, shower, etc. But, the most important thing is to practice it consistently. Because creativity is also like a muscle; the more you practice, the more it is strengthened.

Also, it is important you keep some form of idea notebook to capture things that come to mind. Do not just let them drain away. In addition, when you try to generate ideas, focus on the quantity – shoot for 100 instead of 10. Aim for as many new ideas as possible. The greater the number of ideas you generate, the bigger your chances of producing a radical and effective one. On the other hand, it allows us to let our minds wonder without restriction and that’s how most of the best ideas are generated.

Sarah: From a company perspective, what’s key to creating a creative culture?

Rangika: If a certain company wishes to create a creative culture in their workplace, it is of utmost importance that they make sure to build a fail-safe environment for their employees. Because no matter how hard we request employees to be creative, if they don’t have an environment in the workplace where they can try out their ideas without the fear of being judged, evaluated or punished based on the result, employees will not bring forward their original ideas freely.

At “X - the moonshot factory," they live a simple mantra: "Fail fast, fail often." Terrible ideas and failure are not only embraced, but celebrated. In his TED Talk on “The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure”, Astro Teller, director of X, says, "We spend most of the time breaking things and trying to prove that we're wrong. That's it. That's the secret.”

In addition to creating a fail-safe environment, another aspect that companies need to focus on is encouraging inspiration and innovation. Because if we expect the employees to be creative, then we need to provide the space and time to be inspired and innovate. If their work schedules are tightly packed with other work items, even though they want to be creative and innovative, they won’t have the breathing space to do that. So, if a company desires its employees to become inspired and innovate, then they must empower their teams to be inspired; let them find ways to understand the users of their product, system, or service; and allocate some time to be creative.

Sarah: What are some tactical ways leaders can encourage their teams to build their own creative confidence?

Rangika: Most importantly leaders need to start, by believing everybody can be creative and by accepting failure as a natural part of the creative process. Just as the leaders encourage teams to be creative, they need to encourage the teams when ideas fail. Also, acknowledging a team’s hard work while reminding failure happens to everyone and motivating them to learn from failure rather than shying away from it will create a great impact on building creative confidence within the team.

In addition, consider introducing initiatives that encourage inspiration and innovation within team members - e.g. Innovation day, encouraging frequent field visits to get to know users better. Also, “Worst idea brainstorm” is a great method to help teams to overcome their fear of failure and to open up the imagination and help them get in touch with creativity. Additionally, an “Idea Diamond” is another method which encourages the teams to generate innovative ideas. Another tactic is starting off the discussions from the newest member in the forum. This not only opens up a fresh perspective, but also will make sure that these ideas won’t get shadowed by the perspectives of experienced members. Similarly, from time to time, disrupting the routine, such as changing the environment or team setup, can help teams to think and act differently. Finally, encouraging the teams to simply start rather than overplanning is a key factor.

Sarah: What final thoughts can you share?

Rangika: Creativity is not only for artists, designers, and musicians. It is not a fixed trait gifted only to specific people, and it is not only for kids. Creativity is essential for every individual, not only in their career, but also in their personal lives. Bill Moggridge, IDEO cofounder, strongly believed that most people are vastly more creative and capable than they know, and I believe the same. So, it is all about boosting up the creativity confidence within these people. But creative confidence cannot achieve only by reading, thinking, or talking about it. Rather, confidence in your creativity gets strengthen through action and practicing it often. So, try harder, give frequent space for your mind to roam free, start learning from your failures, get inspired, and simply just take action. The rewards and the individuality you will gain are well worth the effort.

If you’re interested in taking a deeper look, here are some references that Rangika suggests:

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Confidence-Unleashing-Potential-Within/dp/038534936X

https://hbr.org/2012/12/reclaim-your-creative-confidence

https://www.creativeconfidence.com/about/

https://www.ideou.com/products/unlocking-creativity

https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YScywp6AU

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEusrD8g-dM

By Tom Paquin

This is part of an ongoing series on the state and standards of service management software. Here are the previous articles in the series:

We’ve obviously spoken about implementation in the abstract before in this series, specifically with respect to replacing an old service provider, or implementing service technology for the first time, but I feel that it’s worth discussing the processes and pitfalls of what happens when the rubber hits the road.

We’ve seen how this can fail before. It’s important to build systems with employees in mind. This has been the subject of much of our discussion about selecting a service system to begin with. But when you’ve gone through the bid and selection process, what does the act of implementation look like?

There are ostensibly two stages to this—handling the technology, and handling your people. Let’s start with the tech.

Ripping Out the Old Wires

Whether you’re bringing in an end-to-end service system to manage all areas of service oversight, analysis, and optimization, or you’re installing a peripheral piece of software designed to enhance or simplify an experience, odds are good that you’re going to need to reroute some systems, and some thinking. I don’t need to tell you that timing is key, and most businesses build their sunset plans to overlap with deployment of a new solution.

How that looks can differ from business to business, and we’ll discuss in more detail exactly how that nuance can be developed below. It’s a tough balance, because you don’t want technicians to lean on old systems, and when a database is ported over, then that’s the end of it. But there’s inevitably benefits in holding off shutting the lights off until it’s time.

If you’re moving from one vendor to another, it’s often imperative that you look at how vendors have handled transitions from your old vendor in the past. There may be a list of considerations based on precedent, or there may be one particular integration partner that is more adept than others at managing and coordinating the transition.

Enabling Your Staff

Once the transition has begun, it’s time to start thinking about how you on-board staff. We’ve talked about the importance of building teams of player-coaches in the organization, how imperative it is to develop pilots (thus overlapping old a new technologies), and setting hard benchmarks for your team before, but it’s worth revisiting again.

This organizational agility will likely outlast your relationship with an implementation partner, so the onus of how effectively you wield the powerful tools you’ve been enabled with will depend greatly on how they are absorbed into your company culture. In my experience, small pilots are a great way to see what works with a given product.

If you’re going to pilot a new solution with, let’s say five percent of technicians, it’s important that they are not all high performers. Your pilot should represent the broad demography of your service technicians, with older and newer employees, and employees at different levels of output. It’s up to you whether you want to involve different disciplines in a pilot. In my experience many businesses opt to run pilots in a specific division first, then expand it out, but it’s feasible to run a pilot across all different types of service functions.

Pilots are meant to be temporary, of course, so taking it live is the next step. With a major update, many companies make rollout an event. We see organizations shut down operations for a day, onboard new technicians, sell the value of the new technology, and make every resource available to ensure success.

With any technology initiative, starting off on the right foot is imperative. Set yourself up for success with the right tools, a solid implementation plan, and the right people to take it over the finish line.

Michael Blumberg, President of Blumberg Advisory Group, shares with Sarah how he sees companies falter when it comes to successful marketing of services.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast, I’m your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be walking through five biases that hinder effective service marketing. I’m excited to welcome back to the podcast today Michael Blumberg, president of Blumberg Advisory Group. Michael, welcome back to the podcast.

Michael Blumberg: Hi Sarah. It’s really a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me on.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. So as we progressed towards more advanced service offerings, outcomes-based service, servitization, all of those trends, the way that organizations market those offerings becomes increasingly important. And it’s also an area that can be challenging if we’re looking to do some things differently, more creatively than we’ve done in the past. So Michael, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, kind of the way that you’ve collected your thoughts on this topic and why it’s a topic you’re so passionate about?

Michael Blumberg: Sure, Sarah. I started in this industry, this I call it the services industry, I think we all call it that, many decades ago as actually right after I got my MBA. In fact, actually I interned while I was going for my MBA and it was in a company that actually my dad started. And he saw in around 1985, that there’s this emerging industry called services, aftermarket services, product service and support. And he pivoted his consulting firm from being a generalist consulting firm to focusing on the service industry. And the work that the company did and then I did when I joined the firm was around strategy, coming up with strategic plans to move a manufacturer’s service operation from a cost center to a profit center. And I started working in market research. And then I progressed along in the company to doing strategy work and M&A and benchmarking and productivity, efficiency, improvement, and systems recommendations.

Michael Blumberg: But early in my career, I got my first experience of learning the difference between being book smart and real-world smart. And book smart was in the sense that when you go in for an MBA, you do your work, you do your research, you do your analysis, you make your recommendation. And the professor says, “It’s great. It’s good work.” Thank you. In the consulting projects we did, it was often involving the situation where a manufacturer, somebody in the manufacturer’s organization like the CEO said, “You know, we need to build our service business. We need to generate more revenue from services.” And we’d come in and we do a strategy for them and do quite a bit of market research to demonstrate there’s a market for their services and how’s it growing and who they be competing against. And often what would happen is there’d be somebody in the board meeting or in the meeting to senior management that said, “How can we do this?”

Michael Blumberg: Yeah, the data is there. Yeah, we’ll take the data and face value, but we’re struggling with growing our service business to begin with. We can’t get anybody to buy the services that we’re offering today. How is it you think we’re going to be able to grow? Even though you’re saying, offering new services and putting a new systems, what makes you so certain that this business is going to close?

Michael Blumberg: And I realized that at that time that it was more than just the data, there was a psychology behind it. And you might hear me say this, that 90% of successes is psychology and other people have said that too. And so at that point, I really wanted to learn as much as I could about why companies are having a difficult time marketing and selling their services and what they could do to be more effective. So we wouldn’t be on the strategy to getting into the tactics and the execution and a psychology about around how do you effectively market. And that actually become my passion and my lifelong journey is to learn and understand and help companies do it better.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, great. So from those experiences and the insights that you’ve collected over your time in the space, you’ve developed five areas of bias that can impact an organization’s ability to effectively market their service offerings. So we are going to dig into those and talk a little bit about each of those areas. So to start, let’s talk about what you refer to as the OEM bias.

Michael Blumberg: Sure, sure. Yeah, let’s unpack that. That’s the perception of the OEM that they have a captive market. The fact that they manufactured equipment, your customers should naturally buy the services. And unless you have established some competitive barriers and created a monopoly in the aftermarket, you don’t have a captive market. In fact, I don’t know about other countries, but in the United States, it’s a violation of anti-competitive practices and monopolistic practices if you have these barriers. So you can’t have them to begin with, so that’s the first part. You don’t have a captive market. And because of that perception that the OEM is a captive market, sometimes what happens is at the board of directors level or the CEO level, isn’t making the necessary investments in the service organization to grow particularly on the marketing side. They may very likely make investments in the technology to improve the operations to deliver a better customer experience, but not necessarily making investments in the portfolio design, in the pricing, in the go-to-market strategy.

Michael Blumberg: And that can often lead to another aspect of the bias is that the manufacturer discounts the competition. And ran into this quite often, when I began doing management consulting studies, strategic planning, studies around growing the revenue, we often ask the senior management, “Who do you think your competition is?” And quite often they’ll say, “We don’t have any,” because they’re only looking at it with this bias that says they are the manufacturer, they own the aftermarket. But as we get into the organization and start interviewing people in the organization, as we get even closer to the customer, like to the service technician level, they’ll say, “Yeah, we have competitors.” Their competitors are, they’ll say mom-and-pop service organizations or third party maintenance companies. So when we begin a study where we’re helping a company grow their revenue, we want to really dive into who are the direct competitors, but also the indirect competitors. That’s also something that companies can discount.

Michael Blumberg: Fifteen years ago, IT manufacturers and IT service providers would have never believed that Amazon would be their competition.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Michael Blumberg: It is, because Amazon as you know as cloud. So anyone that was servicing on-premise IT equipment were in for a real awakening a few years later as Amazon starting to take market share for them.

Michael Blumberg: Another aspect of the bias is that they view the service salespeople, whether they’re salespeople selling services or service people selling services as order takers. We’ll just make our offer. We’ll ask people if they want to buy and we’ll leave it at that. And when people don’t buy, what starts to happen is the management thinks, well, nobody wants it. Nobody needs our services. There’s no market for it. And that’s usually not the case. The difficulty is they’re not giving the customer compelling enough reasons of why they should buy their services.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Michael Blumberg: And the last part of this bias is though the management views past behavior is indication of future performance.

Michael Blumberg: I found one will make a recommendation about me changing the portfolio or changing what you say in the sales pitch or how you market it. They’ll say, “Well, we tried something like that before in the past, it didn’t work.” And what they tried was offering a service, but they didn’t look at all the complexities that are associated with it. So you really have to be open to changing, re-engineering, rethinking, repositioning how you market a service. You can’t just rely on past experience and look at the data. You got to look at what worked and also what didn’t work and see where you can tweak.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. I like the point you made about almost this idea of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to manufacturers. Sometimes there can be folks within the organization that are a little bit skeptical about the role that service can play when it comes to strategic differentiation or growth. And by not investing in the sales skills necessary, the marketing of those services, et cetera, and then not seeing them take off, right. You can kind of feed that mentality inadvertently because you’re not really putting everything you need to in place to have success with what your value proposition is resonating and the way that it’s sold, like you said, being more of a trusted advisor instead of just waiting for someone to give you an order, et cetera. So, I think that it is important to think not only about the systems, but also about the skillsets and the strategic thinking that’s necessary to kind of balance that out.

Michael Blumberg: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about bias number two, which is around service delivery.

Michael Blumberg: Yeah, sure. Again, a multi-part answer to that. The first part is that there’s the bias among the organization, mostly by the product salespeople because they tend to drive the organization and manufacturing. And that is that service is only there to support the product sale, not the fact that there could be a profitable stream of revenue from offering additional services beyond just the basic installation and maintenance and repair. And another one which I think is the biggest challenge and bias is that the failure of the organization to understand the difference between bad service and not enough service. We’ve done studies for our clients and we talk about them growing their service business, offering new services, expanding their portfolio, making investments.

Michael Blumberg: Someone in the organization with some level of resistance will say, “Well, we’re not doing a good enough job with what we’re currently offering. Why would they buy something else?” Or, “We can’t invest until we fix what we have.” And we’d say, “Well, how do you know?” And they say, ” Well, they tell us.” So, “How do they tell you?” They say, “Well, we ask one question about satisfaction.” And that’s not enough. And so what we’ve done is we’ve dug in deeper and often what’s really happening is the customer is not getting enough service. So what they’re saying, it’s bad service. What they really mean is they want more.

Michael Blumberg: I think a good example is let’s say manufacturer who’s not very mature. Their service organization is not very mature. They’ll might say, “We’ll provide you with field service, onsite service,” but there’s no service level agreement. They’ll say, “We’ll just send somebody out there at some point.” Right? And you dig a little deeper and say, “Well, industry standards next day. So we’ll try and get there somebody there by next day.” And that’s what customers saying they’re unhappy with, is because they would, if they had their druthers, they would like somebody there the same day, maybe even there with four hours. That’s really better service. But if you’re just asking a basic question, like how satisfied are you and not uncovering and digging deeper about what’s the cause of satisfaction. You might think you’re not doing enough. As a result, you’re investing more money, spending more money, it’s costing you more money.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So going back to what you mentioned about the perception that services only role is to support product sales, how do companies move past that perception?

Michael Blumberg: Well, I think it really starts with them doing a market analysis and understanding that there’s this huge revenue opportunity and a profitable one through services. So without that, I think it’s all academic, it’s theoretical to the management team. That should be more than just supporting the product. And also understanding that more services actually sell products. If a company sees your organization as offering great service or offering a value-added services or professional services, design services, productivity improvement services, they start to associate your company with the product. So when it’s time to get a new product or buy more products, they’ll have view is these guys do services so well. We should buy more products with them because we’re getting this experience from the services. Imagine what will happen if we have their products too, more of their products also.

Sarah Nicastro: So the ability to elevate the entire brand experience.

Michael Blumberg: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right. So bias area number three is around product. So let’s talk about that.

Michael Blumberg: Yeah. So for the less mature service organizations and manufacturers that have less mature service organizations, they tend to focus only on the tangible aspects of the product. And one of those is parts. Now we’ve all seen that servitization journey where it often starts with selling parts, but sometimes companies just get stuck on selling the parts and they’re not expanding their portfolio and giving the customer what they want and need.

Michael Blumberg: One example I have, it’s a horror story where we had a customer, a client who wastrying to build up their service organization, but they kept thinking it in terms of the tangible aspect of service the parts. And in interviews with us they said, “Our customers hate to see us coming into the door. They actually run away from our people because they think they want us to sell them more parts.” And like they said that, “Some of our customers, they’ll walk us to a closet and open the closet and see like a stockpile parts, because they can buy the parts that they don’t need.” So you got to go beyond just the parts, finding what services they need.

Michael Blumberg: Another tangible aspect is just focusing on the technician. And so what you have to be able to do is focus on the intangible aspects like the response time. Not just that you’re going to have a technician out there, but what are you going to get the technician to arrive? Focus on the uptime because that’s what they’re buying, in a way that’s an intangible. That’s a very difficult proposition to sell.

Michael Blumberg: It’s also tying into perception that when companies are buying services, they’re not just buying the reality. They’re buying the perception of what the service can do for them. Like uptime is a perfect example. One of the ways we try to explain that is you’re looking at other types of services, like a law firm, a lawyer. You might be sitting at home one day, maybe you’re ill. Actually people are sitting at home a lot now these days and they’re watching TV and they see an ad for a lawyer that it’s helping their clients with insurance cases or accidents. And we couldn’t have an image of that. In fact, we have a name for it. We call them ambulance chaser. Right? And we have kind of an image of what their office is going to look like, right? And then we have an image of what we might be watching the news and see high profile celebrity who’s charged with some crime and they talk about the dream team. And you could imagine what the lawyer looks like, how he acts or she acts and dresses and what he or she’s office looks like.

Michael Blumberg: You think it might be very plush luxurious whereas the ambulance chaser may have a storefront, iron cabinets, iron desk, an old-time style of a desk. And all of that is perception and that perception influences your choice. It influences the price you may have to pay and you may have to pay. So that’s part of the bias is understanding that if you’re going to deliver premium service, you have to deliver premium service. You have to be able to define what that premium service is. I’ll add a little bit more of this is that, in this product bias is that not understanding there’s a difference between the actual service and the capability to serve.

Michael Blumberg: So when you’re selling services and when people are buying, they’re buying both the reality, that’s the tangible part. That’s the technician going to be, that it’s the parts going to arrive, but they’re also buying the capability. So you have to be able to articulate in your marketing and sales messages what that capability is. How do they know technician is going to be there in four hours? How do they know the part will arrive the same day, or you have to explain.

Michael Blumberg: And as part of that, understanding that there’s really three inputs to this engine of service delivery. And again, the service delivery is both the capability and the actual delivery. Three inputs, there’s people, and those are the technicians. Those are the call center people. Those are the people in the parts warehouse. Then there’s the parts, right? Okay. And for many years in any company, we always looked at there’s material and people. And that’s all there is to the engine of production. But in service, we’re catching on now but we saw this 25 years ago that the other input to this is data. Okay. And now people are starting to understand the importance of data, but the data is an input. It helps you determine what you can sell at what price and how well you can deliver it. By looking at the data, you can find and identify new services to offer and even monetize those services.

Sarah Nicastro: I want to go back to the point you made Michael about actual service versus the capability to serve. So when you talk about the capability… I have an opinion and that’s why I’m asking you, how do you articulate that capability to your customer base in a way that will resonate well with them?

Michael Blumberg: Well, there’s a couple. One is what’s the promise? What’s the portfolio you’re offering them and what’s the promise you’re making? Another part to that is to talk about the service delivery infrastructure. What do you have that makes it possible, the one you show them. And I learned this a couple of years ago, well, many years ago where people started to evaluate the service organization based on whether they had a mobility solution, right? So that’s an example. That’s how to demonstrate the capability. Another one is define the process, explain to them what the process will be like, not only when they signed up for the service but when they need the service. Another part of this is testimonials. Giving testimonials, customer satisfaction scores.

Sarah Nicastro: Sure. Yeah. I think the customer testimonials thing is certainly important. I just wonder and I’m sure this varies industry to industry and I think also in terms of within your customer base, the persona that you’re targeting. But I think less and less do people care about the how, until you haven’t delivered on that promise. I think that that capability in terms of here’s what we can guarantee to you in terms of the outcome, the experience and the value to your business is the number one most important thing to clearly articulate and articulate in a way that is very simple for folks to understand. I just think with the ease with which we can attain outcomes as consumers today, I think people want the provider to take on the complexity of the how, and maybe aren’t as interested in that complexity unless it becomes important to them, i.e. things have gone wrong. If that make sense?

Michael Blumberg: Well, a couple of things, though, you have to pre-frame it because when things go wrong and they not understand how, then they understand why it might gone wrong and they’re more forgiving because they understand what was involved. And also you have to show them like, let’s look at Uber, right? Right now, if you didn’t know what Uber could do, you might still pick a taxi. Yes, call a taxi company to pick you up. But you know, it’s that experience that you have with Uber that you can take out your smartphone and see where driver is and who the driver is.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, I think the experience is very important. Okay. So the next area of bias that we want to cover is around the pricing.

Michael Blumberg: Yeah. So sometimes companies think that the way they’re going to sell more services is by lowering their price. And that might be because of a bias from the customer that when you ask them, why are they not buying the service? They’ll say, “Well, it cost too much,” right? And that’s what people always say, no matter what it is, whether it’s a product or a service, a car, house. If there’s no value for them, they’re going to say it cost too much. So you got to really be able to define the value. The other one is the failure to understand the value -in- use. So to be able to price effectively and not have to lower your price, you need to understand what it’s outcome going to do for the customer, right? Again, if you don’t understand that you get into debate, why is it cost so much? Can’t you lower that price?

Michael Blumberg: But if you get somebody there to the customer site within four hours, again, I like to use that example because that’s easiest one to understand. They’re going to save themselves a lot of money. They may save themselves a hundreds of thousand dollars an hour. So when you understand that they know you understand that and you can guarantee that I’ll get somebody there, they’re going to pay the higher price. But when you’re unable to do that, they’re going to knock down on price or they’re going to find something else. Some other reason why the price should be lower.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. That makes sense. All right. And then the last area is around infrastructure bias. So what does that mean?

Michael Blumberg: Not making the necessary investments to deliver on the services. Some of these services that are available today like uptime as a service, for example, you need to have the infrastructure to deliver it. And so it’s almost a catch-22. Some companies don’t want to offer this service and generate greater revenue because they don’t have the infrastructure. Others have the opposite, right.

Sarah Nicastro: They have the infrastructure, but they haven’t…

Michael Blumberg: Yeah. They haven’t leveraged.

Sarah Nicastro: … created the service.

Michael Blumberg: Right. And understand that because they have the infrastructure in place, they can deliver the service.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So what type of infrastructure are we talking about? What do we think are the most important considerations around… Because to me, it seems less risky to have the capabilities and not have the service developed around them versus promising any sort of outcome and not being able to deliver that. I mean, that seems like a death sentence for an organization.

Michael Blumberg: Yeah. You do want to have the infrastructure to deliver all your promises. So I call it a smart tech stack, smart being for service marketing tech stack.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Michael Blumberg: So you want to have your basic infrastructure in place which is your service management system in place. If your portfolio calls for offering uptime as a service or outcome-based services, you want to have remote monitoring and IoT so you can ensure the equipment is up and running. You want to have augmented reality solution so that if your technician is in the field and they run into a problem, they can resolve it quickly. So they’re not spending time searching for the solution. Depending on how large you are, I would add analytics, an AI to speed up the time frame which is required to predict and diagnose and correct an issue. Okay.

Michael Blumberg: Smaller organizations may not have enough of the data. If they have a very small installed base, they may not have enough data to take advantage of that technology, but as you get larger you want to have that. So that’s the foundation for service delivery and I think you and I would agree that that’s the foundation for delivering great customer experience. But on top of that, to market obviously you need a good sales CRM system to keep track of your customers and what they’re buying. You also want to have tools to configure pricing quote, your services. And you also want to have some form of marketing automation so you could stay in touch with your customer.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. It makes sense. Good. So those are our five areas of bias that can get in the way of folks effectively marketing their services. So all really good points, any summary thoughts on this topic as a whole.

Michael Blumberg: Good question. I’d say that you got to keep working at it. It’s not just once and done. You have to keep reevaluating and refining your service offering and your marketing approach. And again, don’t overlook perception that there’s always a way to improve the marketing and that’s with anything.

Michael Blumberg: But I was just thinking the other day I was speaking to a client and they said, “We’ve launched a product as a service offering and we hear that’s what we should be doing. You know, that’s what the data says. That’s what the analyst says, but we’re not having people buy from us.” I said, “Well, why? And he said, “Well, because they turned the conversation into what’s the interest rate because they know that we’re going to finance the product through this as a service model.” I said, “Well, first of all, maybe that’s not a good idea to bring that up early in the sales process.” But more importantly, I asked them, “What are you offering or promising to your customer that’s going to make them believe that as a service, they’re going to get better value for their dollars on an OpEXand CapEX.. And he said, “You know, you’re right. We haven’t defined that.”

Michael Blumberg: So that’s what I mean by perception is you got to take a big picture view and you look at all the different angles and possibilities about why something’s not being sold.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think that for companies that have traditionally sold products, there’s some average product life cycle or lifespan. And I think that on the services side, in the pace of change is so fast in terms of that continual need to understand what your customers need, what will most impact their businesses or their lives and the different ways you can address that. So it does need to be a very continual process of staying engaged with your customers so that you’re designing and delivering services that are really created for them and continually looking for what those opportunities are.

Sarah Nicastro: I see a lot of companies that are having such great success with the closer they get to their customers, the more it starts to open up different channels of opportunity for them because they learn their customers’ businesses more. They look at areas of adjacency and they can see ways that they can kind of expand and progress what they’re doing. And it can be kind of a big hurdle to get over at first to think in more of this way. But once you’ve conquered that there is a lot of opportunity which is really exciting for folks.

Michael Blumberg: Yeah. And you mentioned something earlier that also, I want to add I found common is, you really need to be clear about the value proposition and that’s sometimes the problem is that they don’t define their value proposition very well. They say, “We’re going to offer a product as a service because that’s what we should do. That’s what everyone’s doing, but not defining it from the customer’s perspective, the planning in terms of what problems and pains this itself for the customer.

Sarah Nicastro: Exactly. Yup, I think that’s a very good point. All right, Michael. Well, thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your perspective with all of us. I appreciate it.

Michael Blumberg: You’re welcome, Sarah. And as always, it’s been a real pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you. You can find more by checking us out at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

In today’s customer-centric culture, the moment of service means more than ever. The moment of service is a moment of engagement, a moment of opportunity, moment of innovation, a moment of potential growth. There’s a whole lot riding on your ability to execute on those moments if you realize service for the powerful potential it holds.

For most businesses, mastering the moment of service has become a major priority. This mastery requires the business to navigate and streamline immense complexity to deliver what the customer wants in the moment it matters – a seamless and positive experience. So, is this mastery an art or a science? I’d argue it’s the perfect blend of both.

The Art of Exceptional Service

The art of service, at its root, is in adeptly uncovering, understanding, articulating, and addressing your customers’ challenges and opportunities in the form of your value proposition. A customer-driven value proposition requires relationships, listening, and trust. It requires an innovative mindset and a willingness departure from business-as-usual, and that in and of itself is an art many struggle with.

This art of customer-driven value propositions is enabled by the artful creation of a customer-centric company culture that recognizes the role service plays in success and growth. This culture welcomes innovative ideas and input and recognizes the criticality of employee engagement in delivering on the moment of service.

I also think that redefining the field service role is an art. Hiring folks to show up, fix something, and leave is a thing of the past. To master the moment of service, you need to redefine what service means to your business and reassess what the field service role entails. Most customers are looking for a trusted advisor, a more consultative and value-led relationship, and execution of that requires a different skill set than break/fix service does.

The Science of Service Excellence

To be impactful, the art of customer-driven value proposition, service-centric culture, employee engagement, and modernized service roles must be complimented by some science. One of the most important areas of science in service excellence is the evaluation, optimization, and standardization of processes. While arduous, this exercise is essential to creating a consistent and uniform experience to represent and reaffirm your brand.

Digital transformation and automation are other important elements of the science of mastering the moment of service. Customers want simplicity, and technology is key to being able to navigate and streamline complexity to deliver that simplicity. Whether it’s a consistent view of operations, more efficient planning and utilization of resources, remote service capabilities, or predictive analytics, today’s customer expectations can’t be met without a modern, cohesive digital infrastructure.

That digital infrastructure equips your company to master perhaps the most important science of this all: data. Data is what powers your moment of service – it’s what helps you operate efficiently and intelligently enough to be able to not only offer but guarantee the outcomes your customers want. But, in many instances, data is also an increasingly important part of the customer value proposition as well.

There are, of course, many more aspects to both the art and science sides of this equation. And then there are areas, like communication, that span both – communication is an art, but can be driven by the science of systems.

All too often, when companies struggle with mastering the moment of service and recognizing the potential of service on their business, it’s because they are focusing too narrowly on just one side of this equation. The art and the science are both very important and investing in resources who are strong in either area is important. But marrying the two is ultimately how you’ll master the moment of service and truly seize the service opportunity.

By Tom Paquin

I have always been of a mind that the most important thing that software—any software—can do is to get out of your way. Even social media platforms, cultural cancers that they are, know that their key purpose (communication) needs to be easy, accessible, and provide the necessary feedback to show that it is working (“likes”, as it were). These are the keys of solid programming, and they’re how and why we use the devices that we do in the ways that we do.

This takes on a slightly different precedence in service, wherein the goal is not just to allow the technology to make completing actions seamless, the goal is to enhance the service process while not disrupting it in any major way. Here's an example of bad software design: If, in order to build schedules, you need to have availability loadouts three weeks in advance, and can’t update them same-day because of illness, or because of a high-priority outage that just came up, then that software is worse than pen and paper, and it’s actually an impediment to your growth.

It’s incredible how many software providers don’t understand this fact, and it’s why some firms struggle to get their teams to use the technologies at their disposal in the first place.

Today, though, I don’t want to talk about the user experience of software applications. We do that all the time. I want to take this concept outside of the day-to-day utilization of software, and look at the framework of the software itself.

Because here’s the thing: Service firms are complex. They are, frequently, a mismatch of cultures, either through means of acquisitions, or organizations working alongside OEMs, or distributors, or aftermarket part manufacturers, or contingent employees, or some Frankensteinian combination of these elements. And service delivery itself doesn’t fit into a neat box. There are different tiers (telcos, for instance, balancing commercial and residential service visits), different types of workforces, and different systems employed depending on the nature of a fix, or a routine appointment, or an emergency, or a predicted event, and so on, and so on, and so on.

On a frankly more basic level, some companies simply require, perhaps for regulatory reasons, their solutions to be managed on-prem. Others have managed cloud space of their own that they want to employ. Others, still, are in a position to move to the cloud. None of these (or any other adoption permutation) are wrong, and software that supports that flexibility will be engineered to support flexibility further down the value chain as well.

Service software deployment demands flexibility. This begins with containerization.

The concept of containerization, in its simplest terms, means that software is packaged (or ‘contained’ I suppose) in a way, with all ancillary processes, that enables it to be deployed at the discretion of the end user.

Today, the way that this most commonly works is that businesses build a cloud-first product, and they’re willing to sell it to you in the cloud, managing upkeep, upgrades, licenses, and operations for you wholly. Some companies consider this “The future” and refuse to practically look beyond it, even though it’s not only “the present”, it’s our very messy present. An inherently containerized product, though—one that lives in the cloud natively—can be just as easily packaged and deployed on a home server, with the same internal structure, same APIs, and to the same effect. Or that container can be handed off to another cloud host, managed independently of the “multi-tenant” cloud instance upon which the software was built. So “single tenant” cloud hosting.

Call it containerization, or Kubernetes, or whatever you want. To my estimation, it’s really the bellwether that defines product flexibility down-the-line. Software that cares enough about your business to offer you that degree of deployment flexibility understands your business. In my experience, that means that their actual functionality will be built to contour to the shape of your actual operations, not force you to work around them.

Richard Culberson, Executive Director, Smart Home and IoT Strategy & Operations, talks with Sarah about lessons learned in working to diversify revenue streams with service.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be taking an inside look at Cox Communications' service-based revenue diversification strategy. Say that three times fast. I am joined today by Richard Culberson, who is the executive director for Smart Home and IoT strategy and operations at Cox Communications. Richard, welcome to the podcast.

Richard Culberson: Thanks for having me, Sarah.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here. All right. So to get us started, why don't you just spend a few minutes telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your current role at Cox?

Richard Culberson: Sure. So I've been at Cox now for about nine years. I'm trying to be a reformed consultant, coming from Accenture, where I toured two tours of duty, one on the technology and process side of the house, and then another on a corporate strategy growth, strategy group within Accenture. Joined Cox about nine years ago. As I mentioned, was in the corporate strategy team during typical strategy work, but more often than not partnering with our new growth team. So that's where we investigated gaming and health. And the one business that really stuck was home security, which we rebranded eventually for Homelife to extend its reach into some of the IoT areas we'll talk about. So I've now been working with Homelife for about six years. I'm responsible of both the strategy of the business, as well as the day-to-day operations. So one foot in both, and that's kind of what's kept me interested in the business as we change a little bit every day.

Sarah Nicastro: Cool. Okay. So this division was created about six years ago. Tell our listeners a little bit about how you and the team at Cox identified the opportunity for this line of business, and then the process around kind of creating it. And two reasons for that question. One is just to share your experience. And two is many of our listeners are regularly looking for those opportunities to sort of add adjacent or complimentary services to diversify or even pivot a bit to diversify. So I want to keep that in mind as we walk through your story so that folks can kind of learn maybe some tips or tricks for what to look for.

Richard Culberson: Sure. So if you don't know much about Cox enterprises and the larger Cox company, a long history of innovation. It was started by Governor Cox as initially with newspapers, and then expanded into seeing opportunities in radio as that came as a new medium, and then broadcast television, which led to cable, which is now one of the largest of the two divisions that we have, Cox Communications and Cox Auto.

Richard Culberson: While Cox Communications, we started obviously through your traditional cable company and long history of finding new opportunities to join in with subscription businesses. So for example, we were the first cable company to launch phone, and people don't know about that. And as we look at constantly, what's next and what else can we go in and enter to help out consumers with some of the other opportunities and needs they have around the home? So what you'll find is it all centers around the home and how can we help out our customers?

Richard Culberson: Specifically with home security, if you look at that traditional home security marketplace, it's about 20% of households passed, traditionally are entered in, and it's growing a little bit, but obviously what we'll talk about a little bit later down the path. Now, with smart home is where the big boom is. But we saw there was a huge opportunity, even in the legacy home security business. Traditionally, someone comes at the door, they sign you up, you never see them again. You're paying for something every month, but you've got Ving Rhames at the front door, protecting your house. We saw that consumers really want more of a peace of mind. So whether it was from burglaries, whereas even with cameras and some of the forward-looking technologies that we have right now, we knew that consumers weren't being served to the need. But also we know with our video, our data and obviously our internet products, we have relationships with depending on the market, 60, 70% of households.

Richard Culberson: So this is an opportunity kind of giving customers that one throat to choke. Whether it's from billing or internet connectivity, how do you tie all these together to make a better service for customers? So we knew this is an opportunity for us to enter and explore. And as I said, about six years ago, we really started dabbling and testing in that, but immediately it started resonating with customers as a different business model and a different operating model. So we've been growing off that ever since.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right. So based on your experience six years ago, kind of creating this new division within Cox, but also your history in evaluating some of these other revenue options or opportunities, what advice would you give folks that are listening on the different evaluation criteria? How do you determine what's a worthwhile pursuit and what might be a good fit to kind of branch off into?

Richard Culberson: Sure. We kind of look at it in three lenses and we always start with the customer. So if you look at it from the customer perspective, from our front lines, so whether we're talking about technicians, or sales reps, or customer call reps, or if you're talking about the business model and the financials behind it. So we try to look through all three lenses. What we found is we've had the most success when we always start with our customers, of finding what a customer need is, and is it being met right now or not. And even if it is, so for example, in the home security marketplace, is it being met in a way that they want, or is there a way that we can improve on that, which was definitely the case for the home security marketplace.

Richard Culberson: Then we talked to our front lines, and that addressed... They have a different lens on the customer because sometimes if we do just market research and if you follow what customers say, how they act, isn't always directly in alignment. It's well intended, but when it comes down to the pocketbook, or push comes to shove, how they act it might be a little bit different. So what we found is it's really beneficial to talk to those front lines. And that's where as a cable business, as an MSO, it's really beneficial because we already have an existing billing relationship, our technicians are in the house. I mean, more than not, we have customers baking brownies for technicians when they're in their house, feeding them pizza. So there's no better frontline of really understand what's going on in the home.

Richard Culberson: If then you combine that and start looking at our operating model, that really sets us like, "Well, how do we set ourselves apart, and how do we differentiate?" More often than not, we found that that decides how we'll be successful or not. To be blunt, when we first started this home security model, we kind of replicated what was already happening in the industry; so very consultative, dedicated sales, someone comes in, spends a long amount of time setting this up, and then kind of removing ourselves from that and just letting the product run ourselves.

Richard Culberson: We, to be honest, didn't get the traction we wanted to get. So we knew we had to pivot a bit and said, "Wait a minute, if we want to sell more, we know that we have to go where the existing customer transactions are. Where are we already talking to them? And what are customers expect when they're interacting with us?" So that taught us two things. We changed our sales channel strategy to move distribution more to where they're interacting with us, but we also changed our model. So we started saying, "Well, it's less about expensive device sales. No one calls into their cable company and says, 'I'm expecting to fork out $200, $300, $500 upfront.'" So we pivot our model and good to our strength of subscription model. We'll say, "Let's put a little bit more on a monthly payment, but that removes that barrier to entry for the customer, and at that unexpected, 'We need this much money upfront.'"

Richard Culberson: That spreads it out, which again, we already know their credit, we know their credit worthiness. We have lots of insights as an MSO, that we can use on that relationship. So we changed both our sales strategy on that front, as well as basically how we serve, and being more engaged. That allows us to put more focus on retaining the customer and reaching out to them more proactively, because that's one of the biggest pain points they always say is, "I can't get a hold of people. I just wish they would check-in." So we invest more on that relationship as it goes.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. There's a couple points you made there that I just want to revisit briefly. One is, we have a lot of conversations around this idea of developing advanced services and looking for different opportunities to deliver outcomes, experiences, et cetera. I think that what you said about sort of the interactions with customers, but also the market research just made me think of a conversation I've had recently around the idea that you certainly want to lead with what your customers are telling you, but you also want to look for the opportunity around the things that they might not know to say. Right? And so to kind of temper those conversations and that firsthand perspective with a little bit of research and brainstorming around what needs might be there that they aren't articulating is one point. And then the idea too, of a lot of this, you're sort of figuring out as you go, right?

Sarah Nicastro: As you said, you identified the need, you launched the solution, but then realized, "Boy, we could get much better results if we just reshaped the financial model of this a bit and offered it as a service, instead of expecting an upfront investment from customers." So it wasn't starting over, it was pivoting and keeping the offering, but doing something different in terms of how you're financing it and packaging it. And I think that that's another important point is you don't have to have it all figured out before you start down the path. I mean, you obviously want to have a strategy and you want to do your due diligence, but you're going to be learning as you go, and you can incorporate those learnings to improve your outcomes. Right?

Richard Culberson: Sure. It's very helpful. What we tried to do a bit is established kind of a strategic framework and then say, "Well, how does this fit in as the next change, the new marketplace comes out, a new device? How should we think about it?" The most common framework that we use is we actually go broader than, I know industry terms are all over the place these days and we confuse ourselves as well as our customers, but we consider Smart Home to be one component of the broader connected home strategy. And what I mean by that is you can think of it as three concentric circles, almost like Russian nesting dolls, if you will.

Richard Culberson: At the heart of everything and this is why we think we can be very successful, it starts with connectivity. So broadband connectivity, obviously we are a leading provider of internet and we're a mass market provider. We've got great penetration in the homes already. If you don't have good solid connectivity, you really can't build out from that. So obviously that's the bread and butter of our business. We've got one of the best networks out there, but we know we need to piggyback off of that.

Richard Culberson: So if you go from that inner circle to the next circle out, that's where we get into this smart homes, smart homes as a service model by saying, "Well, wait a minute. If you take that connectivity, right now, consumers can add all sorts of devices on it. But the barriers to entry that we've seen is these devices, they don't work together. They have a hard time getting them installed. What happens if it breaks? There's an affordability issue." So we really set our smart home as a service, or as we call Homelife automation up, we said, "Let's establish this to remove the mass market barriers to entry, so with the affordability and just giving peace of mind, whether that's setting things up, getting them to work together, or if something breaks, we can fix it.

Richard Culberson: So that smart home is that second concentric circle, and that's largely how we're taking to market today and the way that that's really taught us so many things is we're very careful not to use device-centric thinking or device-centric language. This space, as you know, there's so many shiny objects. You can do connected to anything. If you can think of it, it can be connected, it can be made smart these days. But what we found, it's a long tail. There's so many devices down there, but if you can really knock out the top three to five devices that enable use cases. That's the language we always refer to is what are the use cases in the home that we're trying to enable? And then, what are the devices needed in the home to do that?

Richard Culberson: So therefore, that helps us be able to say, not this long tail of all these... We always make the joke of the connected toilet. Sure, we can build it, but what's the marketplace for that? What consumer need are you meeting? Just be careful about how far you go down that long tail? So in this middle ring, we started with use cases, and the three use cases that we prioritize based on what customers are buying and what they've been telling us, it really starts with cameras and being able to see them in their home, and being able to protect what they have in their home, both inside and out.

Richard Culberson: And the second really comes with lighting. So whether it's a switch, a plug, a light bulb, anything to do with lighting. We'll start with just those two. But the good news, I'm going to tie these two rings together before I go to the third ring. But at the end of that, when you call in to buy broadband, the first question you'll always hear us ask is, "Well, how do you need to use that?" Because we're already asking the questions of how much speed do you need? What bandwidth do you need? Is low latency an issue for you for a gamer? We already know these questions, but in that learning process, we said, "Well, do you have children that are in there? How often are they interacting to drive more devices in the home?"

Richard Culberson: Well, that same question we can then pivot and say, "Well, do you want to be able to see when your kids come home from school? Do you want to know when the dog is playing in the backyard?" More often, they want to check on their dog more than their kids. It's amazing. So we think from that use case of what they can see, or do they want a light to come on at night? We need all those use cases to fill out the second ring of smart home. But then that's interesting because that is what's really turned on the open spigot for adjacencies, if you will, for other areas we can go into. And we say, "Well, if they're using us for that, we can use the same platform, the same devices, the same analytics to help starting into energy management." So if I know how much power you're using, I can help you control that and work with your utility of a lower your power bill. So energy management is that new buzzword that's coming out.

Richard Culberson: Or whether it's home health. We ran a trial for a PERS solution, personal emergency response system, the "I've fallen and I can't get up," service. We found that almost using the same services, we can help out seniors who in the pandemic, as you know, they're more removed and the caregivers can't reach them now. So more now than ever, that's been a critical service that we've been able to turn on using the same platform. Or even a in apartments and condos for MDUs, property management. So there's a certain level of control of the same devices for the tenant or the resident that's living in the unit, but also the property manager, when it's vacant, they can control.

Richard Culberson: So we use all those same devices and that same platform to enable that third ring of what we call connected services. So it's that connectivity to smart home, to connected services, that make up the connected home that we are proudly pursuing on a few different fronts.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Okay. So we touched on this a bit, but I want to go into specifics on some of the different areas that you are leveraging economies of scale. Right? So first you talked about you're expanding the in-home value proposition. Right? But talk a little bit about how branching out into these different areas creates sort of customer stickiness or more intimate customer relationships.

Richard Culberson: Sure. And that's kind of what we built this off of. There's as we were talking about, when we look at devices and the options that consumers have in this marketplace, you can go to Home Depot and there's probably 10 different camera manufacturers. So some of the most capitalized largest companies in the world, the Amazons, the Googles, the Apples of the world are really product leaders in this space. So we knew that we want best of breed products, and we even want to work with many of those large competitors because the consumers want those all to work together. We want to try to enable that as much as possible. But at the end of the day, we know that we're not going to sustainably differentiate by having the best camera.

Richard Culberson: So instead, is we focused on service and we knew that that's something that we've already established, a relationship with the customer, we have call center assets. We have technicians in the home. That's where we said, "Wait a minute. As we were talking about the barriers to entry, we knew that they want us to set it up for them. We wanted our platform to have all of these work together. And we know if something breaks, "Who's going to come and fix it? I don't want to worry about that." That's that piece of mind on the service mentality. So we've taken a lot of the same assets that the company already has. We've got thousands of in-house technicians and third-party technicians. They're doing a great job in home, already doing technical work? And they know the customer. Why don't we leverage those same assets and say, "Wait a minute, stay a little bit longer in the home and help them get these devices up and going."

Richard Culberson: So it's cost efficient and actually, we were rather surprised, all of our technicians love it. Because it's a new skill set, it's new capability. Customers were already asking them to help out with the cameras that they had anyway. And now they're able to meet the needs, that they weren't previously able to. So as a service provider, we're getting some of the highest employee NPS, as well as customer NPS off of that. And because it's all coming together and from one provider, we've seen now using some aggressive analytics and new things we've been learning that having our Homelife, whether automation where security is one of the number one differentiators, and basically churn reduction drivers for broadband.

Richard Culberson: There's a stickiness naturally that comes with it, because now they're seeing, "Well, wait a minute, I've got a camera that works off of this. This is how all of my home is working." We're basically the operating system of the home now, so there's a lot more stickiness and we have a deeper relationship that we might not have had with the customer otherwise.

Sarah Nicastro: Now, IoT is the other aspect of your title. So from a technology perspective, how does this build off of the IoT and technology that's already in use in other areas of Cox?

Richard Culberson: So we've been working with both residential and commercial IoT for quite a while. We do have a strong point, one of the first things we want to make sure we enter in, because we've got a fantastic footprint within the home and residential. But we also have very large and growing commercial business, whether it's small business, mid-business or enterprise customers in our footprint.

Richard Culberson: The first example of launching on the commercial side was Cox Business Security Solutions. What we call CBSS, in-house. That's somewhat traditional-minded security, but also has an automation flare to it. You can add cameras and other devices as well for that service. But what we also stood up was a group that we called Cox2M, and they're really focused on commercial IoT and all of its different flavors, whether we're talking about smart communities, as almost as an expansion on the smart home, smart communities and smart cities.

Richard Culberson: So now we're working with builders on seeing what we can do to enable the property, the homes, before they're bought, because we know that increasingly residents in MDU or buyers of single-family homes are expecting this to be there. If it's there, that's even better. But we're also starting to look out of home and we're seeing more press on our smart cities, whether that's really, we're seeing some intelligent parking solutions, lighting solutions across cities. Other examples are smart agriculture. What we found is farming has a massive need for this.

Richard Culberson: But the first trial we executed was actually in partnership with our Cox automotive business. We have several Cox owned properties, whether you're talking Autotrader, Kelly Blue Book, but also Manheim Auctions is one of the largest auctions in which to turn used cars. So there's quite a marketplace there, but people know there's thousands of cars moving in and out of the lanes, constantly being sold. But right now, that the requires a driver, and constant checking of where those cars are. And literally, they're going with key fobs around a thousand-car parking lot, trying to find cars. If you've ever struggled with that in an airport, try doing that with thousands of cars.

Richard Culberson: Now, they're able to be so much more efficient and it reduces our costs because they can find that car quicker, and they can have additional information that's present, using a new technology that we're able to lean in through or activate in through Cox2M.

Richard Culberson: So we're trying to do as much as possible as we go to market, is trying to like, "What's kind of that bringing all of those assets together?" And recognizing because quite often, for example, if someone has a small business and they're using the CBSS product, they also have Cox Homelife in their home. And quite often they might also need some of these other assets that we have from Cox2M. So we're trying to be as intelligent as we can about common platforms, common use sources. So for example, both on residential and commercial, we're leveraging some of the same technicians because it's a lot of the same skill sets.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Okay. So you talked a little bit about the response from customers and employees. Tell us a little bit more about the feedback you've gotten on... I know it's not a new division anymore. You said you were six years into it, but on this area of the business.

Richard Culberson: It's funny because we're so close to it. This is one of the reasons why we constantly do customer research and go talk to our front lines. It's easy to forget that while we feel that we're pretty mature being about six years in market, our brand awareness is significantly lower still than overall Cox. That's why we make sure we never say on the marketplace, "Homelife." We always say Cox Homelife, because we still, even though we've got great spots out, great commercials, and some of the highest scoring that we have for the company, people are still learning about things because there's either just entering the smart home marketplace. It's easy to become probably for you and for I, this focus group of one of, "Well, of course, everyone has 10, 15 devices in the home." We're really trying to open up smart home for the masses.

Richard Culberson: We commonly use the phrase, it's like a speakeasy. There's this cool thing that people have heard of, but they don't know what it is or how to get in. We're trying to make sure that the mass market has a way to get into this. So because of that, a lot of our potential customers aren't aware because they haven't been in the market before, but we want to make sure that when they come into the marketplace, that we're in consideration. So we are running more in commercials, you'll see us more out in presence. And all of our sales interactions are driving that a little bit more. So it's still definitely a new or brand newer brand. But specifically what we found on a marketing return on investment, when we run a Homelife commercial, there's a halo to the rest of the business. There's a positive halo because consumers see this and see us as being so much more for them. So we've seen as much as a 1% to 2% increase on our return investment just by running Homeland spots against our broadband business. So again, seeing tremendous halo benefits for some of these capabilities.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that people are looking to simplify as much as possible, right? So the more you can do in one place, that is I think increasingly important for folks, so that makes sense. Okay. Let me ask you this question. In your experience, if a company is looking to determine best ways to differentiate revenue, what's the biggest mistake that gets made?

Richard Culberson: I think this is pretty common across the board and especially in the space that we're in. If you look at marketplaces and valuations of companies that are out there, there's so much of fear of missing out these days. Of, "Wow, there must be money there. People are making money. I must be able to make money too." What we've always found is that whether you're talking about consumers or businesses, they really do care about their pocketbook. You have to know how deep you're reaching into their wallet and what the wallet share you're trying to extract. So I think it's easy to get excited about so much press that's going on. It's clearly a growth market.

Richard Culberson: People either do one of two things. They jump in, feelings that, "Oh, wow, everyone has a right to win," rather than focus on what their right to win is and looking at what assets they have as to, "Why me?" I think that's one and one we've made mistakes as we've gone, but I think we've continued to tighten up a bit in saying, "Well, why us as a cable provider, as an MSO?" Well, wait a minute. They know they have the connectivity. We have this relationship, but that's an honor and a privilege. So it's easy for us to go too far down that path of, "Look what else we can do." We have to be very cognizant of how much they pay on a monthly basis because we're a big portion of discretionary income for a lot of consumers.

Richard Culberson: So I think as other people are looking at this, looking at revenue adjacencies, you have to know what your right to win is and what a customer thinks of you, which is why we're trying to do a lot of things to make sure we're supporting the community. We're out there increasing brand awareness as a cable company, but also for this specific business, because on a month to month basis, they're paying us a lot of money and that's ours and we have to live up to it every month.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. That makes sense.

Richard Culberson: So for that, we're were doing a lot of work. We started obviously, with just acquisition, but we have a big focus on customer engagement now. So segmenting out each one of these customers, are they online? And if they're not, what do we do to proactively bring them back online? What are they using the product for? How can we drive that up to show that there's more value for them? Because every month, when they sit down at their kitchen table and say, "Well, what can we cut to bring down our budget?" We need to be above that red line and make sure we're a value to that point.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. That makes sense. What do you see as future potential for diversification for Cox?

Richard Culberson: When we look at going back to that connected home space, adjacencies, they're so numerous because it's really a platform strategy at the end of the day. We have a platform which has the analytics and it's collecting data from the home, which can be used to help enable customers live a richer life in one way or another. So we look at that. And while, as I said earlier, we try to keep a tight portfolio of devices. We do that by saying, "What use cases are we enabling?" But there's so many more new things that are opening up, and coming out of the pandemic hopefully, we've learned a lot of things.

Richard Culberson: People are spending so much more time at home, they look at their homes differently. All you have to do is look at telehealth and the numbers are staggering of how many people now are comfortable talking to a doctor or being given clinical advice from the home. I mean, to be honest, that's not being run well. There's so much more opportunity to connect those dots, remove that fear, but it's all rooted in that same peace of mind that we talked about.

Richard Culberson: Another good example is education. Teachers is doing the best they can, but what you found is that they just don't have the tools and the platforms to do this. I have three young daughters, so very, very happy to have them in school whenever we can because of the environment. But we know that there's a good chance that more often than not, that this will be one of the dimensions that has to be available in the future. So as a company, we're doing as much as possible to expand affordable access to broadband, as a company. And many programs in partnership with the FCC and internally, we're driving. But the same piece is here, but that's education. If they have broadband and if there's needs at home, there's so many pieces that are being underserved right now. And again, it all goes back to where are the customer needs? We think that there's a lot of areas that we can serve that are readily available.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there would be a lot of opportunity. And to your point, it's a matter of, like you said earlier, sorting out not what the opportunities are, but what you specifically can provide when it comes to those opportunities.

Richard Culberson: And we are particularly looking at partnerships too. Not all of the funding... I've listened to a couple of your podcasts and it's a good point in talking about what's revenue versus a business model. And if we're talking about all this revenue, the cost can't be fully burdened all the time by consumers. So perhaps if there's a win-win where a utility bill can come down, utilities, they're all building out capacity to that prime hour. Well, if we can shift consumption of that energy, the utility wins and the consumer wins, so perhaps some of that burden of the consumer can be born by the utility now. So if we look more and more at some of these different value propositions, it doesn't all have to be born on the back of the consumer. There's lots of people that can win.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. And what will that inner connectedness of that ecosystem look like as we go forward? I think that that's going to be a big part of the next phase of service and looking at the customer journey from the perspective of connecting some of those dots. Right? That makes sense. Okay. All right, Richard, any other comments, thoughts or words of wisdom for our listeners?

Richard Culberson: No. Probably the most important, you learn something new every day. Probably flexibility. I think the things that we've really learned are making sure you focus on what are your core, sustainable differentiators and build off of that. And what can you use as a pivot foot? It is March Madness, so we can talk about using the pivot foot. From what you do well today, to what's that next step you can take, rather than making a leap. It's kind of when you leap from one cycle to the other, when you go a little too far astray, and we've obviously made a couple of those mistakes and learn as we we've gone. But I think coming back to the first question we talked about, as long as you're coming back to consumers and their needs, and customers in the business side, you tend to be a lot better off.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It definitely needs to be led from that direction. But I think that going back to a couple of the points I made earlier, you're learning as you go and you guys are doing a good job of having a vision and a strategy, but being fluid in how you get there. Right? So you try something and then you recognize an opportunity to do it a little bit differently and a little bit better. And then you adjust. Right? So I think that's one of the important points is, you need to know where you're going, but you don't have to have every step mapped out. In fact, it might be smart to not try to map every step out because the path is going to wind a bit as you work toward that vision. So yeah, that makes sense.

Sarah Nicastro: Well, thank you so much for coming along today and sharing the journey with us. Certainly appreciate it. And we'd love to have you back in the future and talk about where things have led to.

Richard Culberson: No, this is great. Thank you so much, Sarah and I appreciate you having me on.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. You can check out more of our content by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS solutions by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

The future of work is a topic that comes up in almost every conversation I have in one way or another. Service leaders are grappling with a lack of available talent, working to determine how the field service role is changing, and balancing the management and retention of both older and young workers who have significantly different needs and desires. There are many layers to this conversation, all of which we will continue to dig into here at Future of Field Service. The common understanding, though, is that preparing for the future of the service workforce will be one of the biggest challenges among our audience in the coming handful of years. Today I’m going to discuss five pillars of preparation that are key to setting your company up to navigate this massive challenge with the highest chance of success.

Pillar #1: Redefine

The role of the field technician has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. You need to work hard to consider how the role is being redefined based on your company’s journey toward Servitization or leveraging advanced services as a competitive differentiator or path to revenue growth. What does this mean for your needs today as well as for your needs over the next five years?

For most organizations, what’s happening is that the role is evolving to require more than the traditional technical skill sets. Today’s field technicians are needing more soft skills to succeed in the role of trusted advisor as customer relationships and service value propositions evolve. This trend will only continue, so it’s essential to map where your company is heading in terms of what services you’ll be providing and how and then how that translates to the skills needed from your field technicians to accomplish those goals.

Perhaps you can evolve the role of your field technician to meet your future needs; perhaps you’ll need to add new roles as your business model matures. Being clear on the redefinition, though, from what was required historically to what you’ll need over the next five years gives you the insights needed to determine where the gaps lie, how to reframe job requirements and postings as well as training programs and progression paths, and prioritize greatest needs.

Pillar #2: Redesign

Once you have better defined your current state as it relates to talent and what’s needed to meet your service objectives, you can work to redesign your recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and progression processes to be in line with what you need – versus what you’ve always done. As skill sets needed change, so too should job descriptions and recruiting practices. Training may need to focus more heavily on soft skills and relationship management, as well as use of technology, than it has in the past.

Many companies complain of a “talent gap” when really what they’re frustrated with is an “experience gap,” meaning they are accustomed to being able to hire technicians with years of experience and those tenured technicians are becoming harder to come by. This doesn’t mean that talent doesn’t exist, though, it just means you have to work harder for it than you have in the past. This is a new normal you need to adjust to, and it means redesigning your definitions of talent, experience, and fit.

Some of the top areas of “redesign” underway when it comes to creating a workforce for the future are modernizing job roles and requirements to attract a more diverse pool of candidates, being sure to create appeal for the younger generation, introducing new roles based on your redefined requirements, and – perhaps most importantly – thinking about how to foster more talent versus simply attracting it.

Companies like Tetra Pak, for example, have created programs to foster future talent. This need to become more creative, and take more ownership, around meeting the needs you have for your field workforce teams is I think one of the biggest areas of redesign that’s essential. You cannot continue to post jobs and expect a wave of ready-to-hire applicants; you need to become more inventive around how you can take smart, capable people and meld them into the talent you need to exceed.

Pillar #3: Outsource

Outsourcing field work isn’t for everyone, but it is a growing trend. And here’s why – what many companies are doing is outsourcing the more basic, traditional break-fix work in an effort to have more time and energy to focus on upskilling and developing their in-house talent to do some of the more sophisticated work around advanced services.

There have been some reservations around leveraging third-party workers, and I don’t think those reservations are entirely without merit. But as the gig economy grows it becomes a more practical choice for many, and with today’s technologies, many of the concerns around the management of those workers and the control over brand experience are being minimized.

Perhaps for you it isn’t a move to outsourcing, but to creating a hierarchy of field technician within your company – an entry level position that handles some of the basics and a progression of positions that tackle more sophisticated service offerings. However you decide to tackle it, you shouldn’t rule out outsourcing without doing some due diligence.

Pillar #4: Automate

Another critical element of the future of work strategy is automation. How can you leverage predictive technology to anticipate versus react to needs, and to better prepare technicians for the work they’ll do on site? How can you leverage AI for knowledge capture and management, so that as your most experienced technicians retire you don’t lose a lifetime of knowledge along with them?

How does remote service fit into your service strategy? Using remote assistance and AR for a remote-first approach can act similar to outsourcing in the sense of eliminating the most basic level of service requirements by handling remotely tasks that can be resolved easily and quickly.

How enabled are your customers with self-service? Self service fulfills the customer’s desire for more control and autonomy, while often reducing the burden of the service provider in some ways.

Today’s technologies are powerful, sophisticated, and ready to help you morph your workforce into the future. Examining your options around automation, what can be automated and how, is key to managing the significant demands on service organizations that are only increasing.

Pillar #5: Innovate

Like all areas of service transformation, the conversation around the workforce is one that requires an innovative mindset. Break free of the “this is how we’ve done it” and you’ll be halfway there. Your business is likely changing (or it should be!), and therefore your workforce needs to change too. Look at how other businesses in your industry but maybe more importantly outside of your industry are tackling this universal challenge. Be open to new ideas, new roles, new processes, and new technologies. Those that exceed at creating the workforce of the future will do so by thinking out of the box, by creating a unique culture and challenge for their teams, and by understanding that your frontline workforce is absolutely imperative to your success as a service organization.

By Tom Paquin

Oh how we love servitization. We talk all the time about traditional companies product-izing repairs and regular service, building product categories around utilities that previously were seen as a cost center, or relegated to other organizations altogether. But what about those businesses who have been delivering service all along? We certainly talk about them, and we talk to them. Their experience extends, under many circumstances, far beyond that of new entrants.

And as the expectations of these new entrants have changed, so too have the expectations of these aftermarket service companies. Whether it be through companies attempting to corral their work under a licensee framework, or the pinch of OEMs encroaching upon their well-worn turf, challenges mount for legacy companies.

As always, not every challenge will be the same. Not every business will be up against the same types of competition, nor the same environmental challenges. But for many, there are a few issues worth confronting before the metastasize into more complex problems. Here’s a few such problems, and how our legacy service brethren can work to address them.

Rising Tides Sink Old Ships

Ok—I’m not saying that every service provider will be wiped out by a wave of servitization, in which the brands that are serviced build internal infrastructure to compete with you. Dealer service centers and private mechanics are able to live and work side-by-side, have access to the same materials, and offer comparable services.

But in a new environment where businesses are selling outcomes, not products to consumers, the need to pivot services to embrace that might be the key. For some, that might look like, as mentioned before, becoming part of a network of certified service providers for a single brand. Often, that means that the onus of optimization, parts management, and repair coordination is taken out of your hands. But it also means that you need to have the right tools in hand—and the willingness to adapt those tools—to meet the needs of the manufacturer or distributor of serviceable products.

If you’re a service provider against numerous products in a specific industry, like commercial kitchens, retail, or HVAC, that model isn’t as feasible. For those companies, you’ll often lack the ability to connect as closely to specific assets as a manufacturer. For these companies, delivering exceptional service at the greatest value is the key to success. It’s imperative, then, to think about the tools you’re using today to capture that success.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Maturity

Legacy aftermarket service providers have an obvious leg-up in the service wars of the future…they’ve been doing it for a very long time, so they have the infrastructure, systems, processes, and procedures that have been iterated upon for years to produce the New York Yankees of service technology stacks (as a Masshole, this pains me to type).

But also…

Legacy aftermarket service providers have an obvious detriment in the service wars of the future…they’ve been doing it for a very long time, so they’re saddled with dozens of overwritten technologies, iterated into a mob of indiscernible wires to produce the Miami Marlins of service technology stacks (sorry Floridians…the Marlins are bad).

This duality emphasizes the importance of auditing your service processes. In the next few weeks, we’ll present some questions that we can ask to help you evaluate the integrity of your software. It’s certainly tough to turn the mirror onto processes, especially when those processes are day-in, day-out activities of your service business. But taking the time to step back and make those evaluations could spell the difference between success and failure.

Jordan Argiriou, Director, Service Solutions APEC at QIAGEN talks with Sarah about how to normalize a focus on mental health in the workplace, how to grapple with varying comfort levels, and how to navigate cultural differences around the topic.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Very excited for today's episode. I even, for those of you watching the video, wore a shirt specific to our topic today. Today, we're going to be talking about one company, QIAGEN specifically, focus on employee mental health. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Jordan Argiriou, who is the Director of Service Solution for APEC at QIAGEN. Jordan, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast!

Jordan Argiriou: Hi, Sarah. Thank you for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for being here. So before we dig into the topic at hand, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. Anything you want to share about your background and your role at QIAGEN.

Jordan Argiriou: Sure. So I guess initially my background consisted of studying to become an IT engineer many years ago. I then decided to move away from that and get into field service, which was something that I was always interested in, even from an electronics point of view, IT point of view. So I began at a couple of smaller companies, eventually moving onto Thermo Fisher Scientific, who acquired a company that I was working for here. Stayed there for quite some time, and then eventually joined the team at QIAGEN, and haven't looked back since.

Sarah Nicastro: Cool. Now, tell us about the scope of your responsibility at QIAGEN.

Jordan Argiriou: Sure. So in the role right now, I've got a team of service managers reporting to myself. In addition to that, there are back office functions and technical service functions as well. Literally based all around the region. They are scattered around all of southeast Asia, Australia. We have more of the mature markets. We have a lot of the emerging markets as well in developing countries. So quite a complicated region to be in because, in some areas, you're dealing with very mature, very focused groups in terms of even customer base, other areas. It's still developing. We're still creating awareness, and trying to get their buying into service.

Jordan Argiriou: So it's actually quite an exciting role, quite an engaging role. Within the team, there are approximately 65 field service engineers in the field, and amongst other activities that we do. So it is quite a complicated role as in having to manage field work and how they operate and function, and then also having to manage the back office functions. Especially during COVID, it's been a really fun ride, so to speak.

Sarah Nicastro: A wild ride.

Jordan Argiriou: A wild ride, yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. So, Jordan, the first time that you and I spoke, it was an introductory call, and so we did our, "Hi, I'm Sarah, here's what I do." "Hi, I'm Jordan, here's what I do," and we chit-chatted about some of the different things you're working on and things that are relevant to your role. And then I said, "So if I were to have you as a guest on the podcast, what would you want to talk about? What's the topic you're most passionate about?" And your answer was mental health, which I was super, super excited about, but a little bit surprised about as well.

Sarah Nicastro: So I'm pumped to have you here talking about this topic today. It's something that I think is super important, and something that I personally am a strong advocate of de-stigmatizing and normalizing more in our everyday conversations, particularly in the workplace. So tell us to start why this is the topic that came to mind for you that you were passionate about talking about on our podcast today.

Jordan Argiriou: Sure. I remember the discussion very well. We were talking about just general service and everything else. Your third question of "Tell us about yourself and the company" and everything else, and what I do, typically, all of us will pretty much give a similar answer as to our daily operations. The reason I highlighted mental health, I think, especially at that point, for me, with the COVID impact onto this industry and every other industry globally, this is the first time in our lives we're experiencing a global pandemic like this, which has really obliterated the traditional view of how we do things. And that's in every aspect of life.

Jordan Argiriou: The reason mental health is something that I'm quite strong about and something that I really focus on is purely because during this time, looking at our media and just speaking for people in general, and it could be someone at the supermarket, it could be in your professional world, it could be anywhere, mental health is something I think that right now is not being neglected, but people are trying to put to the back because they're dealing with something that's right in front of them and challenges that they're facing every day.

Jordan Argiriou: So, for me, switching that back to the professional world, you've got field service engineers in the field, you've got tech service representatives in our offices, and trying to get to and from work. On top of what's going on, they've also got to tackle their own mental health side and worry about specific lockdowns, not seeing family for an extended period of time, and things like that. Which, overall, has an impact on their daily function, and also their own personal mental health. And health overall. Because, for me, if the brain is not right, if your feelings aren't right, then nothing is really going to be right with what you're doing day-to-day.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. That makes sense.

Sarah Nicastro: So COVID and some of the things that have happened in the last year are what really put an emphasis on the importance of this conversation and this focus in the workplace and in your role. What are some of the ways that you as a leader of teams, and even you yourself, how have you reacted to the recognition of this becoming a more critical focus area?

Jordan Argiriou: I would say for me, personally, it has been a highlight of something ... And obviously from my accent, you can all tell that I'm from Australia. It is quite a big topic here for many years and many generations. And, look, I'll be very open. Coming from a European background where emotion isn't something that you just lay on the table for everyone to see. It's a bit different, especially my father's generation and others. Right now, for the past I guess five years in Australia, it has been quite a hot topic because of high mental issues that have happened amongst especially young men, and something that is quite critical, the high suicide rate amongst young men and even women. But in Australia, it's mostly young men that suffer from mental health issues purely because people aren't really talking about it.

Jordan Argiriou: So when I saw that starting to arise, you start to think of your own mental health. You start to think of, again, if I was in the field, or if I am in the field, as a sales rep in the field having to deal with everything that's going on in the world ... And I guess COVID highlighted it immensely. That there are so many balls you've got to try and juggle, plus meet your commitments in the workplace and at home.

Jordan Argiriou: So, for me, that was a huge focus as well. There's a lot of burnout that happens amongst people, and people don't really see it. I guess it's not really discussed quite often. It's certainly something that you put up as a KPI, and something that you try and focus on, and try not to have people burn out, but I guess from a professional perspective, depending on the culture you're from or depending on the country you're from as well, it depends on whether you would be so open to talk about it, too.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think that when you talk about the impact of this last year, and everything that's happened, I don't think we've even begun to see how that will play out in terms of mental health, and just processing those emotions. It's impacted us all in different ways, but it's impacted us all, right? And I think, to your point, there's a certain tendency, I think, to focus on the crisis at hand and to just "Okay, what do we need to do?" Kind of in survival mode, quite frankly, and I think that as we come out of that, there is going to be a whole host of things that really need to be dealt with. So I think it's smart and beneficial to start the process of let's have these conversations now, let's start talking about these things now, and let's know that this impact is on everyone, and we need to address it.

Sarah Nicastro: I think the other thing I was going to say is that the point you brought up about young men in Australia, and those statistics. I'll be honest in saying one of the reasons I think it surprised me that this was a topic that you wanted to talk about is because I don't have people beating down my door to talk about mental health on this podcast in general, but the conversations we have had around it have been myself and another woman. And so I think that it is a very valid point that mental health overall is not discussed enough, but when it comes to how mental health can impact men, it's discussed even less so. And I think it is very important to understand that it impacts everyone, and that folks like yourself in roles like you are in industry and things like that leading these conversations has a huge impact in reaching people and making people feel more comfortable talking about any challenges they may be having. So that's why I'm glad we're here having this chat.

Sarah Nicastro: So you recognize overall that this is an issue, but then COVID hits, and it's significantly more so. So what advice can you give on ... How have you taken that information and that understanding and turned it into action? So what are some of the things that you as a leader have done in reaction to that recognition?

Jordan Argiriou: Look, I think initially it is sharing a lot more from my side to my team. So direct reports. And I'll give you a really good example. Whilst we're in this Zoom era of Zoom and whatever else we're using, Teams, and I'm not speaking brands here. Typically, everyone is on Zoom, everyone is on camera like you and I are today, and this is quite a common thing now. I think we've lost that personal feel of sitting down in the room and picking up certain cues, or ... How do I put it? Just a general feel of where someone is mentally while they're talking to you.

Jordan Argiriou: So as a really good example, and I'll be very open about it, typically in Asia-Pacific, it's not quite often that someone will share emotion on a camera or share a feeling on a camera as to how they're really feeling about a certain topic or a situation. So not being able to sit in the same room as someone and pick up on those cues has made it really difficult to really communicate in this way.

Jordan Argiriou: So I think the first thing for me and what I started doing was to openly communicate with people, and share from my side challenges that I'm facing professionally. And I guess you're venturing into the realm of your personal area, especially, as everyone or most people will know, Australia was put into quite a strict lockdown very early on in this whole piece. Obviously, we're an island. We try to keep everything contained.

Jordan Argiriou: So from my perspective, it was very quickly around us. The walls were closing in. We had home schooling going on and everything else, and you're trying also to work at the same time, and dealing with different time zones, et cetera. To avoid the burnout, you've got to openly talk about it.

Jordan Argiriou: So some of the strategies with my team, and it wouldn't be an agenda item, but it would be in the way I engage with them, it wouldn't be so much the professional chat of, okay, let's talk about your numbers, let's talk about your KPIs. Let's talk about what's happening in the field and customer issues. It would be all of that, obviously, but then on top of that, in between, you throw in "And this is what's happening here, and what's the situation there?" And you start to ask questions about "How are things going on your side? Forget about the professional side. How are things with your personal situation? Is everything okay?" Recognizing certain critical issues that may be in the background that they don't want to talk about.

Jordan Argiriou: From those conversations, it then leads onto their direct reports. So certain situations will arise. They may bring something up. As an example, we had a situation where a staff member was a little bit hesitant in going back home after being in the field in certain labs, purely because of what they're testing, and with COVID in the air. And we had to make arrangements for that person that were suitable for them to have a happy home life. So that would bring that to the forefront.

Jordan Argiriou: And then obviously with your direct reports, you would quickly flip it over and say, "Look, is everything okay on your side? Are we handling things?" The point I'm making is you break down that initial barrier of resistance, or the fact that they're trying to tell you that everything is fine. Once you get through that, the conversation then becomes much more fluid, and then the next time you catch up, it seems to be that that's the first thing you're talking about. "Hey, is everything okay at home?" "Hey, is everything okay with" even your commute to work. Things like that. Small changes you make to the way you conduct yourself in one-on-ones and the way you steer the conversation, and picking up on cues via Zoom, which is extremely difficult, like I said.

Jordan Argiriou: Because, typically, you get a vibe from someone. You can feel it in the air when you're sitting there and you're talking about a difficult topic. You can really see it. You can see it through body language. You can see it through their tone. On Zoom, it's a little bit more difficult. We have a lot of digital voices going on. We have noise cancellation, so you don't get to hear the background of what's typically happening in their world.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And so there's a couple points I want to touch on. One is I think that your point of leading by example. The best way to start having the conversations is to start having the conversations. And so you said in the circumstances you're used to, people don't necessarily share feelings or emotions. It's all kept very structured and professional. So if you break that mold, and you are a bit vulnerable, then you open the door for people to do the same thing.

Jordan Argiriou: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think that that's one important point is that, even if it's not completely comfortable, if you can lead by example talking about some of the things that people might not typically be comfortable talking about or being vulnerable in ways that isn't necessarily the norm, it allows people that are maybe having some challenges or need some help or want to voice certain concerns to feel more comfortable doing that.

Sarah Nicastro: The other point that I think is really important is when you talk about cues. I've admitted on social media before I have pretty significant anxiety, I have depression here and there, and I've struggled with those things most of my life, and so I know very well that a lot of times when you're struggling, you're least likely to reach out. It's when you're having the hardest time that you're least likely to ask for help. So as a leader, I think it's important to understand that, no matter how you're welcoming or think you're welcoming that outreach, if you're waiting for people to flag that to you, you're probably missing a lot of what's going on. So I think that point about looking for those cues and following up on them.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that if you have good intentions, the worst you're going to do is follow up on a cue that you read wrong, and someone is going to be like, "No, really, I'm fine." And you say, "Okay, great."

Jordan Argiriou: Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: But you can't just expect it to all flow out to you. You really do have to dig around a bit to see what's going on with your team, and where there might be some struggle.

Jordan Argiriou: Absolutely. And I guess part of picking up on the cue is, quite often, as you just mentioned before, people who struggle with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues such as that quite often will want to tell you, and quite often will want to say, "Hey, you know what? I am struggling with this." Even if it's on the professional side.

Jordan Argiriou: The tricky part is when it comes to language barriers. Obviously, different cultural cues, especially in APEC. We're obviously extremely diverse around this region. As I said earlier, you have countries which are extremely mature, others which are emerging, but then you've also got the language barriers. As an example with a country like Korea where English is not an easy language for someone with a Korean-speaking background to grasp and to express themselves in, and it's not very commonly in everyday life. It's not like you see English everywhere in Korea, whereas you do in other countries like Singapore, et cetera.

Jordan Argiriou: So trying to pick up those cues from them, and also trying to break that initial barrier. It's not just a barrier. It would be that the makeup of the person is to say, "You know what? I'm fine. I'm all good. I'm going to continue on." But once you push past that, and I think part of it as well, as you said before, when you normalize the discussion and you start to have that discussion with someone every time you speak to them ... And not to bring it up and say, "Hey, how is your mental health?" Or "I heard you're struggling." It's just opening it up slowly, and then finally getting to the point where you're very comfortable in saying, "You know what? I am struggling. I need some help."

Jordan Argiriou: And "struggle" is not the best word to use, but "I am experiencing a bit of an overload at the moment," and once you get to that point, it's so much easier to manage the situation because, even from a professional perspective, you can delegate the work elsewhere. You can help them. You can add resources into their team. I can take things on that they're not comfortable with that I am comfortable with. It just makes it a lot easier.

Jordan Argiriou: I guess the other side as well is opening it up to an entire group within your team meetings, and this is something that I have to give credit to one of my very first ... He was actually the director of the company, but it was a very small business, and we dealt with him daily. Every Wednesday, he would have a round table where you would sit in a circle in the middle of the shop floor so to speak. That's what we call it here. And you'd have the techs, the accountant, the CEO, you'd have everyone in there, and you would just openly talk about whatever you wanted. It could be literally something extremely ridiculous that you just wanted to say. It could've just been a joke, but it was just opening up and breaking down that initial barrier.

Jordan Argiriou: And I remember when I first started with the company, I was sitting in that chair going, what am I going to talk about? I'm quite young. I'm still new. I'm having a great time in life. And then you start to get into it, and it actually makes it a lot easier as you get older. And, literally, I will give credit to that for keeping it in the forefront of my mind when it comes to managing a team.

Jordan Argiriou: So, yeah, that was my first experience with it.

Sarah Nicastro: I like that, too, because the examples you gave it was cross-functional, right?

Jordan Argiriou: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: So it's not just giving people the forum to speak freely, but you're also opening it up team to team and department to department so that people can learn about other things that are going on within the company, whether that's function-related, or person-related, or what have you. It helps the whole group get to know each other better. You may feel more comfortable for whatever reason going to someone outside of your team, so you're nurturing those relationships in a way where you're expanding the network of the support people have.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a good point. People in certain roles have become very isolated over the last year, and I can speak for myself saying I'm on the phone all damn day. I am literally on this video conference probably six, eight, nine hours a day, but that doesn't always mean I'm connecting with anyone. You know what I mean? There's a lot of days that it feels like I am exerting energy but I'm not necessarily having a connection that makes me feel like, yeah, I could've opened up here.

Sarah Nicastro: So it is a whole different world in which to try and provide an experience like what you're talking about when you can all sit in a room, but I think it's very important to try, right?

Jordan Argiriou: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: I want to go back to one of the points you made about ... We've touched on that there are some cultural, regional, even gender-related differences in the comfort level around this topic, how discussions are approached, how open or not people are wanting to be. But I know that you and I both believe that, regardless of those differences and any hesitancy that may be there, it's important to continue to figure out how to lead these conversations more into work/life so that people can become more comfortable. So, as someone that deals with a lot of those cultural and regional differences, et cetera, what's the best advice you have on navigating this topic with someone who is less comfortable or less receptive to discussing it?

Jordan Argiriou: For me, as I said earlier, it's all about introducing it into the, say, a one-on-one discussion initially, right? As a good example, you're never going to get someone who is already a little bit, I guess, maybe new to the role or anxious in their everyday life ... They're never going to open up, even on a Zoom, into a group full of Zoom attendees. Even if you're making it completely normal, and everyone shares. There's always going to be the person who, for whatever reason as you just mentioned ... It could be a cultural difference, it could be a personal thing, but I think you're never going to get them to really open up in that room without already setting the scene in a one-on-one.

Jordan Argiriou: Look, one-on-ones can go one way or another. Sometimes you have to have difficult discussions in one-on-ones about professional side and whatever else. However, you need to make time in that one-on-one to also have a discussion about ... Just generally, as I said before, opening it up slowly through that avenue, sharing things about your own personal life, and it doesn't have to be specific details about personal life or a specific area of it. Just in general, "You know what? Today, they announced that they're going to lock us down for another three weeks," or "I got some bad news through a friend," or whatever else. You start to open and share that. That person on the other end will start to then ... This is just from my perspective, but it's actually worked, will start to then relate to you have certain things that they can share as well, and they will slowly start to open up.

Jordan Argiriou: Once that happens and you recognize it, you then do introduce it to the group setting. Literally, one of my gender topics is the health of the team in our group sessions. And, obviously, we discuss things like who would be a potential flight risk and things like that. However, within that discussion, the health of the team is also about the health of how they're feeling in the field. Are they comfortable going out to an area that is now in the third wave, as an example? Are they comfortable talking about things with customers? Are they comfortable opening up to their manager who is on that call with me, and telling them "I have some genuine issues that I need to address from a personal perspective," or from wherever else? I think that once you open that up, and now that we've added it as an agenda topic, it's actually become an easier conversation to have with your team because they will now bring it up. When I have one-on-ones, I don't have to prompt anything anymore.

Jordan Argiriou: I think, look, the cultural differences are very difficult to tackle, and especially because we can't be together physically, and it's all via Zoom. It is quite hard. Everyday business, we're used to it now, it's become part of life. But, initially, it was quite tricky to navigate. So this is where we are today, and it's actually working quite well.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. So I wanted to ask, Jordan, what has the feedback been, and I don't mean in specifics, but just generally speaking, from your team and their teams in terms of making this a priority? Have you had anyone that has acknowledged the emphasis on this outright, or is it just measured in the ease with which the conversations happen now versus when you started focusing on this?

Jordan Argiriou: Without going into specific areas, in some areas, there has been a very strong acknowledgment of the support that's being provided and the mental health initiatives that the manager themselves has undertaken for their team. And even without calling it mental health, just the general initiatives that that manager has taken, subconsciously thinking of the mental health side.

Jordan Argiriou: And I think that's another thing. I think people are much more comfortable having a discussion in general without putting that banner on it. So, obviously, that is something that is quite critical to everyone, both personally and professionally, and to a lot of companies in this world. However, I think when you put that banner on, people start to freeze up a bit, and that's when it comes back to the cultural side. It's yes and no.

Jordan Argiriou: So whilst some of the managers in my team will openly talk about it and say, "You know what? This is what I'm undertaking. I'm actually going to put it in some goals of my own to drive this forward," on the other side, just hearing the fact that they're acknowledging certain events and thinking forward about certain things that will potentially happen, or, "Hey, let's do this to improve the culture of the team," that, for me, is a huge win because we never had that before.

Jordan Argiriou: And, again, I'm not going to specifically point out cultural sides, but in some countries, it's unheard of to address that side because it's like work is here and personal life is here, and that's that. There's is a clear line between them. And as we're all aware, and we're all sitting in it now. We're all at home, wherever we are in the world. That line between professional and personal has now just been not just blurred, it's completely gone. As an example, I'm here at the home office. I literally will have my kids come in the afternoon, and they're here at home as well. So you've got to acknowledge the fact that there is no more office home life or field home life. It's all blended in together.

Jordan Argiriou: But once we get past that, and now that it is all together, we have to recognize that, yeah, hey, there are things that we need to address. Some people may feel a lot more comfortable, like my managers, like you said, coming out and telling me, "Hey, this is what I'm doing." I don't want to repeat myself, but others will address certain topics where you'll say, "Great. You've acknowledged it now. That's fantastic." I don't even have to prompt it anymore, so it's great.

Sarah Nicastro: I think the other thing, too, is we talked when we spoke the first time about you had ended up being involved in a round table discussion at an event where this topic came up, and you spoke about it, and had a conversation with folks about this. I think that's another important aspect of normalizing the conversation is just bringing it into different forums like that to talk about it, because it's something that more and more people are focusing on, and an area where there's going to be more and more lessons learned. And, "Hey, we did this approach, and it really worked," or those sorts of things.

Sarah Nicastro: And there really is no reason that it shouldn't be another talking point on an agenda of an event related to field service, because it's a very real part of what's going on, right?

Jordan Argiriou: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think you speaking out in that type of setting is another way to normalize the conversation, right? Because you're not just doing it internally with your team, and doing it to impact the wellbeing of your workforce, but you're talking externally about how you're doing it and why you're doing it so that other people can learn from that as well.

Jordan Argiriou: Well, that's a really good point you raise. Sorry to cut in.

Sarah Nicastro: That's okay.

Jordan Argiriou: That's a really good point you raise. At that event, that specific topic of that round table was supposed to be about health and safety of engineers in the field. Now, we have many plans that we've put together, and, again, we don't want to keep saying the COVID word, but it was a time where we really had to have our own OHS and EHS sides very structured and very ready to react. It was a very reactive situation. Still is today, right?

Jordan Argiriou: So when I entered that discussion, and I was hosting that round table, I brought it up because the discussion around COVID safety and general EHS safety was done. We've talked about it a million times. We've done it by then. And then the line came out from me of "What about the mental health of your field service engineers being in the field?" And then the discussion, I was actually shocked. I wasn't expecting that reception from the group that I was in because we had people from mining. We had people from electrical backgrounds. We had people from biotech backgrounds, such as myself, sitting in that room, and then everyone just had this common place where we all met and said, "Okay." I guess, for me, it was quite eye-opening that everyone is actually paying attention to it whether it's a structured plan in their head or not, that the attention is already there. So it was actually quite refreshing to see.

Jordan Argiriou: But then, obviously, you had others who were not so receptive to that discussion. So it was interesting.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think it is something that more and more people are aware of and understand that there needs to be a bigger focus on, but going back to the points we've made, unsure how to talk about it, right? So that's why you were the one that was like, "Oh, I'll just bring this up," and then people were like, "Yes, we're doing this, or we're seeing this." But it's still one of those topics where someone has to be comfortable initiating a conversation around it, and then people are willing to weigh in.

Jordan Argiriou: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: One of the things we had talked about a bit is your thoughts on, as the younger generation of workers comes in, why this topic is going to be increasingly important for service leaders to get comfortable with and be able to focus on. So talk a little bit about why you think that is.

Jordan Argiriou: Sure. Look, the way we are growing as a society, especially most of us have kids at my age, and you look at the media and everything that is in culture today surrounding social media and everything else. The generation that is growing up heavily invested on that side, there is a huge focus on mental health. I think a lot of countries, and specifically in APEC, are focusing on the mental health side. The US is obviously doing it, Europe. So it is something that they're growing up with.

Jordan Argiriou: They also live in a world where everything is quite fast-paced. Things today, as we're talking literally now, are quite uncertain as well about little things in life that we used to take for granted and things that are changing. So they're growing up through that.

Jordan Argiriou: And I feel as though the younger generation that are coming into the workforce now have an expectation that your employer will have this plan moving forward, will have the support network for them, with everything else. So I think that's, number one, the reason why on the younger generation I do focus on it. Well, it's a topic.

Jordan Argiriou: And, two, the younger generation do live in a world of, as I just said, very quick interactions. I think we said it the first time we spoke. If you look at a phone and apps, it's instant ... I don't want to call it gratification, but it's an instant result. You click something, it happens, right? So we grew up a bit different, where the younger gen will have that immediately at their fingertips. And I think that want that same response from a workplace or an employer when it comes to these sort of topics and others.

Jordan Argiriou: So given that they are so fast-paced, they are growing up in a culture where mental health is something that you do talk about, and there are many support networks as well external to your professional life that you can tap in to, companies and I guess us as managers and whatever other role we play in a company needs to be focused on that. Because if we don't support them on that side, then, in my opinion, you're going to have a lot of people departing and going to the company that does support it.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, it's a good point, and a generational difference that I think people need to big cognizant of along with others.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Two more questions, Jordan. The next one is ... So we have acknowledged this, but I will state it again. There are going to be people that listen to this podcast and think, "Yeah, I am totally uncomfortable with this," or maybe even people that still want that strict delineation between professional life and personal life, and don't think that these sorts of conversations have a place in the workplace, et cetera. So for someone that is really uncomfortable with this type of topic that's in a leadership role, and we know and are advocating that it's important, what are baby steps you could suggest to them to force themselves into becoming more comfortable and taking some little initiatives to incorporate this into their leadership?

Jordan Argiriou: Sure. Look, in terms of three steps, right? So I guess the first one is quite obvious but something that we don't do constantly, and that's open communication within your teams. I guess from my side, you have to not be afraid to show a bit of weakness, so to speak, and I don't like using that word to say you're showing weakness, but show your vulnerability in certain situations.

Sarah Nicastro: Your vulnerability.

Jordan Argiriou: Yeah. So you openly communicate with your team. I guess the first step really is breaking away from that purely professional relationship with someone, and not making it personal as in "Hey, we're best friends," but making it personal as in, "Hey, you know what? I care about what happens to you after you leave our premises, or this call," or whatever else. So once you break down that part, that's that first step, right? So that open communication, willingness to show the vulnerability at the first step is something that will gain someone's trust. You will gain their buying into things that you're doing because they're saying, "Hey, you're in the same boat as me."

Jordan Argiriou: The second step, and I wouldn't call it a baby step, but it is. Normalize that discussion as well, right? So not just openly communicate, but normalize it completely. So, from my perspective, having that discussion not just constantly but in a very casual manner instead of making it, "Okay, here we go. Here's agenda item three. Let's talk about how great you are with this stuff." Just bring it up slowly, or at the end of the conversation you have, or the end of the meeting that you're having. At a round table, I would say if you normalize the openness, and like I mentioned my first company that I really worked for, professional life, normalizing that discussion amongst all levels was actually something that made it a lot easier just to open up and tell people things.

Jordan Argiriou: So that's the second side. And the third one, and I'm on the fence on this one because I have put down a few points, but I'm on the fence on this one. But I am not on the fence. I'm on the fence of whether to put this down as a third point. I would say make it part of your agenda. Make it part of the agenda item in most calls. Once you get past the first two, and you hit that third step here, and you say, "Hey, you know what? It is now an agenda item," you don't have to call it open communication or mental health. If you just call it we're just doing to discuss the health of the team, we're going to discuss in general where your team is today, and then switch it over in a one-on-one the health of you. How are things at home? Things like that. They sound really simple, but they are quite complicated to get right down to it before someone really opens up.

Jordan Argiriou: And if I can add one more to that third point is that if someone does give you the feedback of you're putting way too much pressure on me, or whatever else, don't lock up and get offended, and start to give that feedback. Because then it will become a two-way street. Openly talk about it. Let's talk about what's happening professionally. Am I doing something wrong? These are basic management tools that we already have, but just changing it to talk about this particular topic and about the person versus professional life altogether.

Jordan Argiriou: And still have fun with it, too, right? So when people are talking about their kids and everything else, their home life or whatever they're doing on the weekend, make it about them. Make it a round table discussion.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's a good point of needing to be ready to take action, right? So maybe there are certain situations where you initiate a conversation where someone just needs to vent, and you're there to listen, and that could be fine. But if there is a situation where the response is, "Yeah, actually I'm burnt out and I need X from you, or X-less from you," right? Then you have to be ready to put some action around what that looks like. So that's a good point.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. So last question, Jordan, is I believe that it would be at best difficult and at worst impossible to put a real focus on this topic in terms of leadership if you aren't prioritizing your own self-care. So how have you navigated the crazy last year, and what do you do to make sure that you stay in a good place?

Jordan Argiriou: To be honest, it's been a difficult year across all fronts with everything that we've obviously just spoken about and been through, and still going through today. From my side, and this is going to sound really simple, I bought a bicycle not long ago. And even with our five kilometer lockdown and things like that, it's just taking the time potentially at a lunch break where you would typically go out for your lunch or whatever else to go for a quick ride. Put in a podcast in your ears and just keep going until you just need to turn back or you want to turn back, and just zone out for a while as well. I think taking your mind off certain things.

Jordan Argiriou: One thing that I will say has helped is taking my mind off what is happening just outside our door, because if you were to watch the news every day or whatever else, that can certainly send someone into some sort of spiral in their head, thinking there is no way out of this, et cetera. This is what's going to happen.

Jordan Argiriou: So I think spending time with your family, obviously, and friends and loved ones, and whoever else you can spend it with, but for me, yeah, the bike riding and just switching off, trying to separate the professional life from home life has been a challenge, but something that I'm still trying to do. I can't say I've won that one because it is quite difficult. But, yeah.

Jordan Argiriou: Yeah, and just really opening up to your team. That helps immensely. Having those discussions, knowing that there's someone on the other side not just from your personal life but from your professional life that you can share things with, certain things that you want to, has also helped. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah, it's been an important time for solidarity, and everyone feeling like we're in this together, and we'll help each other through it, and all of that stuff.

Sarah Nicastro: So, good. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for coming on today.

Jordan Argiriou: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: And for sharing openly. I really appreciate it, and appreciate your insights, and thank you for your time.

Jordan Argiriou: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. No, really, thank you, Sarah, for highlighting this topic here. It's something that I want to continue as well, and hopefully this is something that becomes a focus for everyone.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. I think it will become a more and more normal part of the conversation. I think maybe COVID kind of sped that up, and we'll see if it becomes a normal staple on the event agenda once we get back to that stuff.

Sarah Nicastro: But thank you again. Appreciate it.

Jordan Argiriou: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: You can check out more of our content by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @thefutureoffs. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I’m hopeful by now you’ve seen the special report we published recently, The Service Centricity Playbook: 7 Phases of Morphing from Product Provider to Trusted Advisor. The report looks at the common steps along the journey that companies take when servitizing their businesses. But we all know that the real value comes in when you can spend time with people that have done the work and are willing to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of what it took to achieve success. The team from Noventum and I hosted a discussion with Wolfgang Kuenkler, VP – Head of Global Retail & Delivery Services at Diebold Nixdorf and Roel Rentmeesters, Director of Global Customer Service at Munters to hear their tales of living the “playbook” in real life. Here are some of the insights they shared.

Servitization Isn’t Service Transformation, It’s Business Transformation

One of the biggest misperceptions around this journey is that it is a service journey but, in reality, it is a journey for the entire organization – and success only comes when the entire business gets on board. “It was a quite a difficult journey to start with, because it's a mindset and it’s a highly cross-functional journey as well,” says Roel. “This is not just a service journey. R&D spot trends on what is coming up. Product management, who has a relationship with customers as well, bring in what they feel as demands. And so together, this is where you develop this service strategy and vision, and how to bring it to life. And on top, what's so exciting is the fact that it doesn't stop.”

The deeper and richer your history as a product-centric business, the more challenging this shift can be for the business. “If you are coming into the beginning as a pure, product-based company, service is something which over time will change your organization,” says Wolfgang. “You cannot compare product sales to services sales; it is totally different. Everybody in the company must understand that service is not for free. Service is really a big business and it could be very profitable for the company. This is the first step to solution sales. Diebold Nixdorf was really product-driven until 2008 when the economic crisis hit, and the product sales went down dramatically. Our stability came from our long-term contracts. We have long term contracts, three years, five years, so we had that permanent income. This helped to change the mindset of the account management, executive management, and everyone involved. From this point on, service was very important for us on the same level as product – it is 50 percent of our business.”

Standardization is Key to Servitization Success

Wolfgang and Roel agreed on the importance of global standardization. “Diebold Nixdorf has a global service organization of about 16,000 people. Our main customers are global customers from the oil industry, from fishing industries or sales of furniture and, of course, global banks,” explains Wolfgang. “What they're expecting is that an engineer in Indonesia and Malaysia and Brazil is working in the same way as an engineer in U.K. or in the Netherlands or in Denmark. Standardization is key to achieving this. So, what we are doing is being standard in our services, our contracts, our sales processes, our service delivery, our support, our logistics, everything. It is possible, from my point of view, that people are acting in all the countries in the same way, because this is what customers expect from us.”

At Munters, where the journey is earlier in process, standardization is being worked toward by a dedicated team. “I am a strong believer that central services can take away a lot of the burden of the countries and inconsistencies in the way we operate,” says Roel. “We involve them in creating the standards based on best practices that they might have on one side and best practices that come from other companies that are working in a standard way. We have a central services management team that looks into the infrastructure, the product development and the processes, and the business systems we want to use to serve as an incubator and facilitator for the countries that are actually executing the business. We can dedicate resources specifically on the initiatives and steps we are taking, the work to implement them for the countries to benefit from.”

Regardless of what stage of the journey, continual optimization is the name of the game. “We have a continual improvement manager that specifically looks into the end-to-end processes, to make sure that everything flows where it needs to flow,” explains Roel. “If you use companies like IFS with an ERP system, they often base that on a standard process, embedded in there as a framework that you can use. It’s not just customer value that you will be able to create by implementing standard processes; it is your internal way of operating that will change as well. You will become more efficient and that means that you need to adapt your processes to what you implement. If you implement a remote management center that will change your processes, then the way you sell things and the way you train the people that need to sell that to customers also need to change. It’s a continuous journey of learning and refining.”

Streamlined Technology Enables Streamlined Service

Finally, it’s important to realize that the level of cohesiveness you need to achieve for Servitization success is impossible to come by without modernized, streamlined technology. “For IT, we are the service experts and we define the processes. It helps us to optimize our processes,” says Wolfgang. “Our goal is to have only a limited number of tools, because each tool increases the number of complexity costs. To master data services without master data will not work. For IT infrastructure and service, you need a vision. In the same way its important to have a service vision, so also is a vision for IT. There are too many tools on the market at the moment and you must be clear on your requirements to find the right fit.”

You may want to consider having a dedicated resource that is responsible for tying this together. “We have a VP of Digital and that person is really targeting how the company needs to do digitalize and what it needs to do to support the business. We did an inventory on the needs that we saw from a business perspective and are creating a roadmap based on that,” explains Roel. “New technology is key, and alignment between IT and the business is a must.”

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