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

By Tom Paquin

This is part of an ongoing series on the state and standards of service management software in 2020. Here are the previous articles in the series:

Last time, we went through the specifics of service management software while looking specifically at the delivery of service. Now we’re going to take that a step further and discuss the operational underpinnings of service.

While the capabilities that we’ll discuss are of equal or outsized importance to service delivery as a whole, it’s easy to overlook some of these elements when thinking about service delivery in a purely binary sense. Many companies focus on the delivery of service just in terms of SLAs and appointments, not the broader operational infrastructure that your business functions in. Perhaps they have other systems to govern those, but it’s imperative that all these pieces fit together to create a comprehensive service technology web.

I have a tendency to spend an outsized amount of time talking about operational capabilities—specifically within the context of planning and scheduling—but we’re going to go broader today. Here’s a partial list of important utilities to consider when talking about operations:

Rather than focus on the act of service delivery directly, each of these tools do something more fundamental: They enable and ease the act of service delivery. Operational technologies serve an invaluable purpose: Take the burden of repetitive tasks off of the technician, the manager, the back office worker.

With that in mind, and as we said last week, these tools can vary dramatically from provider to provider in a number of different ways. Let’s use our favorite example: Planning and scheduling optimization. There’s a huge chasm of depth that can be plumbed within these solutions. The best optimization systems, as we often say, use artificial intelligence to quickly reroute technicians based on appointment, workforce, and external changes. Within most of the tools listed above, including optimization, there are a few common points of inflection that impact depth:

Scale: How many technicians/appointments can be managed in a single computation by your service software? While a cap of 500 technicians might seem like no big deal, you can run separate batches, the reality is that if a single technician passes from one batch to another, the whole system beaks down. There are literally thousands of different ways to run into issues if you’re forced to compromise on how you manage your service technology. Being able to manage the entire scope of your field staff in one instance in a service solution, with the ability to subdivide down to the branch level, provide a huge advantage in delivering accurate service. This is equally true about parts and depot management.

Speed: This one is pretty simple—if you can’t adjust schedules in the amount of time it takes to complete a simple service appointment, then the tool loses usefulness. The bets tools can handle scheduling, parts allocation, depot estimates, and everything else as quickly as possible.

Configurability: It’s important with any tool, really, to be able to subdivide based on types of appointments unique to your business. A teclo provider may have a huge number of consumer appointments and a relatively small number of commercial appointments, such as working on towers or satellite arrays. Can your parts systems appropriately manage, subdivide, and action on both? Are you able to manage technicians from different organizations in a single application? Your business is nuanced, you need to be able to reflect those nuances in your operational software.

Connectivity: Another simple one—everything needs to speak the same language. Not all of your tools need to come from the same place, but they need to be able to share datapoints. This is an incredibly low bar to clear, but I know a lot of enterprises that have a jumble of tools that exist in a vacuum. If that’s the case, how do you identify bottlenecks?

Brad Resler, President and COO at Brady Services Inc., talks with Sarah about three pillars Brad feels are critical to service transformation success.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about three pillars of redefining service delivery. We talk a lot on this podcast about the different journeys that companies are on when it comes to transforming their businesses to better meet the needs of today's customers. The reality is there is a lot of foundational work that goes into structuring a business to be able to evolve to meet those needs.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Brad Resler, president and COO of Brady Services to talk with us about Brady's journey and the foundation that they've set in the business. Brad, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Brad Resler: Thank you for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. Before we dig into the topic, Brad, can you just tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your journey and Brady's business?

Brad Resler: Sure. Well, let me start with Brady. We are a mechanical contractor, HVA service provider, and a building solutions organization that is headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. We were founded in 1962 by Mr. Don Brady, who left the train company and moved down to Greensboro from up north. Since then, our company has grown to almost 500 associates and we've diversified into parts sales service, building automation. We even have a large integrated security division, all in the commercial and industrial space. We do business throughout North and South Carolina.

Brad Resler: As far as my own journey is concerned, I've had the privilege of being here at Brady for about six years now, starting in a sales leader role, and for the last three years or so have had the opportunity to run our organization from an operational standpoint.

Sarah Nicastro: Great. Good. Well, thank you for that. I was obviously really excited to dig in. Brad, you and I connected not long ago and had a really in-depth discussion about Brady's journey and the way the business is evolving based on the current landscape of what customers are looking for, and how that differs from how things may have been one or three or five years ago. We've talked about how you're leading the company through this journey in an effort to find new and different ways to serve your customers.

Sarah Nicastro: One of the facets of that conversation is us discussing how building a strong foundation upon which to build that evolution, how important that is. That's why I asked you to come and join us here, because I think that that foundational work that you've led Brady through is very, very important. Because I think sometimes it's that foundational work that companies race past and then ultimately end up having to go back and fix. Based on the conversation you and I had, we broke the foundational work into these three pillars.

Sarah Nicastro: As we talk through those three pillars today, I want to talk about the foundational changes that you've made at Brady that have allowed you then to move past that foundational level and start building upon that. The first pillar we're going to talk about is culture. That's the first pillar of this idea of really redefining service delivery. Talk to our listeners about culture and how at Brady that needed to be evolved foundationally and how you've been able to build upon that.

Brad Resler: Yeah. At any organization, the foundation of success is its culture. Brady has long had a very strong family-friendly culture, a culture of performance excellence. Those are things that we certainly didn't want to change as we looked at how we were going to continue to evolve our business. As strong as that culture was, it was also in some ways our biggest challenge, because as we've grown to the size that we are now, we've had to change. We've had to scale the business and it requires doing things a different way.

Brad Resler: Sometimes when you've been successful in doing things a certain way for a long time, it's hard to understand why you'd need to do something a different way. We've really focused in the last several years on our culture and have been very intentional about how we wanted to preserve the good and evolve as we've needed to. It's really come down to getting good leaders in place and having a culture that is very performance-based, very data-driven and very process-focused, and helping everybody understand that that's not a bad thing.

Brad Resler: That's a good thing and it's going to help us continue to grow and continue to distinguish ourselves from our competitors in the marketplace. Sounds easy, but it's a lot of work to take an organization in that direction.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of good points you made. The first and I think the most important I want to go back to is the way I asked that question I think set it up to sound that you had to build this culture. The reality is, to your point, you had a really good culture. This idea of evolving the culture isn't an idea of going from a bad culture to a good culture. It's about taking a good culture and making it even better. The reality is it's human nature for both people and businesses to get comfortable doing what they're doing if it's working.

Sarah Nicastro: You can go on for a long stretch of time and have success and you just get in a good rhythm. When there's market changes, technology changes, business changes that require significant change, it's not a matter of making a bad culture good. It's about making a good culture comfortable with evolving, right?

Brad Resler: That's right.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a really good point and I think the more you can acknowledge the good and make people feel appreciated for the good and not just drive change, the more open they'll be to that. In terms of the foundational aspect of culture, you mentioned a couple of things related to being more process-based, being more metrics and performance-driven. Are those new things that you had to put in place and introduce, or are those aspects, again, that you just evolved?

Brad Resler: Well, both. It certainly evolved. We certainly had measures around our business. What we didn't consistently do was apply those measures at the individual level and set really good expectations and communicate what good performance means, which for us, is tied to good outcomes for our customers and have a way of measuring that and rewarding people for that. Or, if it's not working, correcting the course. One way that we've done that is a couple of years ago we revised our core values.

Brad Resler: One of our core values that as an organization now we talk about constantly is the value of continuous improvement. That really gave us a language and a structure to talk about how we get better without it indicting anybody for what's happened in the past. It's let us say, "Hey, it's okay to be where we are. Let's understand where we want to go and let's figure out together how we want to get there." That's a different conversation than, "We're not getting it done," or, "You haven't done it right," or, "You're not getting the job done."

Brad Resler: A lot of that is really in how you frame the conversation and how you frame the goals. We, over the last couple of years since we've had those core values, have seen some pretty significant improvement in our engagement survey scores. It's working in that we're able to engage our associates, get voice of associate into the change that we're driving and really have an organization that embraces getting better.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. I think there's a couple of common things that come up when we talk about this idea of cultural shifts and change management, and you touched on a few. I mean, one is, people want to feel heard. To your point, they want to feel that you're listening to their input and their insights. Another is, I think that the more you can explain what the driving forces are for the changes you're making, and most importantly, how adapting to address those forces will help the individual.

Sarah Nicastro: To your point, setting up not only measurements to be able to measure performance, but tying that back to if we can, as a business, meet these needs, here's how that will benefit you. I mean, it just makes it personal. The other is, to your point, I think that people like to know what's expected of them. I think that when you have a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty, that doesn't make employees feel comfortable. That's stressful.

Sarah Nicastro: Even if some of these performance measurements and things are new and more structured than in the past, I think once employees can learn them, I think oftentimes we see uptick in engagement and satisfaction because it's just the expectation is clear and they know what they need to do, and they can focus on doing it well. That tends to make people feel more comfortable.

Sarah Nicastro: With some of the foundation you've put in place, the core values, and some of the things that you've done around the idea of continuously improving the company culture, what do you see as the next steps in terms of continuing to build upon that and continuing to innovate?

Brad Resler: Well, in all the things we have been doing in terms of innovation is actually redefine what innovation is for our associates. We've learned this the hard way. Innovation isn't always transformational or redefining your business. Innovation comes in a lot of little improvements as well, and little improvements that affect the day-to-day activities of our associates. We like to try to get innovative about how we complete our service paperwork in the field so it's easier on our technicians, it's more thorough, it gets processed faster to our customers, quicker.

Brad Resler: Those don't seem like innovation in a grand sense, but for us, it has a very big impact on our productivity, on our customer satisfaction and on our ability to get onto the next job. Those types of things are very important innovative aspects of our business. Some of that recasting the perspective on innovation has really helped us zone in on what's important. The other thing that we've had to do is really focus on and get discipline around creating standard work.

Brad Resler: We've got a lot of folks who have grown up and worked in this organization for a long time, do great work, but they may do it differently than one of their counterparts. The result of that is a different service outcome to our customers. If we've got a customer in Raleigh, we want them to have the same excellent experience as a customer may have in Greensboro or a customer may have in Wilmington. It's really important that we have systems and processes in place that guide that standard work. We're now in the midst of becoming ISO certified, which is the benchmark of having good standard work.

Brad Resler: That's helped continue to drive that process, but it's just so important, especially as you continue to grow geographically that you have that strong standard work in place. We spend a lot of time on that.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. You're actually giving me a really nice natural segue into the second pillar, which is around process standardization and optimization. That's the next foundational aspect of this service delivery evolution, is making sure that you do the work of standardizing and optimizing the processes. What's interesting is I think the reason it comes up on an answer around culture is there's a huge intersection between those two things.

Sarah Nicastro: If you have that employee that is used to doing things their own way, you have to balance the desire and business benefit of standardizing without making them feel too unappreciated for their own way of doing things. Does that make sense?

Brad Resler: It does. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Tell us a bit around what some of the work is you've had to do in terms of process standardization and optimization and how that sets you up for the future.

Brad Resler: Yeah. A couple of years ago when we started the journey of transitioning to IFS, that was a natural time for us to start thinking about how we look at our standard work in the field. We certainly want to do the work that our customers expect of us, and we have customers that have a wide range of requirements. If we're working in a pharmaceutical company facility then we have to meet certain FDA standards. If we're working with a customer who makes aircraft, then we have FAA standards we have to meet.

Brad Resler: It's difficult to have consistency from job to job, so we had to figure out how we create some broad processes that let us get on the job and get off the job and deliver paperwork and be safe, and fulfill whatever the scope is in a consistent manner. There was a lot of work done to think through that and create boilerplate scope where we could, and also build a system that allows us to meet the needs of our customers. That's a unique challenge that we, and a lot of our competitors in our industry have. The other thing that's really important is the consistency aspect of it.

Brad Resler: This isn't a flash in the pan, or a focus that's going to wane. This is who we are and how we're going to do business for now and ever more. It's really making sure that, again, you have local field leaders who understand that, buy into that and help drive that into the field through their quality assurance and oversight. Leadership development has been a huge part of how we've come at this because that's ultimately what is going to win, is having good leaders. We've also put a lot of investment and time into organizing our data and creating internal dashboards.

Brad Resler: We use Power BI, and how do you take an enormous amount of data and structure it, summarize it, make it available in a usable, actionable way? That has evolved significantly in the last two years and will continue to evolve significantly as we go forward. If you're a database, data-driven organization, you've got to figure out how to use your data as effectively as you can. That's been a challenge for us.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I mean, the reality is, every business is a data-driven business today. I mean, or should be. It's like you said earlier, these are things that sound simple, but are not at all simple when you have to actually do them. That's why some of these areas are the areas where companies fall down the most because they try and race past this foundational work and then have to come back. It's the same thing with the standardization and structure of processes. I mean, you're not going to automate a poor process and get a result from it.

Sarah Nicastro: I mean, you have to do that examination and that refinement before you can really build upon that. It makes sense. The third pillar is around technology. You alluded to your use of IFS. Talk a bit about the idea of putting foundational technology in place and what that process looks like at first, and then how you can build upon that.

Brad Resler: Yes. Technology comes in a lot of different forms, obviously. For us, we view technology as impacting how we work, how we demonstrate our performance and how we train our associates. If we start with how we work, as a service provider, in the old world a lot of times we would wait for the phone to ring. The phone would ring and somebody would say they're hot in the building and we would dispatch a service technician to the site. Hopefully, that service technician knew what to do and fixed the problem and then hopefully we got paid for it.

Brad Resler: In today's world, we often know, or have the ability to know about problems before a building owner even does. We're connected to hundreds of buildings and have all of the building data from their automation system at our disposal, and receive thousands of alarms a day that we have to sort through, decipher, and again, make actionable, and oftentimes can respond without even sending a truck to the site. Just a massive transition or difference in how the industry works and therefore what our customer's expectations of us are.

Brad Resler: Technology has been a big element of how we manage that, how we offer service around that, and how we track our activity around that. Certainly, a service software platform is important, a building automation system is important. We look at those almost in sync to determine how we can take data out of a building, make it actionable, understand what the problem is, get it into our service platforms so we can dispatch and provide a technician with actual data before they get to the site so they know where to go, or they know what piece of equipment to start troubleshooting.

Brad Resler: Again, a big efficiency time-saver and opportunity to provide a differentiated service to our customers. That's how we work. How we demonstrate performance is a big part of what we do as a service provider. Oftentimes, since we're working on very large and complex machines in industrial and hospital or other complex environments, it's difficult for our customers to even understand exactly what we did. We certainly try to convey that in a written service report, but we've also adopted video recaps of our service events.

Brad Resler: Our technicians, when they complete an event ... and they may get some before footage and then show some after footage and can describe exactly what it is that they did so a customer has a better understanding of what happened and what they're paying for. Every one of our service reports and our invoices as well, contains a link to a video recap of that service event. It's a pretty simple piece of technology, but it's been very effective to convey to our customers what it is we do.

Brad Resler: Then in terms of our training, really at the end of the day, what we sell is the expertise of our people, so training is a huge area of focus for us. Being spread out all over the southeast, we've really turned to technology to up our training game when it comes to providing virtual training events, different ways of making content available upon demand, even in the course of a service event, that can help our staff be more effective. Technology is really embedded in every aspect of what we do. Some big, some more so.

Sarah Nicastro: Again, looking at the building upon what you have in place, from a technology perspective, what do you think are some of the next iterations or next steps for Brady?

Brad Resler: Well, some of it is what I described. It's how do we respond more effectively to what buildings are telling us and working with our customers more as a business partner than a contractor to help them solve their problems. Just even having a good technical understanding of the data and of what's happening, is only part of the picture. We need to understand our customer's business objectives. How they want to operate that plant or that facility, what exactly an operating room needs to be set up as in order to do those procedures.

Brad Resler: We have to know those requirements of our customers and marry those with our expertise to provide them proactive service. That's really the future of our organization. That's how we're trying to differentiate. That's how we evaluate technology in order to make good investments and implement it appropriately in our business. That's what we'll continue to do as we go forward.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because on one hand I see that customers really want simplicity. They want you to take on the complexity of doing all of those things on the backend that makes the service to them seem simple. It's just things are working the way they should without a lot of complexity on their behalf, but on the other hand it's interesting what you mentioned about while that is true in terms of wanting the service to be executed with simplicity on their behalf, they also want the insights.

Sarah Nicastro: In that sense, they want more information than maybe you were giving in the past. It's not just, "Hey, yep. We were here, we did the job. You're welcome." It's, "We were here. Here's what we did and here's a video of it." They want that reassurance that they are getting their money's worth or what have you. It's interesting that on one hand they want super simplicity and on the other hand, they want more context maybe than they've had in the past. There's a ton of opportunity in terms of the move to more predictive and how you expand to meet more of their needs and all of that.

Sarah Nicastro: One of the things that I also find interesting is, a lot of the steps you've taken within these three areas or these three pillars has given Brady progress in improving the customer experience and providing better service to the customers, but also improving efficiency and productivity for the business. Is that a correct understanding? It's a lot of these areas of focus or areas of investment are double-focused?

Brad Resler: Yeah. If you're doing it well, they certainly go hand in hand. You're streamlining your operations to only provide the outcomes that are important to customers, that makes you more efficient, that makes you more valuable to your customers when you can deliver on a consistent basis exactly what they're looking for. Even the next level is really justifying the value of what you provide customers. Customers are increasingly looking to us to help with energy modeling and helping with ROI type of data on either replace or repair machines or just overall operation of their facilities.

Brad Resler: Again, that's how we become a business partner and a trusted advisor rather than just a service dispatch operation. A lot of that's driven through technology, but it's understanding that at the end of the day, it's about expertise, it's about speed, and it's about doing business in a way that the customer wants to do business with you. All of those things are part of how we evaluate and implement any technology that we would adopt.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That makes sense. Good. You've shared what you see as the future for Brady coming up. Anything you would add in terms of what you expect on Brady's journey over the next 12 or 18 months?

Brad Resler: Well, the next 12 or 18 months are going to bring a lot of change, just like the last 12 or 18 months. Certainly, in the age of COVID our customers' needs in the last four months have changed significantly. They've got, in some cases, less people in the building, or they need to get a better understanding of who's in the building, where they are. They need to introduce fresh air into the building more often when it's occupied. They need better ventilation and air quality.

Brad Resler: Change is just really coming at us very rapidly, but through all of that, we've got to remain focused on the fundamentals, because while you've got a lot of change happening and a lot of change in the world, our fundamentals won't change. Our fundamentals are providing a good, fast service that our customers can rely on. We've got to be able to continue to do that as we deal with the rest of the change. We never try to stray too far from the fundamentals.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Would you say that the foundational work you've done in the three areas we talked about today, so culture, processes and technology, helped you be more adept in how you've responded to COVID and the changes that it has brought?

Brad Resler: Yeah. I really think it has. Yeah. Focusing in those areas that has allowed us to develop some great customer relationships and communication now is more important than ever because we've had to navigate with, when can we be onsite? How do we go onsite? How long can we stay onsite? Are we restricted to work in certain areas? It's just introduced a lot of friction in our operations that without having those good relationships and those good fundamentals in place, would be even more disruptive than they are.

Brad Resler: I think it's certainly been helpful. We certainly learned a lot and we fully expect to come out of COVID with a better understanding of how we can do those things than when we went in. We try to look at that as an opportunity as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Last question, Brad, and I like to ask most of our guests this question, I just find it very interesting, is, as you've led Brady through all of this foundational work or fundamental work to be able to adapt and evolve and innovate, what is the biggest lesson you've learned?

Brad Resler: The biggest lesson I've learned. Probably that faster isn't always better. I like to do things fast and check things off the list and accomplish something, and pace is just so critical when it comes to managing change and evolving culture and adopting new technology. You certainly don't want to go too slow or you'll miss the boat, but you definitely can go too fast. That's been an adjustment for me. That's something that leaders of the business that have helped me with, leaders in the field have helped me with in perspective of everybody involved.

Brad Resler: It's just something you have to learn as you go in some cases, but I definitely have a different perspective on that. It just requires more planning, more discipline and a better thought out strategy than maybe you would otherwise. That's been a real eye-opener for many of these last several years.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's a very, very good point. I'm like you, it sounds. I'm a little bit ... I like to move fast and I'm not the most patient person so that discipline is important and that's a very good point. Well, Brad, I really appreciate you joining us today and sharing your story and Brady's story, and look forward to staying connected and having you back at some point and seeing how things are progressing. Thank you for being here.

Brad Resler: That sounds great. Thank you Sarah.

Sarah Nicastro: You can find more content by visiting us at www.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 Service Management by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With the industry awash in a sea of change, we often discuss the foundational imperatives of success: a strong pulse on customer demands, a cohesive business strategy, streamlining operations, incorporation of enabling technology, and ample change management. I’d argue that the latter is where the vast majority of companies go awry – we often fail to recognize that, at the end of the day, the ability to execute on the opportunity that service presents to an organization lies largely in the hands of your field service teams.

As such, I think it crucial to consider the psychology of field service excellence. Yes, each of the foundational elements I mentioned above are important. But as you strategize and plan and innovate, you cannot become so narrowly focused on execution that you overlook the emotional investment in your workforce that will make the difference from their compliance with the change to their championing your mission – which is ultimately the difference in your moderate success to your transformative evolution.

If you’ve mastered the art of evaluating the customer journey and taking the time to hear the voice of the customer, the process with your frontline workforce is largely the same. Considering the psychology of field service excellence means putting yourself in the shoes of your field technicians and thinking about what matters most to them – how will the change you’re introducing help them, and how can you make them feel they are as integral a part of your company’s success as they really are. Here are a few points for consideration:

Do your frontline workers feel valued? As companies work to seize the opportunity of service, it becomes clear the important role field technicians play as the face of the brand. What steps are you taking to ensure your workforce knows how important a part they are of the company’s mission? Paying your workforce well is no longer enough – today’s workers want to feel valued and appreciated. Accomplishing this is critical in having your employees invested in the company’s mission versus simply “playing along.”
Are you giving your employees a voice? No one wants to feel like change is happening to them; they want to feel they are a part of the change. Giving your employees a voice in your company’s strategy and initiatives is important not only in creating buy-in but because these workers often carry valuable insight that will help your project’s success. Remember, much of your opportunity to innovate – particularly when it comes to the customer experience – comes from the frontline. Ensuring you give these workers a voice to provide insight, feedback, and ideas helps them and you.
Do your frontline workers feel empowered? Chances are, if you have highly experienced field technicians, they do not need you to micromanage them. On the flip side, if you have newer technicians, they do not want you to micromanage them. Hiring good employees and then trusting them to do the job you’ve hired them to do is important. Employees that feel empowered to make decisions and work with a bit of their own creativity and personality are happier, more engaged employees – and happier, more engaged employees are more supportive of the company’s mission.
Are you setting clear expectations for your frontline workforce and aligning proper incentives? Employees thrive in an environment where they know what is expected of them. This doesn’t mean you need to be prescriptive in how they deliver on these expectations (see previous point) but it does mean that your service objectives, and their responsibility for delivering on them, are clear. Top-down clarity is essential and 1-1 support when needed is important. Your workforce should have KPIs they are consistently measured on, they should have clear communication from top leadership down to their line management, and they should be fairly incentivized to meet the expectations you’ve set. KPIs, both team and individual, should be reviewed often and celebrated when achieved.
Do you show appreciation beyond compensation? Of course, financial incentives are important to your workers, but so is being recognized and appreciated for their contributions. This can be as simple as a short conversation or a bigger gesture like a gift card for a special dinner or something like that. It should feel personal, and it can be private or public. The point is just to consider whether you’re taking steps to show you appreciate your workforce’s contribution.
Are you offering career development/advancement opportunities? If a worker is happy doing the same job for twenty years and that is in line with your objectives, that is great. But especially today, you will find many workers will become disengaged if there isn’t a path of progression for them within a company. If you haven’t already, you should be considering a more formalized progression plan for those workers who feel motivated by their own continual growth and improvement. This will keep employees engaged and give them a home within your organization instead of them looking for these opportunities elsewhere.
Do your employees feel they are a part of something bigger? It’s human nature to want to feel you have a purpose and are making a difference. Is your work environment a collaborative one? Do you encourage teamwork and connection? Are you illustrating for your employees the impact they have on the customer, and therefore the impact they have on the business? Building a culture of connectedness can significantly improve employee satisfaction and protect field technicians, who often work alone, from feeling isolated or becoming disconnected.

What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear!

By Tom Paquin

We have a pretty good idea now that, especially among some change-resistant businesses, Covid-19 has dramatically accelerated digital transformation. There are questions about how quickly it’s accelerated it, but the general consensus is that we’re probably about five years further along than we would have been had things remained on their pre-Covid track. We’re seeing this play out as retail stores like Best Buy take their brick and mortar footprints and turn them into fulfillment centers. The shift to hybrid commerce has taken a huge leap in six months, and that’s true of service as well, with more companies approaching truck rolls with hesitation and building service models around augmented reality and connected assets.

So the drive to digitize is upon us, but often the means to do that effectively, and more importantly quickly, sometimes fall short of our expectations. Lengthy and complex implementations is often unavoidable, but customization of that software to fit your specific set of business rules doesn’t necessary need to be lengthy and complex.

We’ve talked about low-code before with respect to DevOps, and it’s something I talked about quite lot in my previous role at Aberdeen. There’s really no substitute to involving practitioners in the actual development of tools: It not only gives them a sense of agency, but it also allows you to conform the tools more closely to the day-to-day of your staff. We know what actually getting your technicians to push the buttons is often the biggest challenge of successfully implementing new service tools, and employing low-code solutions to set up elements of your software can go a long way to mitigate that.

On top of simply increasing the demand for technology across the board, Covid also acts as a bludgeon for implementing low-code platforms as well. Business rules have been changing quickly, restrictions pop up, staff levels fluctuate, and order volume takes a hit as well. Having the ability to adjust systematic rules quickly and without coding experience is a net gain for businesses across the spectrum, even more in service where fast resolution and appointment-making are the keys to success.

In order to think about low-code functionality, it’s key to get the concept of customization out of your vocabulary. Your service software should not be custom. Custom software draws a direct line to integration problems. Service software excels when, rather than custom, it’s configurable. Configuration is a fundamentally different concept, but as we move forward, we should be thinking about low-code along that axis instead. We’re not writing programs in low-code for service, they would be far too primitive. We’re configuring programs to the external factors of your business.

I do want to preface that configurations are not something that a novice will simply be able to pick up and excel at immediately. Even low-code engagements require a complex understand of the if-then framework at the heart of coding languages, and because of this, you are going to need a certain aptitude to get through the door. For that reason (and this is not a particularly revolutionary concept) it’s useful to have a technical Sherpa there to guide any new explorers up the mountain of development.

Jamie Beck, VP of Field Operations at Peloton, joins Sarah to discuss the company’s perception of service as a strategic differentiator and how field operations is being used to deliver a first-class customer experience.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about Peloton's investment in field service as a strategic differentiator. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Jamie Beck, Vice President of Field Operations at Peloton. Jamie, welcome to the Future of Field Service package.

Jamie Beck: Thank you, Sarah. Great to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. So we're going to talk today about the Peloton field service story, and I'm very excited to do that. Before we dig in, can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your role with Peloton?

Jamie Beck: Sure. I've been with Peloton a little over four years. Joined as the VP of Field Operations back when it was really just coming off of a pilot, and so really been a part of, I guess, the meteoric growth over the last few years, and in this role, I oversee our internal teams that do the delivery, repair, and refurbishment of our products to our members. Prior to Peloton, I spent some operational roles. I was at Fresh Direct, which is a large online grocer in the New York area, spent a little bit of time at Target, and then spent time at Cintas as well, the large uniform company, where I was in a number of different roles, and then going way back, I was in the Navy. I did ROTC in college, so I spent four years in the Navy. So most of my career has been in the operation space. A lot of it in the delivery, both B2B as well as B2C prior to Peloton.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Very cool. So you and I connected, Jamie, and talked a bit about the Peloton story as it relates to service, and I love it because I think it is a really good illustration of a lot of the trends we see right now with companies in all different industries, recognizing the opportunity that exists to use service as a strategic differentiator, and so this story is very representative of that, and I think it's a very interesting one to dig into, how field service is such a valuable tool in being the face of a brand. So let's talk a bit about that. So you mentioned that you joined the company after the decision was made to invest in field operations and field service. So can you talk a bit about some of the reasons that the company's leadership felt it was important to make that investment?

Jamie Beck: Sure. As I think back, there's probably three reasons that I think about. And so John Foley, our CEO, they started selling bikes in 2014 and as we started to deliver them, one of the early important things as a company was to put our members first, and we call all of our customers members, and really to deliver to them a great brand experience, and I think John took a look to say, "Hey, how can we make this delivery experience better than what we're currently doing?" And so they started with a pilot in the New York area in order to test this out. Can we deliver better brand experience than what we're currently doing? And so I think that's the first thing. The second thing was we know that over time, these are big bulky products and they're bikes and they could break, and so I think the investment in field service was not only about the delivery, but I think thinking ahead to how are we going to service these? And how can we control that experience so that our members have a great experience, not only on the delivery, but also on the repair and service so that we can get into their homes and fix them quickly?

Jamie Beck: I often equate it to if your iPhone breaks, you take it to the Apple store. If something goes wrong with your Peloton, you can't simply put it into your car and drive it to one of our showrooms. We have to come to you. The third thing I think was ... and I think this was John's foresight as a leader was this is back in 2015 when this category was really just being created. Competition was going to come. If we're successful, competition is going to come, and so it's an investment in field operations. Obviously there's probably cheaper ways that we could do this, but we knew that by investing in this field operations team, delivering this great brand experience, being able to service and repair your products, it helps put a strategic moat around what we were doing as a business, and I think those three things are really what we thought about, what John thought about when we decided to make this investment in field operations.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So prior to doing this, the delivery and installation was handled by third party providers, is that correct?

Jamie Beck: That is correct. Yep. Yeah, and we still use 3PLs today. It's a mix of internal and 3PLs. We'll always have 3PL partners. Our relationships with our 3PL partners, they've actually probably gotten stronger since we've started our field operations team, because we've been able to learn from each other, but as we move forward, we'll always have those 3PL partners, and today the majority of what we do is done by our own teams, but we'll never be at a point where we're a hundred percent field operations, whether it's in the US or any of the other countries that we operate in.

Sarah Nicastro: It's a good point though, having that function internally gives you the wealth of knowledge to help foster those relationships and, train those third party providers on what you're doing yourself as the field operations of Peloton and therefore what you would like them to do or what you would expect them to do. That makes sense, and I think the idea of ... I think when people think of Peloton, they think of a premier, exclusive product. So desiring to provide a service that is on par with that brand perception makes a lot of sense to me. So those were the three reasons that the CEO felt it was important to do this, and that makes sense. As I said earlier, investing in field operations, seeing an investment in field operations from a brand like Peloton is representative of how we see businesses perceiving the opportunity around service and how they can leverage a frontline workforce in really being the face of a brand, particularly if it's a product scenario where you buy online.

Sarah Nicastro: You might come to a showroom and you might have a face to face interaction, or you may buy online and not have that face to face interaction. So when that delivery person shows up at your door, that might be the first face to face impression you have of the company you're purchasing from. So can you talk a little bit about with this investment and with the field operations team that you've built, what is the user experience that you desire to provide to your members?

Jamie Beck: Sure, and going back ... I don't anymore, because the scale has been too much, but I used to interview every field specialist that would be going into the homes, and I think that the litmus test we would always use is would I feel comfortable with this person coming into my home? And I think we still do that today, obviously at a much, much larger scale, but it's one of those where you get the branded van that pulls up, you get the team that comes out of the van and they're wearing the branded Peloton gear, athletic looking, similar in line with what we promote around fitness, but then they walk up to your door, they'll introduce themselves with their name and then they will walk the path, but the first thing that they do is they'll ask, "Would you like me to remove my shoes before I come into your home?" And it all goes back to we're being invited into your home and we respect that and we're going to treat it and respect it in that way, and so whenever we go into the home, those are some of the things we do.

Jamie Beck: Once we bring the product into the home, into room of choice ... and the bikes are about 90% prebuilt. We do that so that we can get good quality and test data, and it also ... we realized early on when we were delivering them in the box and building in the home, it wasn't really value add, and actually, from an experience standpoint, it was uncomfortable, because does the member talk to us? Do we talk to them? It just was something that we said, "Hey, this is non-value-added. Let's make sure that the time in the home is complete value add." So we'll bring it into room of choice, we'll size them to the bike to make sure that the settings are correct to that member. We will have them try on the shoes and learn how to clip in and clip out, because if you've never clipped out of a cycling shoe, out of the cleat, it can be difficult.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. You don't want them to get stuck.

Jamie Beck: Right. Completely, and these are all things that we've learned along the way. We do customer satisfaction surveys with every member and we get a great response rate and things that we've learned. We connect them to their WIFI. We get them set up on their account, but we do little things too. One of the things that the bike asks you during setup is to enter your height and weight, and so when it comes to that point in the screen, our team member will step away in a way that demonstrates to the member that we respect your privacy, but at the end of the day, the experience of the delivery is so that when we leave, you are ready to ride and you can enjoy your Peloton from there forward.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think those are really interesting observations, and I think that what you're describing sounds like you could achieve the ... and you did achieve the function of delivering the bike and setting up the bike without doing that yourself. I mean it's totally possible, but this goes back to the concept of investing in this field function as a way to differentiate the business. So when you talk about what you're doing ... so you said, the bikes are 90% prebuilt. You're not going there just to build the bike. You can do a lot of that before you arrive, but you're going there to provide a Peloton customer experience. You're going there to make that member feel valued and important and appreciated for the investment they're making. So a lot of the things you're talking about, the interactions you would have with them, how it's personally to that person, and how you make them feel important in terms of let us help you get completely set up so that when we leave your house today, you can get on and ride and get the full value out of your investment. It's really about using service as a way to reinforce that Peloton brand and the feel you want those folks to have from buying the product that you provide.

Jamie Beck: It is. It is, and it is about an experience. That's something we talk about. It's not necessarily about the delivery. It's about the experience, and I think one of the things that helps us differentiate that too, is that the majority of our teams delivering our products have their own bike at home. It's something where a few years ago, our president William Lynch actually lowered the price of the employee bike so that they could have that, because it's so powerful when you walk into someone's home and they're asking questions, and you can say, "Well Hey, I was on my bike last night and my favorite instructor is Robin, and this is my favorite type of class." It's more about that experience, because we know ... and it's the experience, obviously. They're going to go tell their friends about it or their family to say, "Hey, not only did I get the Peloton, but let me tell you about the delivery experience." I mean that's how we think about it. It is a true differentiator to what we're doing.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's a really good point. If they can say, "Hey, let me show you this cool function. This is my favorite thing," or to your point, "This is my favorite class, my favorite instructor," it's a really good point. So I have a couple of questions then about how you're preparing these frontline workers to provide the service experience. So what type of training are you giving? What type of expectations are you setting in terms of what they should be doing while they're there? And the reason I asked this, Jamie, one of the things that came to mind as you're describing this experience is you're really doing this to set yourself apart, not to "turn and burn." You're not saying, "Get out there and deliver more bikes, more bikes. Drop them off, move on." You really want them to spend time and invest in providing that experience. So what resources do you provide to equip them to do that, and what, I guess, metrics or objectives do you put around what you want them to be measured on in terms of their performance?

Jamie Beck: Sure. It starts with hiring. I think we look for people, like I said before, that you would feel comfortable coming into your own home. A lot of our employees ... there's a whole wide range. We don't necessarily look for, hey, this is the prototypical field specialist for Peloton. We have former division one athletes. We have people that have worked retail. So it runs a lot, but it's generally just good people. It starts there. The training we provide obviously is knowledge about the product, but the thing that we don't do is we don't give our team a script. We don't expect them to go into the home and say, "Hey, you have to say this and in this order," and we learned that through benchmarking some other delivery companies, because let's say you're going through your script, but the member only is concerned about, "How do I clip out? Because I've heard that clipping out is hard," and so they're going to be patient, and I think that's a key word that we've learned in the experience is they're going to be patient with a member.

Jamie Beck: And in order to do that, they have to have the knowledge around the product and how it works, which again, is helped by the fact that most of them are owners. Even if you're not an owner, we have our products set up in our warehouses, and so if you want to do a ride when you get back from your day of working before you go home, that's something that we encourage, but they'll go in and really it's about listening to the member, and so I think as much as product knowledge, it's just customer service training and being patient, and it goes back to what you said. It's not about dropping off X number of bikes a day. We want every member to feel that they have all the time in the world, and so if you have a hundred questions, we're going to stay there and answer all 100 questions, going back to that goal of when we leave, you're ready to ride. And I think one of the things that we tell our team is whether it's your first delivery on Monday morning or your last one on Friday afternoon, that members should have the same level of experience, and so I think going back to your question, obviously there's product knowledge there, but more important is how do you deal with members and be patient with them?

Sarah Nicastro: So a couple of questions on that. So would you say that you hire more based on personality and the ability to provide that customer experience or technical aptitude?

Jamie Beck: Yeah, great question. I think more about their personality right now, and obviously when we first started, it was a lot about delivery. It's still mostly about delivery, but the service component and the repair component and the field service component for us is only going to continue to grow. As we get products that are older and have more use in the field, and as just the sheer number of products that we have in the field grows, the amount of service and repair work that we have to do is increasing, and so sometimes we'll find people maybe that worked at a bike shop and have that level of service, but for the scale that we have been growing at, that would not allow us to hire enough people, if we just looked at technical skills. We can teach the technical skills, and so as we've grown, we have built in what we call our master technician courses that allows that field specialist to promote into a role where now they can go into the home and they're not delivering anymore. They're just providing service, and so traditionally we've looked for more personality, knowing that we can train the skills in order to do the service.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and that was what I was expecting, because I think that's in line with ... when you look at companies providing service to a consumer, I think that tends to be more the case. It's more important to get the right fit in making them feel the way you want them to feel while you're there and once you leave, and the stuff you're actually doing while you're there can, most of the times, be taught. So that makes sense. Now in terms of measurement of performance, is that mainly based off of those customer satisfaction surveys then?

Jamie Beck: Yep. Yeah. So we send out a survey, whether it's a delivery or a service or repair, and we have a very high bar. We measure it on a customer satisfaction, on a five star scale. As a company, we also measure net promoter, NPS, of existing members, but when it comes to our internal teams, we strive for a near perfect five. We're not there, but overall, over tens of thousands of surveys, we're at about a 4.92. So it's a high bar that we set, and we have locations, individual locations that are at sometimes a 4.97, 4.98, and our teams really thrive on that, especially when if you see in the comments, "Hey, I got my delivery today. Wow, I was blown away. Jamie and Sarah did an amazing job." It's recognition and our teams love to see that. So we make a big deal out of the success that our teams have, and at the same time we look for areas or trends where we can improve the overall experience for our members.

Sarah Nicastro: Sure. Okay. That makes sense, and I think it's interesting, when you look at the employee engagement and how that relates to the customer experience, promoting that culture of even being a part of something that is as "elite" as Peloton, and feeling invested in being able to provide those experiences. If you have employees that are excited about doing that, and you promote a culture that rewards them for doing that, that's going to help them just be excited about showing up and giving that customer the feel you want them to have while they're there. You're not asking them to just, "Can you show up, can you check these boxes and can you move on?" To me, it sounds like if you can find the right fit, like you said, from a hiring perspective, it's a job that would be really fun for folks to do, because if they like engaging with people and they like that customer service aspect of it, they have great opportunities to be able to do that.

Jamie Beck: Certainly.

Sarah Nicastro: So you mentioned this Jamie, that as you started with field operations, the focus has been more ... just the nature of the relative newness of the business and of the equipment, the focus has been more on the delivery side. So I'm curious, over time, how do you see the evolution of the service side of the business and how do you see this investment in Peloton field operations as an ability to continue to differentiate?

Jamie Beck: Sure. The service component's only going to continue to grow. I think the biggest opportunity for us is right now, we work in a more reactive or break fix service area. So you're riding your bike, something goes wrong, then you have to call into member support and we'll send someone out to fix it, but I think with Peloton, obviously it's a connected product and we have data. We know how many rides you've done. Every member that hits a hundred rides, it's called their century ride and they get a tee shirt that they probably wear that says, "Hey, I've done a hundred rides," and so we have that data, and I think where we're going to be going with this over time is how do we get to predictive maintenance?

Jamie Beck: Because we know that, hey, this bike and this home has ... similar to your car, it's got 3000 miles and it's time for an oil change, and so how do we utilize that data that we're capturing to say, "Hey Mr. or Mrs. Member, we'd like to come out and do a bike tune up for you to ensure that you can continue riding. You're someone that rides every day. We want to make sure that you're not interrupted in any way," and I think that's the way that we'll be able to do it. Another interesting component obviously is how can they interact with us without potentially even getting off their bike? So through the touch screen on the bike that enables them to access our full library of classes, is there a way just to contact member support? There are a number of things that we have in the bike where you can send data from the bike to our member support team if there is something going on, and so those are all areas that we're exploring, but I think over the coming years, that's where we want to get to, is being able to make sure that people that want to ride or run every day can continue to do that because we're getting ahead of their potential problems before they happen.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's a good point. I mean it's the evolution of, of service. So if you look at, hey, it's great if people call us and we're there quickly and we fix their problems quickly and they have a good experience while we're there, but what's even better than that? What's next is how do we predict those issues? How do we get ahead of that? How do we prevent them from even happening? So that makes sense to me. So as you look back at your time with Peloton and the huge potential that exists for the field operations division with the company, what's the thing you're most excited for in the future?

Jamie Beck: Yeah. I think our growth has been crazy in a good way, and I think that COVID is obviously ... we're one of the few companies that I think has, in a way, grown even faster due to what's going on right now. I think what I'm most excited about is just the way that we continue to innovate as a company, and I think that's at our core. It's not just about innovation in products or content. It's how do we innovate with field service as well? And so I think there's a lot of opportunity to continue to innovate, whether it's predictive maintenance or using the internet of things in order to make our company more successful.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So Jamie, in the time that you've been at Peloton, and as you look at what's on the horizon as the field operations division grows with the company, what are you most excited about as you look at the future?

Jamie Beck: Yeah, I think, obviously, we continue to grow at a really rapid rate, but I think more than anything at our core, Peloton, we're an innovation company. We happen to be in the fitness space now, but how do we think about innovating, whether that's in hardware, in content, or even in field operations, and so how do we improve the member experience? And I think what excites me is there's so much opportunity out there that maybe people aren't doing today. For example, in the big and bulky delivery space, this high touch, white glove experience, not many people are doing that, and so we continue to use technology to even improve that level of experience. How do we use the predictive maintenance, the internet of things, artificial intelligence? I think there's so much out there for us, and as a technology company, I think we're in a position where we can harness that, because we're using it in other areas of our business to bring that to our field operations team. That's probably one of the things that excites me the most.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and I mean 2014, it's a relatively young company and it's a hugely known brand. I mean the impact that you guys have made in a relatively short amount of time is just staggering. The other thing that's interesting is if you look at the current situation that we're in with COVID, I know that home fitness stuff has been one of the industries that has been positively impacted by what's going on, and I'm sure that that creates some craziness for you all, I would imagine, with trying to keep up with that demand, but it's giving you a chance to expand the footprint even further and to have a bigger customer base from which to consider, how do we innovate? How do we expand? And you're right. I think the opportunities are really significant. So it's a very cool story in a very cool company to be a part of. Last question I wanted to ask you, Jamie, is with your time at Peloton, leading the field operations function, what's the biggest lesson you feel you've learned so far?

Jamie Beck: Yeah. Great question. When I started four years ago, I was the VP of Field Operations, and today I'm the VP of Field Operations. My team has gone from maybe 20 people to 2000 people though, and so even though my title's the same, my roles and responsibilities have changed a lot, and I think one of our value statements as a company is to hire smart creatives and get out of the way, and we talk a lot about empowerment at Peloton, especially within the field operations team, and it goes down to if you're a field specialist delivering a product and maybe you don't have the answer, but you know it's a good decision for the member, it's a good decision for the company, and it's a good decision for you, then make a decision. I think the worst thing that a member customer wants to hear is, "Let me check with my manager."

Jamie Beck: And so I think the biggest thing that I've learned as a leader is to really step back and empower your team and trust them, and I think that goes not only to helping the member, but it really helps our team as well. You mentioned before engagement of the team. When you empower teams, they are so much more engaged and they are doing what you want them to do and more, and I think that's the biggest thing I've learned is as we've grown in scale, putting people in positions that can do that and just continuing to step back and let them lead at their level has been the biggest lesson, and I think it's going to be critical for us because our growth is only going to continue, and so making sure that we're designing for that for the future as well,

Sarah Nicastro: It's a really good point that you just made and it makes me think about how earlier you said that you aren't at all prescriptive with what you want your field team to do or say on site. You want them to accomplish the objective of making the member happy and having them ready to go when they leave, but how they do that is up to them.

Jamie Beck: Correct.

Sarah Nicastro: So you're not prescriptive and you empower them to make those decisions, and I think as we look at how do companies leverage field service more strategically, those are two really important points. It is hard to provide the type of customer experience you're seeking to provide if you're trying to tell someone exactly how to do that. "Here's what you should do. Here's what you should say," and making them feel that they can't problem solve on their own or they don't have that empowerment to make decisions and not fear repercussions for acting in the member's best interest. I think it's not only important to consider how that approach benefits the customer experience, and therefore Peloton's ability to use service strategically, but also for you to hire those type of people that you want to hire, giving them that freedom to be themselves and to do that job the way that's natural to them, as long as they're accomplishing those goals. I don't think you could get those people and then be prescriptive with them. I don't think they would be happy.

Jamie Beck: Agreed.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think those are really, really good points for people to consider. I think if you look at companies that have historically had a field service function, a lot of them are coming from a school of thought where it's very efficiency, productivity driven, and therefore it is prescriptive and it is get in and get out and do more and do more, and those employees oftentimes don't feel empowered to be themselves or to make decisions, and I think that there's something from the Peloton story for those people to learn from today's discussion, which is how do we evolve our thinking around what our service function means and how do we think more strategically and how do we empower those folks more? I've really enjoyed having you, Jamie. I think it's an interesting story in a lot of ways. I really appreciate you joining us and sharing it today and would certainly love to have you back in the future and talk about how that service part has evolved and what's new and what you're learning. So thanks again for joining us and for sharing.

Jamie Beck: Awesome. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me today.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. You can check out more of our content by visiting us online at www.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 Service Management Solutions by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Companies have realized the strategic and monetary value of service as a (or the) key differentiator and most are at some stage of the journey to equip their businesses to seize the service opportunity. You read (I write) a lot of articles on Servitization and the journey to outcomes-based service, and the reason you hear so much about these topics is twofold: first, the opportunity they present is immense and, second, the undertaking of these journeys is no small feat. It isn’t just about an intimate understanding of customer needs and pains or an examination of business strategies and processes. It can’t be accomplished simply by investing in technology or conquering employee engagement. It isn’t possible for just one function of the business to progress this agenda on its own. It’s a puzzle with many pieces and takes a cohesive vision and multifaceted plan.

This is why it’s a topic I’m so passionate about discussing – because there are many aspects, and multiple layers, that a company needs to consider and address to achieve success. It’s powerful for service leaders to share where they are on this journey, because inevitably there’s something to be learned from each and every experience. As I talk with business leaders about how they are transforming their businesses to seize the service opportunity, one of the root issues that often arises is how a company’s structure needs to evolve – particularly as it relates to the sales function and how that intersects with service. In traditional product-based businesses, sales has historically been tasked with and compensated on selling product – with service bolted on after (and often as an afterthought). As these companies look to prioritize service offerings, it begs an examination of what needs to change in how the sales function is structured. There’s no singular way to tackle this challenge and companies’ approaches span from improving collaboration between sales and service functions to completely restructuring the organizations.

I held a Focus Group recently with a handful of business leaders across industries, born out of a request from one in particular that is working through how the businesses needs to change in order to deliver on its mission to become more service-centric. Listening to these folks discuss how their organizations have addressed this topic was really quite interesting – there was a lot of commiseration and some significant similarities. While each businesses approach proved unique, there do seem to be some common important points to consider and work through:

Service can’t stay siloed. This may sound like an “of course” statement – but believe it or not, it’s a common misstep. Companies that are moving toward Servitization often try to do so by putting the onus of that progress on the service function alone, and as the group participants shared – this is recipe for failure. Servitization is a journey that requires the strategic vision of the company to be supported and socialized from the top and throughout the business. Progress in seizing the service opportunity needs to be a company-wide priority; not a service group’s responsibility.
Ownership needs to be clearly defined. As such, ownership when it comes to service sales and the service P&L needs to be clear. It seemed to be commonly agreed upon that keeping separate product and service P&Ls promotes division and prevents companies from realizing the true potential. Rather than keeping product and service sales separate, most companies seem to be working toward a more cohesive sales strategy so that the sale becomes about the outcome or deliverable versus about the product and service. However you choose to tackle this within your business, the ownership and responsibility for how the sale should be handled needs to be clearly defined and articulated.
Clear expectations need to be set. Building upon the last point, not only does ownership need to be understood, but expectations need to be set – both from a sales and service perspective. If you are restructuring the sales function to sell the deliverable (product + service), not only does this change need to be managed, but they need to be incentivized to achieve the goals you’ve set forth. From a service perspective, some companies are expecting field service workers to be directly involved in the sales process and others are promoting more of an advisory or consultative role. Again, there’s no single right answer – but your expectations for how the service technician’s role will evolve beyond the actual service work needs to be clear.
The data loop needs to be robust. However you structure sales and service, you need robust data. Whether a service technician is directly selling or acting in a consultative role, the data loop with sales needs to be in place. You need accurate, digestible, real-time data in order to hold both the sales and service functions accountable for the expectations you’ve set. For many companies the shift in responsibilities is a significant one, and there’s no way to measure compliance, performance, and progress without solid data.
Best practices need to be examined and built upon. The folks in my Focus Group were all from global companies, which adds complexity in not only determining a desired approach but then standardizing the approach to the appropriate degree among business units and regions. Knowing that complete uniformity is unlikely, another important point these folks shared is creating a system to ensure the sharing and formalizing of best practices. Most of the participants have a central function that is responsible for strategy and the aggregation and communication of best practices while execution is done at a regional level. Since much of the innovation and learnings happen at the regional level, it’s important to put measures in place (business reviews, forums, etc.) to keep a bidirectional information flow in place between central, business units, and regions.

How do you “sell” service within your business – and is that process changing? I’d love to hear from you and discuss!

By Tom Paquin

This is part of an ongoing series on the state and standards of service management software in 2020. Here are the previous articles in the series:

Last time in our series, we took a look at the broad capability categories of service management and broke them into three subsections: Service delivery, operations, and customer experience. Today we’re going to start breaking down the first of these three subsections, service delivery.

This should, on its surface, not be rocket science to people. Here are what are typically defined as some of the key features in a “big tent” sort of way:

It’s not unusual for a service vendor B to produce a list like this and say, “See? We have all the same capabilities as vendor A!” but looking at this list it’s pretty obvious that having a broad scope of capabilities has virtually no relationship to having the capabilities necessary to actually manage service processes effectively.

Let’s start at the top of the list. In the olden days, service ticket management meant that a dispatcher initiated an appointment that was often manually routed to a technician. Then CRM systems allowed those appointments to include customer history and SLA requirements. Then mobile devices allowed technicians to initiate appointments. Then online portals allowed for a diversity of channels for appointment booking. Then IoT-enabled devices allowed for zero-touch appointment booking.

And all that’s just at the first step of ticket management. Think about appointment initiation, notation, close out, and everything in between and you can see the layers of complexity that separate a true service capability from a check list box.

And that’s really the major thing to keep in mind with all of this. Service capabilities are worthless if all they do is replace a piece of paper in a file cabinet. Truly best-in-class systems and processes automate repetitive processes to free up backoffice time, provide a constant vector between the backoffice and the field workers, and use available technology to enhance and provide new solutions.

Looking at the “Knowledge management” capability is a great way to consider how businesses can use available technologies to improve capabilities. Five years ago, knowledge management may have consisted of guidebooks and instructional videos on mobile devices. Today, augmented reality is changing the world of knowledge management permanently, allowing less tenured technicians or even end-users the guidance to mitigate issues without a truck roll.

This makes each capability much more than it appears on paper. Service capabilities should rise to meet your service expectations. Otherwise the technology is simple overcomplicated shovelware that technicians will marginalize or completely ignore.

You may be wondering why we’re leaving out some key service capabilities here that are components of service delivery, like parts management, and we’ll talk more about that and others next time, when we discuss optimization. Until then, if you’re considering a new FSM implementation, or upgrading your current systems, remember to focus on your list of service needs, and find the technology that elevates itself to the level of service execution you aspire to.

Sarah welcomes back to the podcast Roel Rentmeesters, Director of Global Customer Service at Munters, to discuss the company’s evaluation and addition of smart glasses to its merged-reality solution.

Roel Rentmeesters: Yep, that's correct. We didn't think really of using smart glasses at that time, or the wearables, because we wanted to have a quick solution, fast implementation, and our people were mostly sitting at home, so they did not have to wear the glasses at the time.

Sarah Nicastro: And that was... You guys had a very fast deployment of that technology. And one of the ways in which that's possible is the ability to just deploy it on whatever device that is in use. But as you did that, how did you determine the need or opportunity for migrating that to wearables?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yeah, as it wasn't initially a solution we wanted to use towards our customers and those customers would not have the wearables. But quickly, internally, people from the operation side, the factories, who are also stuck in their country and could not travel to other countries. So for the internal use, it's where they came up and said, "Yeah. But you have people on the factory floor maybe want to start up lines or change lines to other locations. Since we can't bring expert from one factory to another factory, is there another solution that we can have a hands-free way of working?" And that's when I started looking into those smart glasses. So it came from an internal use because of the non-travel.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. And the remote assistance solution is in use both in the field operations as well as in some of those manufacturing applications?

Roel Rentmeesters: That's correct.

Sarah Nicastro: So are the wearables also used in both?

Roel Rentmeesters: No. I've sent a few to the field service organizations to test it. And actually, it worked really, really well. We did an intervention in Australia, from Australia for New Zealand. So we sent the glasses to New Zealand and the technician who was doing the commissioning on site was guided by technicians in Australia. And that technician on site, he was wearing the wearables. Also in Germany, we are testing it, see the feasibility. And I've sent them also to Brazil and US for testing. And so far, it seems to be going well. On top... So, that's field service. We had the factories, as I mentioned before, but also the R&D organization is now using the wearables to communicate between each other. When they talk about parts and specific pieces, they can visualize while they're holding it in their hand, etc. So it's becoming a bit more widespread inside the organization, outside of the field service.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And you think about the increase in efficiency and productivity that the hands-free environment really creates, and it is a compelling value proposition. Whether you're talking about in a factory or, like you said, R&D, or in the field, it really can speed things up and make things easier for those folks to be able to use both hands instead of holding that smartphone and using the application that way. So it makes a lot of sense. How did you set out to evaluate the options that are out there? And maybe share what you found as you were doing so, and what you landed on.

Roel Rentmeesters: Yeah. To be honest, I've been experimenting with HoloLens in the past, and that was before we were talking about IFS Remote Assist solutions, so it was more like, "What could HoloLens do in the future?" Taking into account that HoloLens is an amazing device, it was the HoloLens first, and it was very heavy on the nose, et cetera. But once I looked into IFS Remote Assist, I checked with IFS what companies are already certified to be using, from a wearable perspective. And there were two. I don't remember if the first brand and the second one was Vuzix.

Roel Rentmeesters: And we spoke with some experts who were from IFS Remote Assist, and they advised us for the things we needed to go for a specific brand, the Vuzix M400 Smart Glasses because of the screen quality, the way you could mount it, the fact that the solution is integrated in it, so there's an app that you can download on the smart glasses. And one of the major things that helped was the fact that this type of smart glasses, you can control them from your mobile phone. There's an app that you can download. So on the side of the glasses, there is a thing that is difficult to see, but you need to, with your hands, scroll over like a touch pad to manipulate it. Whilst with the app you have on your phone, you can do it on your phone, which is much more user friendly as people are used to doing it. So you control, actually, the menu in the smart glasses from your phone. And that was, for me, the most compelling argument to choose this.

Sarah Nicastro: You can use the phone to scroll the menu to make the selection you want, then put the phone down and do what you need to do hands-free?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yes. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. That makes sense. So, when you started testing the Vuzix Smart Glasses, how did you feel about the user experience? And what I'm most curious about is, I've talked with a number of companies now that have deployed remote assistance that commonly talk about how easy of an experience it is, both from the initiator and the recipient's perspective, within the application. And the deployment is simple because you can use whatever device you have. The user interface is clean. So knowing that you deployed first on the smartphones that you had, and then you introduced the Vuzix Smart Glasses, how would you compare the user experience between the two?

Roel Rentmeesters: Well, the fact that it's hands free is a really good one. The app that was designed to work with the glasses look and feel completely similar as the thing on your mobile phone, so you will recognize everything you need to do, how to make a call, how to answer a call, how to share things. You can recognize it very easily, because it's exactly the same look and feel. And the quality of the glasses is amazing.

Roel Rentmeesters: The little screen that you have in front of your eye, it takes getting used to because you need to focus here and then focus there, but it's so sharp and the quality of the camera, that others can see on the other sides is also so sharp that I would say it's maybe even better than the phone because of the quality of the screen and the camera you have on the device. Does it mean that I would be using it to do normal stuff? Probably not. If it's quicker and easier, I would do it with this because the battery drains quite fast on the wearables, et cetera. But if I really would need my hands, I would have no doubt to switch to the smart glasses.

Sarah Nicastro: That was the other question I was going to ask, is it really wouldn't be something that would be used instead of the smartphone. It would be something that would be used in addition to, as an option when that hands-free experience is mandated. Is that accurate?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yeah. If a technician needs a quick-and-dirty answer because he is facing something, but he knows he does need to manipulate it, it would just be, "Can you confirm that it's that part that I need to change? Or that is what I'm looking at is indeed this," that I would do with my phone. But if I need to manipulate at the same time, then I would definitely use the smart glasses. And the way we did it in the factories was actually, as you can use three people in the solution, one provide support, one receiving reports, and somebody else who can witness and intervene if needed, we use a third person view to put a big screen in the factory as well. So one guy was wearing the glasses and others could monitor what he was doing next to him on a big screen at the same time. So they saw what he was doing, and they saw the intervention that the provider of support was doing as well, guiding him. So that's the way we use the smart glasses in our factories.

Sarah Nicastro: And you can record those interactions if you want to, right?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: And you can still do that with the Vuzix the same way you could through the phone?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yes. There's no difference. No difference.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So, the user experience is very similar, and I think that's also an interesting point to mention, which is that it wouldn't be like teaching your employees how the solution works on the smartphone and getting them used to that, and then teaching them an entirely different interface or experience on the smart glasses. They're very similar, and so that would make, I assume, the training and introduction to that technology fairly straightforward?

Roel Rentmeesters: Yeah, you're right. The only thing that is different, which is logic, is in the first instance, you need to set up the glasses. You need to download the last firmware, et cetera. Then you need to make sure that you install the app, the IFS Remote Assistant app on the device. And that, I would suggest somebody else does. But once it's there... It's a one page instruction, so it's really, really clear. Once that is done, they're up and running like a mobile phone.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. The other question I wanted to ask is just based on the experience you had. So, I know that the main use of the Vuzix currently is on the manufacturing side, but being tested on the field side. If someone were looking at, or debating between, "Okay, we're going to deploy an augmented reality or merged reality solution." What's your opinion on, should they deploy first on smart phones and then incorporate smart glasses, should they skip that step and go right to the smart glasses, or a combination of both? How did you feel about the way in which you did it and how that would lead you to advise others?

Roel Rentmeesters: I would do it the same way as I did it. I would first go for the smartphone solutions. And why do I say this? Because you can use the solution then, both with customers that don't have a license and an application, which you can still already support them whilst they don't have the smart glasses. Your internal use is done more with the smart glasses. And like we said before, for the quick-and-dirty things, people will probably still want to use their phone. So you have a much quicker deployment. You have less investment because there's a cost attached to these devices as well.

Roel Rentmeesters: For instance, I'm not planning to supply every technician with such smart glasses. The focus that I would put is if we know we have a big commissioning that we need to do, that the technician that will do that has them. And we target the junior technicians. So the ones that just come in, we provide them with those glasses for a couple of months, so that in case they need support, they have them always with them and they can use them. The more senior ones will be using their own devices to provide assistance. They don't need the glasses to give assistance. It's really for the receiving end. So, much broader audience, less investment, quicker deployments.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. That makes sense. So, I'm curious. How has the employee feedback been on the introduction of smart glasses? And has there been any difference between the different applications, so manufacturing, R&D, in the field? And I ask this because we commonly see resistance to change and new things. And I would say smart glasses are a pretty new introduction to these types of applications. I mean, they've been around for a while, but as I said at the beginning, we're just now starting to see them get more widely deployed. And so, how have your employees responded?

Roel Rentmeesters: Luckily, we have a bunch of these millennial people inside our organization, the ones that are keen for new technology and look into that. And you will see most of the junior technicians that you will bring in are also younger and grown up with more technology than the old generation has. This being said, I can feel a trend change inside Munters, where we really look at new technologies to help us in our evolution for the future. So from top management, this is something we're really... R&D is looking into this, product management is looking into this, and field operations is also looking into this. So we try to make people warm on this new technology, so we're showing them the benefits of it. And I can really feel that some are really eager for us to come up with this new technology. So you have, of course, both cases, the more traditional people that say, "I don't need this."

Roel Rentmeesters: On the other hand, we're asking now, those more traditional, maybe different generation, to provide the support to the ones that are on site. And if the one on site says, "Maybe you can guide me using the app. I have the glasses with me," the technology gets more embraced and people see the benefits of it as well. I can see when we deployed this solution with the smartphones in the beginning, lots of people started testing it, so then it fell a bit silent, also because of the fact that we could start traveling again. Now I see it rising. I see the use of the solution rising back up because people start to see the benefits of it. And it's the same with the smart glasses. But the top sponsors is actually management. Management is using them to do virtual tours of the factories, to inspect the factories, et cetera. So management is starting to use them a lot, actually.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So, when you have someone providing the insight, so like you said, if you have a junior technician out in the field that has the glasses on, the experience for the person providing the insight doesn't change, right? So it doesn't matter what's on the receiving end. That instruction is the same.

Roel Rentmeesters: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: But seeing the use of those glasses and how it helps the person on the other end can help them warm up to the idea of it a bit. That makes sense. And I think, going back to my question I asked about, would you recommend starting with smartphones then introducing smart glasses, or introducing them together, it might be another check in the column of introduce smartphones first, because it gave your employees an opportunity to see the value of the technology and become familiar with the use of the technology before you introduced something else that was cutting edge. So it kind of phased that change a bit, to where they could welcome the remote assistance, and then you introduced this new thing, and perhaps they were a little bit more willing to consider that since they had found value in the tool already. That makes sense.

Roel Rentmeesters: Yeah. I can see a lot of possibilities using smart glasses, from parts recognition when you look at them, when you glance at them, et cetera. So I really look forward into the new technologies and possibilities that will come out using smart glasses, from a training perspective, where you explore the views and you have virtual devices, from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective, et cetera. And I think as new technologies come out and things we can do with those glasses, people will start embracing them more and more and more. It will become part of our life and the way we work on a day to day basis. This is the beginning. We are just at the beginning of what these things can do.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last question. And we touched on a couple of things here, in terms of you mentioned the weight of the glasses and making sure that they're comfortable, you mentioned the clarity of the view for the user, as well as the clarity of the camera for the user on the other end. What other criteria would you mention that are critical for people to have in mind as they're evaluating the wearable options that are out there?

Roel Rentmeesters: Probably the way to manipulate the glasses. The fact that you need to find an easy way to scroll, or to change apps, et cetera, specifically if these wearables will be used more using different applications, maybe to report on your call or your ticket that you're performing, et cetera. The way you be able to control and manipulate will become very important on top of the fact that they need to be very comfortable and not fall off, et cetera. Wearable on helmets, if needed, or on hats. You can see that is really coming. So if they're difficult to operate, people will not use them. That's something, for sure.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Now, you mentioned the battery life can be a challenge. Did you find that to be pretty universal, in terms of the options you evaluated?

Roel Rentmeesters: I didn't really check that, I must admit. But there is solutions. The fact that it's HDMI, et cetera, you can use a normal power bank to continue to charge the devices. So it's not that it's a problem in the long end, but I think it's normal that the battery life... I think it's consumes a lot, and I think it's normal because of the camera and screen at the same time. Actually, we have the same with mobile phones. If you use a solution on mobile phones for quite some time, you see the battery drainage as well on the phone. So I think it's normal on the technology.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's just something to be aware of and plan for. So, that makes sense. All right. Well, thank you Roel, for coming back and talking us through this. I'm certainly excited to see how the use of Vuzix expands within the organization to the field force, and then also, as you said, as things evolve and more aspects of the technology become possible.

Roel Rentmeesters: Thank you. It was my pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. If you haven't yet had an opportunity to listen to the previous podcast we did on Munters' journey to Servitization, take a look at that on Future of Field Service, www.futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter, @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more about IFS Service Management by visiting www.ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Next week we’ll release a podcast episode with Jamie Beck, VP of Field Operations at Peloton discussing how the world’s largest interactive fitness platform has decided to invest in field operations as a strategic differentiator. The conversation is an excellent illustration of a trend I’ve witnessed – the recognition by companies of how the face-to-face interaction that field workers provide can be an opportunity not just to “get the job done” but to deliver an experience that sets your company apart from the competition. I urge you to stay tuned for the podcast, coming August 26^th, to hear the Peloton story firsthand – but today I wanted to share some insight on a topic that came up during that discussion: what are the keys to delivering a field service experience that provides a premium customer experience?

As Jamie talks through how Peloton views the opportunity to differentiation through its delivery and service functions, he describes three key points that enable the company to use field operations to provide a customer experience that Peloton members expect from the top-tier brand. An experience that leaves them feeling not only satisfied but also appreciated, valued, and part of the Peloton world. Even for companies not selling such well-known household brands, I believe these three keys are worth considering in the context of how you’re evolving your field operations to align with the type of customer experiences desired today. If you want to “wow” versus simply work, you have to think about how to create a field team that can deliver that premium experience. Here’s how Jamie of Peloton says the company is doing this:

#1: Hire on Personality; Train on Skills

“Delivering a strong customer experience starts with hiring the right people,” says Jamie. “We look for people that you would feel comfortable coming into your own home. There's a whole wide range of experience among our employees – we don’t have a prototypical field specialist for Peloton. We have former division one athletes. We have people that have worked retail. So, it spans a lot, but it's generally just good people. It starts there.”

Peloton has adopted this philosophy of focusing more on personality because the company knows it can train on the necessary skills. “For the scale that we have been growing at, we could not hire enough people if we just looked at technical skills,” explains Jamie. “We can teach the technical skills, and so as we've grown, we have built in what we call our master technician courses that allow that field specialist to promote into a role where now they can go into the home and they're not delivering anymore. We've looked for more personality, knowing that we can train the skills in order to do the service.”

#2: Don’t Be Prescriptive – Promote Creativity

“The training we provide obviously is knowledge about the product, but the thing that we don't do is we don't give our team a script,” says Jamie. “We don’t want to be prescriptive in how they treat the member or what the experience should consist of, because each member is different, and we want them to tailor the experience. A key word that we've learned in the experience is they're going to be patient with a member, to make sure they focus on that member’s questions and areas of interest.”

The idea is to provide a unique, white-glove experience – and Peloton knows you can’t do this by being prescriptive. I’d also suggest you’d have trouble hiring the caliber of people you want to provide that experience if you think you can do so by feeding them a script. Peloton, instead, hires good people and then promotes creativity. “When I started four years ago, my team was maybe 20 people to 2,000 people today,” says Jamie. “So even though my title's the same, my roles and responsibilities have changed a lot. But one of our value statements as a company that has remained along the way is to hire smart creatives and get out of the way.”

#3: Relinquish Control and Focus on Empowerment

Finally, Peloton is big on empowering its field workforce rather than controlling every aspect of what happens onsite. “We talk a lot about empowerment at Peloton, especially within the field operations team, and it goes down to if you're a field specialist delivering a product and maybe you don't have the answer, but you know it's a good decision for the member, it's a good decision for the company, and it's a good decision for you, then make a decision. I think the worst thing that a member customer wants to hear is, ‘Let me check with my manager,’” explains Jamie.

Empowered employees are engaged employees, and this fuels the cycle of those employees providing the type of experiences Peloton wants its customers to have. “When you empower teams, they are so much more engaged and they are doing what you want them to do and more,” says Jamie. “I think that's the biggest thing I've learned is, as we've grown in scale, putting people in positions that can do that and just continuing to step back and let them lead at their level has been the biggest contributor to success.”

By Bill Pollock

There’s plenty to “get” about Servitization! So, why have so many field service managers not yet taken steps to adopt Servitization within their own organizations? Break/fix was decades ago; and so was Network Services Management (NSM). Self-support and customer portals? Yesterday’s news, as well. However, Servitization is here – and here to stay – at least for a long while.

But, what is there left to “get”?

I suppose it makes sense that you will need to “get” a full understanding of what Servitization is before you’re actually able to acquire a Servitization-based Field Service Management (FSM) solution for your services organization. OK – I “get” it!

So …, here’s your path forward:

First, learn as much as you can from trade associations, virtual Webcasts and conferences, industry experts, peers and online case studies and testimonials. Word of mouth testimonials are also good. And, oh yeah – you may also want to schedule some time with an actual Field Service Management (FSM) vendor that bases its solution on a foundation of Servitization.
Next, review the material you have collected for consistencies/inconsistencies, soundness, delivery, maintenance, practicality, scalability, user ratings – and price. Don’t just look at the suggested list price – those days are long gone (i.e., another traditional software acquisition mechanism that has bitten the dust). You will need to look at pricing in a completely different way, in terms of monthly fees based on things such as system uptime; system capacity, bandwidth, usage and throughput; results/outcomes and, ultimately, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) (i.e., which, by and large, has replaced Value-in-Use, or ViU).
Look for prospective matches between what your “new” FSM solution offers and what your services organization delivers to see where there may be gaps that may need to be filled. Making the transition from the traditional on-site support and Preventive Maintenance service delivery model to an outcomes-based model will not necessarily be easy. Management has to buy into Servitization from the outset – and that may not be easy to achieve. In fact, you may run into a great deal of resistance from the top – especially if you have not communicated the anticipated Return-on-Investment (ROI) that can be realized through the transition.
Prepare to be “shot down” once or twice – or more. To avoid this, take steps to really know your material before making any presentations – to anyone. Enlist the help of your peers and support teams elsewhere in the organization. There will be strength in numbers that you will be able to leverage.
Set a realistic bar for your expectations – and be careful not to set it too low, or too high. Too low, and there will likely not be a groundswell of support for your path forward. Too high, and you will probably never reach your goals. Either case is bad: the former because you may not get the chance to move forward; and the latter, because you may be told “I told you so” following the transition.

Back to Basics: The Operational Capabilities of Service

Back to Basics: The Operational Capabilities of Service

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

3 Pillars of Redefining Service Delivery

3 Pillars of Redefining Service Delivery

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

The Psychology of Field Service Excellence

The Psychology of Field Service Excellence

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Will Covid-19 Lead a Low-Code Revolution?

Will Covid-19 Lead a Low-Code Revolution?

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Peloton Invests in Field Service as a Strategic Differentiator

Peloton Invests in Field Service as a Strategic Differentiator

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Is Your Business Structured to Seize the Service Opportunity?

Is Your Business Structured to Seize the Service Opportunity?

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

Defining the Service Leader’s Duty Around the "Silver Tsunami"

The Service Leadership Trifecta

Most Recent

Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

Back to Basics: The Attributes of Best-in-Class Service Delivery Software

Back to Basics: The Attributes of Best-in-Class Service Delivery Software

Share

Stay Connected

Related Content

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Save Us from Ourselves: Breaking Industry Echo Chambers

Alcon’s Service Overhaul – And What Comes Next