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December 7, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Managing COVID-19 Complexity: Real-World Lessons to Help Navigate the Second Wave

December 7, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Managing COVID-19 Complexity: Real-World Lessons to Help Navigate the Second Wave

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

When we began lockdown in March of this year, I thought – maybe naïvely – that the pandemic would be in our review mirror by year end. Here we are, however, with cases rising in many regions across the world and second waves of lockdown in certain areas. While we all long for our lives to normalize, we must find fortitude to wait this out with safe practices and patience.

I recently held a Focus Group with some of the Future of Field Service Advisory Forum members to discuss what best practices they could share from how their companies have handled COVID thus far that may help their peers prepare for this second wave. It was a great conversation – I continue to be heartened by the connectedness among the industry and the inclination to come together during this crazy time to help one another along. Here are some of the points that came up in conversation – thought processes, strategies, and steps that participants felt served them well in navigating COVID challenges.

Let Go of Business as Usual – It’s Time to Get Creative

There were a number of points brought up in conversation about how companies’ normal course of business has been significantly impacted by COVID. Particularly companies that serve retail locations and restaurants have seen drastic declines. Even those who haven’t been hit as heavily have had to alter the normal business processes to comply with lockdowns and keep employees and customers safe. While the outcome varies from company to company, what was shared in conversation was a willingness to let go of business as usual and quickly get creative. This may mean diversifying the business, embracing innovation, altering delivery methods, introducing new services, or a variety of other things. But the commonality is that companies who have navigated COVID successfully haven’t done so by being tied to the legacy of how things have been done.

Lean on Digital Tools to Maximize Safety and Adapt to a Virtual World

Some companies have been able to adopt tools like Remote Assistance to move to a remote-first service strategy. This enabled organization to persist in providing customers service during lockdowns, and really sets the stage for a more evolved way of working even post-pandemic. Much of the conversation within the Focus Group centered around the fact that the focus on physical intervention as the first line of field service will be a thing of the past even once COVID passes. Looking beyond service, companies also discussed technologies being used to replace other functions that were previously conducted in person – like training, for instance. And those whose organizations have needed to continue with essential, in-person service throughout the pandemic discussed ways they’ve been able to rely on planning and automation tools to optimally schedule and route technicians in a way that reduces travel and minimizes exposure through avoiding peak times to keep both employees and customers safe.

Don’t Downplay Employee Emotions

This has been a hard year for everyone, and it is essential not to overlook or minimize the emotions your employees have. Not only are they likely struggling with concerns around health and safety, but those concerns may be compounded worry over the future of t heir job or overwhelm from the introduction of new technologies or processes. Companies that have done well managing COVID share a focus on empathy – a dedication to remembering the human side of all of this and recognizing and addressing the emotions of their employees as best they can. Leaders have gone out of their way to develop more personal means of checking in and staying connected in this virtual world. Some companies have noticed that as remote service ramps up, technicians fear for their jobs – and are working hard to address these concerns and put minds at ease about what’s to come. In a time where we have to move fast to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, don’t overlook the need to put your people first.

Act Global; Empower Local

Global organizations have faced an extra layer of complexity because COVID cases, management, and restrictions vary so much from region to region. As such, it was brought up that there isn’t any real way to centralize the rection to local COVID circumstances. Rather, these organizations have worked to centralize access to information and resources but empower the local units to react in the ways that best fit their individual conditions. Certain best practices are created and communicated at the global level, but each region feels empowered to react to their own changing circumstances in the way they see fit. Part of what makes this possible is a move toward more real-time data analysis and far faster decision making. This enables communication between central and regional functions and helps everyone to stay in lock step on the approach.

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December 4, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

What Can We Learn About Service from a 1,400-Year-Old Company?

December 4, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

What Can We Learn About Service from a 1,400-Year-Old Company?

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By Tom Paquin

If you look at the Fortune 500 list as a barometer of business success, you’ll see some truly behemoth mainstays, many of which have endured on the list for at least the last five years. And sure, evaluating these businesses on the sliding curve of assets and liabilities, this can provide some insight into the health of a company, and excellence is great, but what about endurance? What can we say about a business that has stood through crises, recessions, wars, governments, and natural disasters?

If you look at a list of the oldest businesses in the world, you’ll discover that the top of the list is monopolized by Japanese companies. And while many of the years are impressive—705 for the oldest hotel in the world, 862 for the oldest winery—one business stands a head (and nearly 150 years) above all the others, and that is Kongō Gumi.

What compelled me about Kongō Gumi specifically was that in a list dominated by hotels, restaurants, alcohol producers, and state-owned properties, Kongō Gumi was something different—they were a service provider. Specifically, they’re a construction company, specializing in elaborate Buddhist temples.

There is however a twist to this story: Kongō Gumi was liquidated in 2006 and sold off to Takamatsu Construction Group. It seemed incredible to me that a company that has survived for as long as Kongō Gumi could so flippantly and abruptly go the way of the dodo, but it’s yet another reminder that, in the age of empowered customers, legacy is meaningless. It’s fascinating, though, to look at what toppled a service mainstay that was incorporated more than 1200 years before the country that I am currently sitting in. The obvious answer is that pedigree is a meaningless function in the face of industrial growth, but nevertheless, when a company of unrivaled pedigree collapses in an industry about which you study, there are certain to be some lessons to take away.

To consider those lessons, let’s look at some of the main reasons why Kongō Gumi was driven to acquisition.

Insolvency
If you look at the available evidence regarding the collapse of the business, this, in its simples terms, is what dealt the final blow. Unregulated lending derived from the Japanese economic bubble of the 1980s weighed down companies like Kongō Gumi with excess debt. Exacerbated by a lagging economy in the early 21st century, the business was no longer capable of standing on its own.

There are of course many positive and valuable reasons for businesses to take on debt—personnel attraction, research and development, or expansion—but this can serve as a reminder that debt needs to be justified and leveraged across a broader business plan, rather than be a means to keep a business afloat. This is a bigger challenge in construction and real estate than in other businesses, which is well-known for solvency issues and corrupt practices. This doesn’t mean that other service industries are immune from the challenges of debt, obviously. Let’s take it a step further and think about what led to this degree of insolvency.

Product Rigidity
Kongō Gumi has a broad and detailed history of building Buddhist temples and shrines. It was the stability and consistent needs of this industry that permitted their success through the centuries. This rigidity of vision turned detailed, elaborate architecture almost into a widget factory, though each of their constructions endures as a unique and beautiful symbol in its own right. Nevertheless, the other side of that rigidity meant that when the market reached a point of saturation, there was nowhere to pivot to.

For manufacturers, product-oriented organizations, or service companies, it’s a short path to see how some product diversity could have helped to mitigate some of the fiscal problems that the business ultimately faced. We frequently talk about building new service offerings that stem out of the primary offerings of a business, and that remains a way to evolve with a changing market. Service, on a whole, can be extremely nimble when given the tools to do so.

Knowledge Hoarding
The complexity of the work that Kongō Gumi meant that apprentices needed ten years’ worth of training in order to reach a level of mastery necessary to produce work that met the expectations of the customers. While I personally admire and respect the cultural practice of rewarding expertise and excellence at a craft, it is easy to see how such a business model would struggle to scale in a modern corporate environment.

Service businesses have an opportunity to take heed of this, and consider how their skills are disseminated across their business. Most businesses don’t require the expertise that is needed to construct elaborate pagodas, so making sure that new staff have the skills they need as soon as possible is an imperative, and a comparatively easy one to manage.

In spite of it now being a totally-owned subsidiary, Takamatsu Construction Group respects and maintains the name and reputation of Kongō Gumi. In some ways, by joining the larger organization, Kongō Gumi has, in short order, been given the tools to be more nimble. Let’s hope that the beautiful structures that they create even now will endure for many more years.

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November 30, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

5 Steps to Future-Proof Your Field Service Workforce

November 30, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

5 Steps to Future-Proof Your Field Service Workforce

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Finding, attracting, obtaining, and retaining talent is one of the most complex challenges that field service organizations face today. There are a variety of factors at play – changes in the demands of the role, an increasingly small pool of talent to compete for, differing desires from the new generation of worker, and now COVID complexities. Not to mention, the service landscape is evolving rather significantly as organizations adopt digital tools and embrace the move to outcomes-based service – which means the traits, skills, and characteristics sought today are vastly different than they were just five years ago and will be even different yet in another five years. So, with all of this said, is it even possible to future-proof the field service workforce? Not entirely, but we need to prepare. While no one can predict precisely what the future will hold, we know enough that it is important to start taking steps now to set us up for success as the future (rapidly) unfolds. As such, here are five steps you can take now to help you prepare the workforce of the future:

#1: Optimize Automation to Maximize Utilization

Step number one is to ensure that the resources you have are fully and properly utilized, and this rests largely in the hands of your digital journey. Do you have tools in place to plan and schedule your workforce in a streamlined manner or are your technicians wasting time each day on unnecessary travel? Does your workforce have access on site to all the information and inventory they need to get the job done, or are they frequently making return trips? Have you incorporated IoT or Remote Assistance to be able to diagnose and even resolve issues before going onsite? Do you have an effective knowledge management system in place to capture the insights of your most experienced workers and make them accessible to others? It only makes sense that before you work to future-proof, you are making the most of what you have today.

#2: Think (Ahead) About Field Service Responsibilities

We know that the role of the field technician is changing, but what will that look like for your business? Have you thought about what your frontline workers will be doing in five years, once some of the more monotonous and administrative tasks have been fully automated? Have you considered the ways in which your company’s progression toward Servitization will impact what you need your technicians to do differently? This can be an area that is difficult to fully predict, but there are some general points to consider such as how soft skills or even selling behaviors may become more important or how the ability to consume and present data may be more relevant. We recently had Bonnie Anderson, Global Manager of Talent Acquisition and Future Talent at Tetra Pak on the Future of Field Service podcast to discuss how Tetra Pak tackles field service recruiting. One of the pieces of advice she offered is to use an outcomes-based approach to hiring – in other words, to consider what outcomes you need to deliver to your customers and then translate those outcomes into the skills you’re seeking. This practice can apply to the future state, too. How do you think the outcomes you’re delivering for customers will be different in twelve months than they are today, and how do you prepare to hire skills needed to deliver those outcomes? You can future-proof in part by thinking ahead to where the business is going rather than “doing what you’ve always done” when it comes to hiring.

#3: Consider the Role of The Gig Economy

I was listening to an HBR IdeaCast podcast recently on Why Companies and Skilled Workers Are Turning to On-Demand Work that featured Joseph Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School, and Allison Bailey, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. It was an interesting episode because it looked at the intersection of several trends, including digital transformation and COVID-19, that are leading to a major uptick in the use of on-demand workforces. I’ve spoken with service leaders who are successfully leveraging third-party workers, but thus far those conversations have been the exception versus the rule – often, it is a concept being considered but not yet incorporated into strategy. I think it is inevitable this will change in many cases, so it is worth investigating further and thinking about how a gig approach could help to fill certain gaps or needs.

#4: Adopt a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring

For the talent you do need to bring on board, Anderson of Tetra Pak suggests evolving from an experience-based approach to hiring to a skills-based approach. “When we look at a skills-based approach, it’s shifting that mindset that a candidate needs to have a certain background to be able to fill a position. Having an experience-based assumption has limited talent pools for employers particularly for in demand and niche skills, that are hard to find,” she explains. “So, by flipping that a little bit and saying, ‘Okay, well, actually, a candidate might get a skill from somewhere else other than from their qualification or from their experience;’ you can find a whole talent population that might be untapped, or that you’ve never considered before.” In my words, this means that companies who have traditionally hired based on experience need to understand that the experienced pool is diminishing and that means you need to work harder than you may have before to hired based on skills and then build the experience. While this means more training time and development programs, it is a critical part of the answer to the talent problem many companies have. In addition to considering skills-based hiring, you also need to be thinking about how you can upskill and reskill your existing workers as certain parts of their jobs are automated and/or as new facets of the role are introduced.

#5: Take the Reigns on Developing Future Talent

Step number five is to do what you can to take the future into your own hands, in the form of creating a program to develop future talent. Anderson of Tetra Pak spoke about the company’s Future Talent program, “Future Talent is our graduate development program designed brand new graduates coming out of university, for us to build our long-term strategy in developing that new talent,” she says. “We have a technical track to close the skills gap between industry and the skills that we require in the organization. We don’t really expect graduates to have the skills that they might need, that we might look for in somebody that does have experience. But we do look for potential, how willing they are to learn, how quick they are to learn. And the program is to expedite that learning so they can pick up those skills very, very quickly. If you pride yourself of being at the forefront, you really have to invest your time to get the talent that you need to have that competitive advantage.”

Anderson says, “It’s not necessarily about future-proofing, because I think that’s impossible, but perhaps future preparing.” I like that – prepare today so you are not behind tomorrow.

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November 27, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Is it Time to Servitize Black Friday?

November 27, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Is it Time to Servitize Black Friday?

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By Tom Paquin

Starting in High School, I worked a cascading series of retail jobs. While the day-to-day operations of sales and service were actually something that I quite enjoyed, I’d always have to to shut off all higher brain function from the end of November through January 3rd. The numbing din of massive crowds, low, low prices, and verbally abusive parents chiseled me down into a fine paste by the time the ball dropped in Times Square. This slog of exhaustion and inescapable noise always kicked off with the darkest of dark days: Black Friday.

While Black Friday is typically honored by charging a $300 laptop to a credit card at 4AM and parking lot fistfights over Tickle-Me Elmo, this year will likely look more like Black Friday’s little sister, Cyber Monday. Perhaps this year is an opportunity to reset people’s expectations about Black Friday, and retail in general. Perhaps now is the time to look beyond brute forcing predatory pricing, towards a more holistic reimagining of what makes compelling retail. Is it time to servitize Black Friday?

This was literally the first topic I wrote about after joining Future of Field Service two years ago, and given my personal background, both as a rank-and-file retail person, and then working for two analyst firms with a large swath of retail customers, it’s definitely something that I feel compelled by. 2020 has exacerbated retail’s challenges by advancing digital adoption and channel disruption, accelerating our natural progression away from traditional retail by five years or so, according to some estimates. This time last year, your mom wouldn’t know an Instacart if it bit her on the face, but now she’s getting two deliveries a week and hasn’t seen the inside of a Tesco since February. Unsurprisingly, this is also something that I wrote about within the context of service. But Black Friday itself is a slightly different animal.

Black Friday has the unique and bizarre dichotomy of offering deals while enticing people to spend exuberant amounts of money. It if frequently and inaccurately referred to as “The busiest shopping day of the year,” which, again, means that the average shopping mall usually smells like the inside of the average High School locker room by 3PM or so. This year, though, a large quantity of those sales have either been stretched over the course of several weeks or will take place in large part online.

For businesses ready for the ecommerce boom, that’s great. For smaller shops that don’t have the infrastructure or tools in place, things are a little more complicated. Since we’ve long since cleared the Black Friday Event Horizon, we’ll have to think about most of this in the hypothetical, but it’s useful to think about this in the longer-term as well. Here are some thoughts:

Making Retail a Service Operation

This in many ways is the Instacart-ization of service. While it’s certainly fun to browse aisles and look for the perfect tchotchke for Auntie Roxanne, as a crowd-averse person, I appreciate the idea of getting access to Black Friday deals with a quick drop-in rather than a lengthy stroll through the store. By creating a buy-ahead system, you get a little bit of crowd control, you get a new spate of emails with which to market to, and you get some new customer loyalty. Some of my local bookshops are doing that, and it’s fantastic. I’d much rather give them my money and go pick up a book than feed it to the website equivalent of Smaug that Amazon has become.

The Service Upsell

The other benefit of a digital storefront, and moving more commerce onto it, is that it makes upsells to service products much easier. I used to work for a company wherein we had a service bundle that we wanted to sell the customer. We also had self-checkout machines. When tabulating the metrics of who sold more service bundles, the self-checkout machines beat the honest-to-goodness humans every week. Why? Because the self-checkout machines asked every customer, and presented a lot more information on the screen than their meaty colleagues behind the counter bothered to. Selling online already requires a certain amount of information be surrendered. Therefore, a service sell is that much easier. They’re already locked in! For that reason, if your looking to servitize your business, your online portal is an ideal way to reach customers.

Thinking About Next Year

Thinking ahead, we now have a more empowered consumer who is much more amenable to doing the bulk of their shopping through digital channels. How do you get them back in the store? For businesses balancing the cost and benefits of a physical presence, the answer should include a service appointment. Do you create a personal shopper-type service appointment that matches clothes to people? Is there a technical support hub that you can build for customers? Is the answer gift wrapping? Is it an experience that allows parents to entertain their kids for a few short minutes during an incredibly stressful day? No matter what—service can be the conduit back into the store.

Listen, here’s the deal—Retail is in a weird spot right now. The demand is there, for businesses looking to capitalize on it Perhaps this fake holiday is an opportunity for us to reset our expectations.

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November 23, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

A List of Gratitude: 7 Things I’m Extra Thankful for This Year

November 23, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

A List of Gratitude: 7 Things I’m Extra Thankful for This Year

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 By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With the Thanksgiving holiday this week, I’ve been spending extra time reflecting on all that I am grateful for. In a year as challenging as 2020, the practice of gratitude has become even more important to me. It’s far too easy to succumb to the tough moments and dark days – putting effort into focusing on the things I’m thankful for helps me to be resilient in the trying times. So, without further ado, I am sharing with you a list of seven things I’m incredibly thankful for this year.

#1: Greater Perspective

I try hard not to take things for granted, but I think inevitably we all do to some degree. This year has given me greater perspective and a more profound appreciation for so much – for example, travel. I haven’t stepped foot in an airport since February and while many people who travel for work may be thankful to have that halted, I miss it in many ways. Meeting a friend for coffee or a beer, without second thought. Being able to take my kids to the Children’s Museum or local amusement park. Concerts. Hell, going grocery shopping without a mask. But while it can be challenging not to become frustrated or angry or sad about what’s been taken from us (which I do, sometimes), I am thankful for the perspective of looking back on so many moments with such joy and knowing that, when they happen again, I will appreciate them more than I ever have before.

#2: Deeper Connections

I love getting to know people and one of the things I’m thankful for this year is how people have been willing to engage on a deeper level. With such a major shared experience as we’re all having this year, it’s been interesting to observe how the “small talk” that often got rushed or dismissed before seems to have taken center stage in many conversations. It’s like we all want to know each other better – on a more human level – and I am loving it. I am so incredibly thankful for all of the interesting, enlightening, amazing conversations that I’ve had with service leaders this year – discussing how they’re leading through such crazy times, but more so just getting to know them for who they are.

#3: Being of Service

With in-person industry events on hold and challenges abound this year, I’ve felt that a platform like Future of Field Service is even more valuable than before in terms of keeping people connected and creating as sense of community. I’ve tried in my conversations to be a force of positivity for those I’m speaking with – whether it is offering useful information, or just lending an ear when it is most needed. I’ve tried to help folks in my network whose careers were impacted by COVID. I’ve brainstormed and worked hard to try to think of more impactful ways to serve this community, now, when we need it most. I am grateful to be of service in any way I can, small or large. And I’m grateful to IFS for the opportunity to do so through Future of Field Service.

#4: Technology

Shout out to today’s technologies for making this all possible, am I right? This is an area that, again, we can take for granted – but when you think about how COVID would have impacted us even more deeply without all of the tools we have access to today, you realize just how big of a deal it is. From fueling the ability to stay connected to friends and family that I can’t see in person right now to ensuring I haven’t missed a beat in my career, the virtual world we have created is quite impressive. Don’t get me wrong – I will jump at the first chance to have a conversation in-person over coffee versus on Zoom, but I am incredibly thankful to have the option.

#5: My Family

Can I tell you how absolutely insane it is to work from home with four and five-year-old boys? There are no words (and those of you that know, know). Yes, I have help – but there’s no replacement for mama. As crazy as it has been, and as close as I’ve been to losing my mind, it has also been sweet. I realize that all too soon, these boys will be off to school and no longer my “babies” and so I’m grateful for every extra lunch break I can squeeze in with them. In a year of isolation, it is really comforting to realize how much happiness and joy exists inside your own little bubble (plenty of screaming, fighting, whining and crying too – but, hey, this is a list of gratitude!).

#6: My (and my family’s) Health

My five-year-old son has Type 1 Diabetes which has given us some practice coping with scary health situations – but also put me extra on-edge when COVID began wondering how much more at risk he is due to his condition. I had COVID in October and overall, my symptoms were mild and thankfully my husband and sons were spared. While I do worry about the indications of potential long-term impacts, I’m very thankful that thus far my experience has been manageable. I feel immense gratitude to the healthcare workers on the front lines caring for those in dire need.

#7: Hope

I’m a skeptic with a healthy dose of anxiety mixed in, so hope doesn’t always naturally rise to the forefront of my mind. For me it is more of a muscle that needs strengthened and flexed and I’ve found this year has given me ample opportunity to do just that. On the days I feel most disheartened, I dig deep to find hope. It can be in the form of a prayer, a few deep breaths, looking around for examples of how people are coming together despite being apart, or the commitment to exert more mental energy on the positive “what-ifs” than the negative ones. I’ve learned I often find what I’m looking for, so I try to look for hope.

Thank you all for reading – I am grateful for each and every one of you as well. What are you most thankful for this year? I’d love to hear.

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November 20, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Considerations for Service Surge Times

November 20, 2020 | 3 Mins Read

Key Considerations for Service Surge Times

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By Tom Paquin

Every year I go outside and stare at my gutters. As a person with an exceptional fear of heights, the thought of maneuvering on my ladder to remove the accumulated gunk and misery deposited there by the two gigantic oak trees in my yard drive me to near heart attack. So I call my gutter guy and ask him to come out. My gutter guy then puts my name on a massive list and shows up somewhere in the ballpark of three to six weeks later.

I like my gutter guy because he’s the guy who installed my gutters, but I don’t like my gutter guy because the gutter guy knows that peak gutter cleaning season starts in mid-October and runs through late December, but he can’t seem to bring on additional gutter guys and gals to help manage the process.

Perhaps it’s because my gutter guy understands that a set of new gutters costs a full one hundred times what he charges for a gutter cleaning. My gutter guy looks at that, and asserts that his time is better spent installing gutters than cleaning them. Yet the cleaning service is not some sort of mandatory component of gutter service.

The leaves falling and embedding themselves like concrete in my gutters are not a yearly surprise, though, and I understand that for mom and pop shops, scaling up and down at any time of the year will be an unreasonable ask, but even if seasonality is not a consideration for the average gutter guy, there are some lessons on understanding the ebb and flow of service surge times that are worth discussion.

The most obvious, alluded to earlier in this piece, is the headcount challenges this presents. And again—I’ll couch this by saying this is not a tool of a small, local business—but smart optimization systems are specifically designed to allow organizations to plan for this. Demand is at X, headcount should be at Y, expected demand with ramp up by Z on a specific date, so we need to start brining in temps or contingents here.

Best-in-class optimization systems take it a step further. With multi-time horizon planning, businesses are able to automate surges well beyond a single day, week, or moth period. If you know that business tends to drop off around a certain date, you can automate the approval of more vacation time around that date, for instance. And you’ll know to allocate more payroll when business gets busier. The best of the best among these systems can take historical data and automate the output of these triggers through AI.

Though the seasons tend to be fairly predictable, we now know the volatility and unpredictability of external factors on our business, and the truth is that the best optimization systems not only can pivot in real-time, but offer the ability to simulate “what if?” scenarios in order to plan out the resource impacts and needs on particular hypotheticals. These are all initial planning steps that businesses can make, and they each offer the ability to more smartly serve customers. This saves firms money and time, and hey, if you can deliver faster gutter cleaning, I can tell you from experience that it improves customer happiness.

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Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World: How Much Service Should Be Remote Service?

November 16, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World: How Much Service Should Be Remote Service?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

For many businesses, COVID-19 has proven to be the force in making remote service roadmaps a quick reality. We have featured a variety of companies that have shared stories with us about how acting quickly on Remote Assistance technologies was key in navigating the pandemic, including Munters, Alfa Laval, and Panasonic. With such an acceleration in the use of technologies that enable remote service delivery, combined with increased acceptance from customers due to current circumstances, it is interesting to think about what this period of business continuity through remote service will mean when a return to former service delivery methods does become widely possible and safe.

Of course, the answer will vary from industry to industry and company to company. Based on the conversations I’ve had; I know remote service is here to stay – but I also believe in-person service is a critical element of service strategy. On a recent podcast, I discussed this topic with Michael Blumberg, President and CEO of Blumberg Advisory Group. “I think every organization has to have a touchless service strategy,” he shared. “I think touchless service will become table stakes for all service organizations. Just like you can’t think of a field service organization that doesn’t have a mobility solution.”

Marrying Remote and Field Service

If remote service will become table stakes, does that mean the need for field service decreases? Well, yes and no. The burden of non-value add tasks on field service decreases – travel can be minimized, and issues that can be easily resolved remotely should be. This frees technicians up to spend time creating value – handling detailed repairs, working with frustrated customers, acting as a trusted advisor, even training new technicians. This change provides a valuable opportunity for you to more intentionally leverage your resources in a way that moves you toward your service goals.

So how do you create the best strategy for service delivery that combines remote and in-person capabilities? “I think the strategy may differ a little bit by industry, but some of the things you should consider is what is the complexity of the equipment being supported? What’s the level of mission criticality of that equipment? What are the safety issues?” suggests Blumberg. “You also have to consider the skill set of your customer, because remember when we talk about touchless service, we’re talking about supporting the customer.”

I agree with these criteria for consideration, but I think there’s also this softer element of when does an in-person visit add value in the sense of just needing to have human connection. We know how true it is that field service is the face of the brand, and I don’t believe all of that experience is replicable in an all-remote world. So maybe that’s something where it’s more of a frustration or an escalation or maybe it’s an initial install where that person is a part of the brand experience. But that softer element is important to consider, too. I believe a remote-first service approach makes sense as a really good frontline and first wave of service delivery. It’ll be powerful in terms of triaging and resolving simpler issues, so that the field technician’s role can evolve into being more of a customer service type role - a trusted advisor - than just a break-fix type role.

From Business Continuity to Business Transformation: Creating Your Hybrid Service Strategy

Having remote service capabilities is powerful in that it puts you in a position of power in terms of what you’re capable of and how you want to be strategic in making the decision of how and when you opt to provide service in a touchless way or in an on-site way. Perhaps remote service has become your only method of service delivery during COVID-19, but when that changes you will be able to move from business continuity to business transformation. As I mentioned at the beginning, the companies I’ve interviewed this year all had Remote Assistance on their roadmaps; they simply sped things up as a means for business continuity. But post-pandemic, those remote service capabilities will be leveraged to further Servitization objectives and create new revenue streams.

In considering this transition, Blumberg offers some advice. “They really need to gain clarity about the value in the use of the tool. They really need to be able to clearly articulate to the customer what it will do. What value will they get out of it? Will it save time? Will it improve productivity? Will it increase uptime? They’ve got to be able to talk about it in those terms, because without those terms, there’s no value,” he says.

Make sure that as you think through how to create new service offerings, you do so with customer pain points in mind. “Companies often have a production orientation versus a market orientation or customer orientation. Companies that don’t do a good job at monetizing their service or selling offerings is they’re talking to the customer in terms of what works for them – ‘look what this has done for us’,” says Blumberg. “That’s a production orientation. The market orientation is, “Look at what this can do for you. Companies also use too many buzzwords. In the research that I’ve done recently on touchless service, I find the companies that are really getting their customers to embrace it have branded it themselves. They’re not saying, it’s an AR solution from XYZ company; they’ve given it their own brand name. I think that makes a difference.”

We know that service holds immense potential for businesses, and that goes for both remote service and in-person service. Adding Remote Assistance capabilities to your repertoire varies the opportunities you have to differentiate your brand and solve your customers pain points; you just have to think through the right tool to use in each scenario.

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November 13, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Politics and Potential of Changing Service Software Providers

November 13, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

Back to Basics: The Politics and Potential of Changing Service Software Providers

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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 we spoke, we were discussing what happens when a brand new piece of service software gets slotted into an organization’s workflow, either replacing a few small pieces of software, or nothing at all. While that particular scenario is a rare one for large organizations to find themselves in, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. This time, we’re going to approach the much more common scenario of switching from one service management software provider to another.

So why make the switch? One might assume—wrongly—that you make a trade when you’ve been scorned in some meaningful way by your software partner. If things are honkey-dory then why change your systems and processes? Of course, you make a trade in software for the same reason you make a trade in baseball: Because you need a mixture of elements that support your business. Let’s unpack some of what might cause that to happen.

You grew out of your software
There are an inordinate number of dollar-store service management software providers out there. More today than last year at this time, as more companies realize the incredible growth potential of service. This has led to a cottage industry of limited-function home and commercial service platforms. Any one of these may be perfectly fine as digital schedulers, or very basic invoicing tools. Why would I ever need anything more?

I also don’t want to imply that outgrowing software doesn’t happen with top-tier service management software, either. At that level, what most businesses find is that they start to conform their service delivery around the limitations of their software, rather than how they want to deliver service. For instance, if your scheduling tool is dumping out useless schedules that need to manually cleaned, you are likely at a point where you’ve outstripped your service platform.

Forced upgrades to inferior products

Allow me to editorialize for a moment. The current service landscape is littered with mergers and acquisitions. There are ways to do this effectively, then there’s the common scenario where a non-service brand acquires a service platform, stripmines it, and forces its users to upgrade to a half-cooked frankenplatform that they’ve created with some of the old company’s capabilities shoved into a home-grown utility.

Service companies are then faced with a choice: Embrace a new frankenplatform, or test their fortunes elsewhere. Either way, we’re dealing with a brand new implementation, which takes away some of the incumbency bias that companies naturally feel when evaluating new software. Unsurprisingly, when companies are presented with this option, a great many of them discover that a more viable solution exists elsewhere.

Implementation problems

This is a little bit more of an abstraction, but as I have often said, your field service management platform needs to be the Grand Central Station through which your company’s aftermarket activities are executed, logged, followed up upon, and preempted. So when a new piece, usually an emerging technology, does not play reasonably well with your service platform, then it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

Does this mean that you immediately start shopping around the moment a single bauble doesn’t work with your FSM solution? Probably not, but if, let’s say your IoT system, doesn’t integrate with your solution, then that is certainly a failing of one or both system (moreover it’s a failing of your team for not identifying that at the RFP phase). As noted earlier, your software and technology needs to work for you, conforming to the way you deliver service. If that software has failed you, it’s time to look elsewhere.

Obviously there are other reasons why people choose to switch service providers, but these are a few that we see all the time. If you happen to have an interesting story about what compelling your service software change, please reach out! We would love to hear from you.

Once the decision to employ new software has been made, there are naturally a multitude of stakes, elements, and decisions that need to be made. Many of these, in one fashion or another, can be seen in previous entries in this series. Before the choice is made, though, we need to start by evaluating the unique set of challenges that businesses find themselves in when switching from one service provider to another.

How do you unplug one system and prepare your business to onboard another? Let’s look at it through three different lenses:

The software

The main consideration here is integration. Do all of your legacy systems that are not being replaced work with the current software? If not, what is the best means to proceed? How easily or directly can historical documentation, parts and employee lists, and contracts, be ported from one system to another? The best way to absolve your firm of the crushing weight of these tasks is to employ an integration partner alongside your software partner. You’ll be working with seasoned professionals who have gone through this process before many times, and can help guide you through the crossover. With the appropriate guidance in place, getting this part right is not guaranteed to be frictionless, but will at least offer a more robust system of validation.

The employees

Employee buy-in is the key to any service strategy. We’ve all been in a position where a dramatic change in the way we do business disrupts life, and sometimes adaptation to the new status quo is not something that comes naturally. This is why it’s important to engage player-coaches early in the process. You’ll need advocates to make sure that technicians are actually pressing the service buttons—especially if their new service software will automate more than it did previously (which it should). By using in-role advocates and making implementation a big deal for the company, you’ll position yourself to hit the ROI that you expect to receive from a new service platform.

The customers

This one is a bit more squishy. Does your customer care about your shiny new service platform? The answer is a resounding and unequivocal no—BUT—your customer will care if your service platform now offers new ways to go to market. If you’re now tracking more elements of your business in your service solution, then you can offer solutions around that trackability. This is the core of outcomes-based service—build your contracts around uptime and output, not break-fix. Offering customer value like that means a lot to the average customer, who prefers guarantees to warrantees. Taking this seriously can extend the ROI of a new service platform out of the obvious, and help you build business and customer loyalty. A true win-win.

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November 9, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The 3 Essential Service Leadership Skills of 2020

November 9, 2020 | 5 Mins Read

The 3 Essential Service Leadership Skills of 2020

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 By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Regardless of your age or geography or role or industry, 2020 has challenged and stretched you. For service leaders, this year has put an extra burden on an already tall task of spearheading immense change. In the same way companies that have reacted nimbly to how the pandemic has changed the needs of their customers; service leaders have had to tap into different skills to meet the needs of their teams in this new world.

In my conversations with service leaders over the last nine months, many have shared poignant stories of how this year’s experiences have impacted them as people – and also how they’ve had to rise above their personal impact to show up for their teams, their customers, and their companies. There are three skills that seem to have been particularly critical to hone this year:

Vulnerability. This may be the lease familiar or comfortable for some of the service leaders I’ve talked with, but it is also arguably the most important. This year has been hard, and we all need a little more empathy and camaraderie. In order for your teams to feel comfortable being honest about what they’re struggling with, or sharing their feelings, or expressing their needs, they need to have a safe space to be vulnerable. We published a podcast last week with Linda Tucci, Global Sr. Director of the Technical Solutions Center at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, which I highly suggest you listen to if you haven’t. In the episode, Linda says: “People are suffering. 2020 is throwing the kitchen sink at us, between the lockdowns, job loss, wildfires, hurricanes, stress, polarization. I would say that we have to ask ourselves, how do we manage, how do we lead in these times? If we want to be experienced as leaders, we have to demonstrate both empathy and compassion. People connect with people. And being vulnerable is not a weakness; it’s an act of courage. There’s evidence that leaders who are prepared to show their vulnerability more easily gain the trust of others and are believed to be more effective leaders, and I believe in that statement. Brené Brown says, endearing greatly, that, ‘Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of human experience.’ And I believe in that.”

Linda’s sentiment is one that is shared by many service leaders I speak with. They all discuss how they’ve become more personal with their team, more open in discussing feelings, and more connected on a human level. And, overwhelmingly, while they all wish circumstances were different, they feel increased vulnerability and connection is a very positive change. It’s important for leaders to normalize language about mental health in the workplace and being vulnerable yourself gives your team the permission they might need to do the same.

Flexibility. Chances are the way you work this year is different. Service delivery is different, business decisions are different. Customer needs are different – and employee needs are different, too. As leaders, we can’t hold to expectations, practices, or routines that worked in a post-COVID world simply because “that’s how it’s done.” We need to be willing to reexamine not only how we work to serve our customers in new and different ways, but how this year may change the way our employees work as well. We have employees now working from home that are juggling family and household responsibilities in ways that are just unprecedented.

In a podcast featuring Reihaneh Irani-Famili, VP of Business Readiness, National Grid, we discussed the need to evolve to a value-based mentality when we think of assessing productivity. “You need to replace the 8:00 to 5:00 mentality by a deliverable based mentality and a value-based mentality. And it’s both for the leaders in the companies as well as for those employees. Because as an employee, if before my success was I spent eight hours in the office, now that needs to be replaced by this is the value that I have created in the hours that I was working or being productive,” she says. “The more clarity you can give on the outcomes and the value that you’re trying to drive and less about how they would get to that, it helps people be more productive, more engaged, and it would really make sure that your productivity doesn’t get impacted by this sudden move to a virtual environment.”

The consideration around flexibility becomes even more critical when you think about how you support the women in your workforce. In this article from McKinsey & Company, they state: “Due to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis, as many as two million women are considering leaving the workforce (defined as taking a leave of absence or leaving the workforce altogether). If these women feel forced to leave the workplace, we’ll end up with far fewer women in leadership—and far fewer women on track to be future leaders.”

Fortitude. We can likely all identify with times this year where we’ve just felt like throwing in the towel. When you’re facing your own challenges, it can be daunting to show up – let alone show up and try to be positive for your team. But service leaders have. They’ve show up when they don’t feel like it. They’ve dug deep to be positive when it’s easier to give in to negativity. They’ve worked tirelessly to rally their team. They’ve had to continue showing up through hard decisions, layoffs, and reductions in workforce. Leaders too have to balance the stressors of work with the demands of home. None of this is easy, but service leaders have shown immense fortitude this year. To do this, you need to determine how to recharge. You have to figure out how to put your oxygen mask on before you focus on helping others. Fortitude is admirable, but without an element of self-care it will result in burnout.

I want you to know how much I respect each of you and honor what it’s taken to lead in a year like this. I’ve felt so genuinely fortunate to get to have conversations with so many service leaders this year – to hear their stories firsthand and to witness the greatness that is in all of us come to life in such challenging times. I’ve hoped to be a sunny spot in some of your cloudy days, and I hope you know you’ve been the same for me. None of us know what 2021 will hold, but I do believe wholeheartedly that this year has made all of us stronger, closer, and more acutely aware of what really matters.

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November 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

A Modest Proposal for Movie Theaters

November 6, 2020 | 4 Mins Read

A Modest Proposal for Movie Theaters

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By Tom Paquin

As we are now only a few months away from a full year of living with COVID-19, it is safe to say that governments and businesses are starting to learn the nuanced strategies needed to open safely and make smart decisions to keep people and employees safe. Of course, these strategies and remedies are not distributed evenly across industries. Restaurants have struggled to offset losses, and many have permanently closed. Many other industries, including a great many in the service sector, have needed to think creatively in order to stay afloat.

One industry for which I care about very dearly—Movie Theaters—have been dramatically impacted by lowered attendance and closures. With no new releases and restrictions on guests, many theaters sit empty.

I’ve wracked my brain on how these organizations may be able to reinvent themselves for these times. There are a great variety of creative and innovative ideas, but this being a service-focused website, let’s consider the place that service may sit in the future of these endeavors.

I’ll start this by saying I love going to the movies. I find the dark quiet of a theater therapeutic. I love that, in a world of increasing distraction, we are all forced to pay attention to a single thing for an hour—a shared experience with a room full of strangers. I even love the smell of stale popcorn. Not being able to experience that over the last nine months has been a disappointment. So much so that over the summer I got myself a nice little projector and built a screen in my backyard. Watching Toy Story with friends and family safely social distancing was such a joy. It was a taste of normalcy.

Not everyone is as big of a sentimental baby as I am, of course, and theater profits have been declining now for decades. Theaters need to rethink their strategies, and I believe this starts with memberships. Some of the bigger chains are starting to see the importance of this, which is a key first step. Most theater profits come from concessions, so getting people through the door is ultimately the main goal.

I’d argue, though, that for this to be successful, movie theaters need to start thinking about channel distribution more holistically. Perhaps $15 a month gets you unlimited access to visit the theater, but $40 a month—the price for a family of three to go see a first-run film—gets you streaming rights to first-run movies at home. For many people who don’t enjoy sticky floors or remain concerned about the threat of the virus, that would be a way to offer products to an interested audience. There would naturally have to be exceptions for blockbuster films, and certain studios will object to showing their movies that way, but by diversifying and servitizing some of these offerings a lot more than they have already, there’s huge growth potential.

Another consideration that organizations like the Alamo Draft House have started to play with are full theater rentals. This has been useful for their businesses while their real estate has sat mostly unused over the last few months, but the space itself is just the beginning. Forward-thinking organizations should consider how to build service packages around these things, for their space. Sure—business meetings and birthday parties are a great start, but there are other packages that theaters could offer. I think about one of my favorite theaters—The AMC Loews in downtown Boston—which has sweeping views of Boston Common and beautiful art deco designs. The space, frankly, is primed for a cocktail party, even for a wedding. Creative thinking is the key here. Obviously there are resource considerations—Catering, liquor serving, and so on—but with the right combination of partnerships and technology, there’s a huge amount of potential.

One last idea, which goes back to my DIY backyard movie screen. If theaters created similar packages, and made them available to customers for pickup or guided setup through field operations, I think there’d be quite the market for it, especially for things like Birthday Parties. Imagine combining the screen and the film with branded decorations and concessions. Obviously we’ve been talking a lot about service, and this is explicitly field service, but it’s a simple idea to diversify revenue screens that I do feel has appeal—especially today. Most people don’t need a permanent backyard movie theater, but for special occasions, it can be a very fun diversion, especially if you can pay to have someone set it up and break it down for you.

I am certain more creative people than I are coming up with additional plans to save the film distribution industry, and I look forward to seeing their ideas come to fruition. Innovation in cinema is an existential need today, and getting it right has the potential to help struggling businesses not just survive, but to expand their business beyond its current bounds.

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