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September 18, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

Will Generative AI Increase Big Brother Concerns Among Field Service Organizations?

September 18, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

Will Generative AI Increase Big Brother Concerns Among Field Service Organizations?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, the Future of Field Service

There has been a lot of news generated around artificial intelligence (AI) over the past year, and back in March, I wrote about short-term and long-term ways that AI can benefit field service. Over the summer, I also talked to Alfonso de la Nuez, who is very bullish on how AI can improve digital customer interactions.

Field service tools are already beginning to incorporate generative AI into their workflows. The idea is that these AI algorithms can help better route customer service requests to specific technicians based on their skills or experience with a particular customer. This provides new functions that can help save time for technicians and improve service for customers, while also automating more the dispatch function so that the dispatchers can focus more on addressing emergencies or other value-added tasks.

However, these tools also provide much more granular visibility into employee activities, which for some, may raise concerns about increasing levels of employee surveillance. A few years ago, Google got into trouble because a calendar tool extension was seen as a way to monitor employee meetings and possible crack down on unionization efforts, and there has been consistent pushback in some industries around how AI can enable employee surveillance. In field service, particularly with a lot of younger technicians entering the workforce, concerns about “Big Brother”-style employee monitoring going to be a problem?

Visibility Vs. Micromanagement

There is a fine line between increasing visibility and insight using technology and enabling an invasive level of surveillance or micromanagement. For a lot of desk workers, this usually involves software that keeps track of their productivity and Internet usage. In some industries, companies use software to record and evaluate customer calls and other interactions.

There have been some studies that indicate heavy employee surveillance actually encourages rule-breaking or can be detrimental to productivity. This has gotten a lot more attention since the COVID pandemic created an influx of employees working from home. Gartner says the number of large employers using these types of tools has doubled since 2020 to 60% of firms and will probably rise to more than 70% in the next few years.

And various surveys show that, as you might expect, a lot of employees do not like that. This is especially true since, in some instances, worker surveillance is discriminatorily targeted more frequently at women, minorities, and workers in low-skill jobs. According to a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, both non-unionized women and black workers are 52% more likely to face workplace surveillance, and young people in low-skilled jobs are 49% more likely to be monitored.

Field service is a lot different than the work-from-home desk jobs usually profiled in articles about workplace monitoring, and I suspect that young workers are probably less worried about it than their older coworkers because they have grown up in a culture of online data sharing. According to one study, just 22% of employees aged 18-34 were concerned about employers having access to personal information and activity on their work computers.

In field service specifically, workers are already used to a high-level of visibility. Routing and scheduling systems live and die on accurate data about location, job completion, and other data points. Field service organizations regularly evaluate data around drive times, time to completion, and other information, most of it related to SLA compliance, safety, and reimbursement. 

What can sink a technology deployment that involves this type of visibility, though, is a lack of communication. Most technicians don’t mind this type of data collection, provided they know why it's being deployed, and how it can help them do a better job. 

According to a study that appeared in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication this year: “Attitudes toward workplace surveillance grow more negative when there isn’t a clear rationale for collecting this more sensitive data, and workers may see this as an abuse of power ... Therefore, it becomes essential for employers to clearly communicate both the purpose for collecting data, how they will use that data, and constraints on future data use.”

If you have any thoughts on AI in field service, or how increased visibility is accepted by the technicians in the field, feel free to drop me a note about your experiences.

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September 11, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

What the History of the Barcode Reminds Us About Introducing New Technology

September 11, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

What the History of the Barcode Reminds Us About Introducing New Technology

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

When we talk about technology here at Future of Field Service, we are usually looking forward. But a new book about old technology – The Barcode, by former IBM engineer Paul V. McEnroe – got me thinking about some important lessons from the past. 

Primarily, the fact that you never know exactly what kind of response you are going to get when you deploy a new technology, even one that seems to have some pretty obvious benefits.

McEnroe was one of the engineers who developed the UPC retail barcode – the one we still use today at most checkout counters. Other types of barcodes existed in the early late 1960s and early 1970s when McEnroe and his team began their work, but the UPC was specifically created to help retailers improve efficiency at the checkout counter and for inventory. The retail industry worked closely with IBM and cash register manufacturers to create a laser scanner/register combo that could communicate with a server in the back of the store using the available networking technology of the day.

After years of development and several live tests, the team was ready for a full-scale launch at a Giants supermarket in Virginia in 1974. McEnroe waited to hear word from his technician on site to find out how the launch had gone, but when the phone rang his colleague told him that the store couldn’t open.

Anyone who has been involved on a big technology installation knows that things can go wrong. But in this case, the problem wasn't technical. The store couldn't open because there were demonstrators picketing the store and telling customers not to enter – because the prices were no longer marked on grocery items.

What happened with the UPC rollout was a common mistake – the engineers had not done a good enough job of letting actual users know why they were deploying the technology, and how it would help them. In fact, not only did retailers get pushback from customers, but retail unions also objected to the new barcodes because they feared more automation would eliminate jobs. There were safety concerns about the lasers in the scanners, as well.

Within the first year of the roll out, popular talk show host Phil Donahue had railed against barcodes on TV, and there were eventually Congressional hearings about customer concerns.

McEnroe and the team at IBM, as well as retailers, had to go on the defensive and educate employees and consumers that the lack of price marks was actually a good thing. For the checkers, they could do their jobs faster. Customers also now had an itemized receipt that not only showed them what they paid, but exactly what each item had cost. There were tests conducted to prove the lasers were safe. 

Eventually, UPC codes made their way onto more goods, but the technology was not ubiquitous in retail until the late 1990s. One major retailer, Hobby Lobby, still doesn't use UPC codes at the register.

There are few lessons here for any big technology or digital transformation project:

  • Involve all the relevant stakeholders at the beginning of the project. The IBM team felt a bit sandbagged by the consumer backlash, because up until that point they had primarily been talking to retailers, packagers, and manufacturers about how to make the scanning system work. If they had involved customers and retail employees from the start, they would have been able to address those concerns earlier.
  • Communicate the why of the project. I have heard this from lots of guests on our podcast. Team members and customers want to know why you are deploying new technology, not just how it works. The UPC was meant to improve efficiency at the store, make life easier for staff, and improve service for customers. The developers should have been beating that drum from the start.
  • Be prepared to answer hard questions. Concerns about labor cuts were not entirely unfounded, and in the 1970s there was a lot of talk about replacing employees with what at the time seemed like sci-fi style machinery. Even if the IBM team could not anticipate that issue, the retailers involved should have seen it coming and had answers ready. 

Like a lot of new technologies, the UPC had ramifications beyond its original application. Barcoding revolutionized inventory management, and with the introduction of other types of barcodes, those benefits eventually spread throughout the supply chain. Barcodes play a key role in product recall efforts. Customers can scan barcodes with their phones in the store or at home to compare pricing or look up product information. 

The technology solutions that organizations are deploying in the field service space present those same types of opportunities – provided that companies communicate the benefits and address concerns for employees and customers alike.

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September 5, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Three Keys to Better Workforce Development and Retention

September 5, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Three Keys to Better Workforce Development and Retention

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

At this year’s Future of Field Service Live Tour stop in Minneapolis, I had a chance to feature the wisdom of Gyner Ozgul, President and COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions, which specializes in commercial food service equipment repair.

Smart Care has been in a high-growth mode, acquiring other companies in the market and, in the process, tripling its business over five years. In our interview, Gyner talked a lot about some of the strategies that the company has employed to help manage that growth while maintaining high service levels for customers. That has included things like investing in a modern, sophisticated foundational service management solution, adopting the best practices of some of the companies they have acquired (rather than imposing their own processes in every case), and leveraging repair data to drive predictive maintenance efforts.

He also had a lot of interesting things to say about workforce development that I thought were worth repeating. Technicians make up the biggest part of the Smart Care workforce (two-thirds) and play a key role in maintaining customer relationships. Gyner says the company has taken some really beneficial approaches to training, employee development, and compensation that have helped improve technician retention and customer satisfaction.

Training: As the economy emerged from the COVID pandemic, Gyner says that Smart Care experienced growth that, if you put it on a chart, looked like a hockey stick – a huge increase after a relatively flat period. That meant they needed to hire a lot of new technicians to keep up, and managers were rushing to get those new technicians into the field. As it turned out, that was self-defeating.

“We had a lot of turnover on year-one technicians,” Gyner said. “They were leaving because our onboarding and training experience, frankly, wasn't very good, because it consisted of some qualitative view of some local manager or dispatcher saying this person is ready to go and run service calls.”

To fix this problem, the company adopted a system that relies on experienced technicians that serve as district field trainers. New hires are only released for active duty, so to speak, once that trainer says they are ready, even if managers are chomping at the bit to get them into a truck.

This not only provides buy-in among the other technicians (who are more confident in the abilities of new employees), but also gives the trainers the opportunity to recommend that those new hires work on specific types of equipment. The dispatch tool the company uses can restrict job assignments just to the skills those technicians have.

As a result, Gyner says the company has improved its retention rates on year-one technicians by a whopping 50% this year. 

Compensation: Gyner’s views on pay are pretty straightforward – pay the technicians what they deserve to be paid and set expectations for them to enable their success.

“We all have this trepidation [about paying] people what they deserve to be paid,” he said. “I am not one for the carrot [approach] – I will give you $1,000 and I'll give you another $1,000 if you do something right. I'm more like, just give them the $2,000 and help them be successful. If they're not the right person, then they're probably not the right person at $1,000 or $2,000. I say, compensate them well because it's hard to overcome culture if the compensation is not right to begin with, because that person feels they're undervalued immediately.”

Workforce Development: Gyner said it was important to recognize that there are employees in the field that want to work their way up to higher positions, and others that are happy staying put. 

For technicians that want to remain in their current positions, it's important to provide training to help them hone their skills and allow them to feel energized in their jobs.

For those that do want to advance, there are tracks available to help them become district field trainers, managers, or even sales representatives. 

“We've been very clear to map out each one of those for our technicians, so they feel that this is an organization that no matter what path they take, they can feel supported and be successful,” he said.

But Gyner also pointed out that managers have to recognize which employees fall into which categories and identify team members that might have more to contribute (even if they may not recognize it themselves). Gyner calls these people his bright stars.

“I proactively like to reach out to them and just talk to them. Sometimes not about anything specific, just what's their experience like, what are we doing in the organization I should know about.”

Sometimes those conversations can lead to ideas for new product improvements or processes. “Then I take them, and I'll put them in a little bit of a discovery special project and empower them to go do that,” he said. “They may be or may not be in that work stream function, and that's less relevant to me. I just want to give them an opportunity to go do something and shine.”

You can listen to our full conversation here.

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August 28, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

Is Your Field Service Technology Ready for Stormy Weather?

August 28, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

Is Your Field Service Technology Ready for Stormy Weather?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

This has been a weird, volatile, and often frightening year for extreme weather – from massive floods in the northeast, wildfires in Canada, the western U.S. and Hawaii, to record-setting heat waves across the country. In late July, people were dying from extreme heat in Arizona, but skiing in California.

There was recently an article in the New York Times about the challenges that extreme heat poses for air conditioning repair companies, with a particular focus on José Guerrero, based in Phoenix, who has certainly been busy this summer. Guerrero runs a small company (most of the employees are his family) and has not only struggled to keep up with demand, but also finds himself working in attics where temperatures have exceeded 150 degrees. There are days and times when they simply cannot work, risking fainting or far worse.

With weather extremes increasing throughout almost every season, field service companies need to have technology that can help them take weather, alongside other considerations, into account for planning and scheduling optimization.

Extreme weather events are not just driving up the number of calls fielded by HVAC repair teams and utility companies; they are also making it difficult for technicians to get to job sites. In Vermont, flooding washed away massive chunks of major roadways. In the west, wildfires can make certain areas inaccessible. While weather forecasting has made predicting certain conditions – like big snowstorms or heavy rain – more foreseeable, conditions during and after these events can increase service demand while making customers much more difficult to reach.

These conditions can not only thwart routing and scheduling, but potentially put employees at risk. Planning and scheduling solutions must be nimble enough to reroute work, even when conditions on the ground (or the ground itself) are constantly changing.

There are a few ways weather can have a big impact on service delivery:

Demand: This is the obvious one. If there is a heat dome like the one that spread across the American west and south this summer, demand is going to go up for HVAC repair and electrical utility service calls; the same is true for frigid temperatures in the winter. Planning solutions must be able to rapidly ramp up to accommodate more volume, and companies have to be able to muster more technicians on fairly short notice.

Routing: This one is trickier. For really bad weather events (like that flooding in Vermont, or big wildfire) technicians that work for utilities may be dispatched right alongside first responders into the heart of a developing natural disaster. Your route may be blocked by traffic or an impassable road. Technicians should be able to communicate that information back to dispatch and have it incorporated into the routing technology, and then communicate with customers (and possibly emergency personnel) if there are delays. That requires agile mobile technology, and an intelligent routing solution. 

Safety: This one is easy to overlook in an emergency, but it is important. Just because you can route a technician safely to a customer location, does not mean they should be working on an asphalt roof in 120-degree heat, or remain in the path of a fire or floodwaters. Technicians need plans and processes in place for hydration and frequent breaks, the right clothing for the job, and weather and safety gear. They also need to know that if they do not feel safe, they can communicate that to their customers and supervisors without worrying about recriminations. 

Safety issues can go farther than that. On the Gulf Coast, a lot of companies keep provisions on hand in case workers are stranded during hurricane season (food, blankets, beds, life vests, you name it). For field service organizations that operate in the path of severe seasonal weather, that type of safety planning may become even more important as the weather gets wilder.

Planning and scheduling optimization tools use a lot of parameters to route technicians — experience, client requirements, drive times, traffic. Weather can be harder to predict, but as we experience more severe and dangerous conditions, field service companies and their software providers will need to do an even better job of incorporating weather information to make sure technicians can reach customers quickly and safely.

Have you had experience routing technicians during extreme weather events? I would love to hear what strategies and tools you used. 

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Selling Field Service to a New Generation

August 21, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Selling Field Service to a New Generation

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

It appears we have passed through what economists were calling The Great Resignation and the job market upheaval that occurred during the pandemic. But labor markets are still tight and the field service sector was already struggling with staffing issues before COVID. We talk often about the fact that recruiting and retention remain a big challenge and how accommodating the decidedly different expectations of younger workers can sometimes flummox entrenched field service companies.

But not all of them. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Anthony Billups, North America Vice President of Sales and Market Development at air conditioning pioneer Comfort Systems USA. And although he works in an industry with a very long history, Anthony has some pretty forward-looking ideas when it comes to attracting and managing younger and more diverse technicians.

We talked a lot about outdated thinking, and one area he highlighted was the way the industry talks about field service jobs. In the past, most companies talked about technician jobs exclusively in the context of technical skills required and the type of work done, but that has led to a bit of a branding problem. It's actually a bit challenging to describe field service work in a way that makes it both understandable and interesting to young people who may not know anything about it. 

Consider other types of work that students or new graduates easily grasp – teacher, doctor, police officer, musician, truck driver. When people talk about those jobs, they don't just talk about specific tasks or skills. They talk about the work in its entirety. Police officers protect the public and help people. Doctors heal people. 

“It's important as a leader to go back into your community and to talk about what it is that you do, right? Talk about … your day in the life, talk about the things that made you excited about the role,” Anthony said.

There are a lot of aspects of field service careers that many may find appealing that we don’t highlight enough. That could be talking about travel. It could be talking about the types of facilities you have access to and the people you meet, and what you can gain by working in the industry. It could be how the work you do enables a hospital to run or a pilot to fly, or any number of other very critical, often cool roles that seem to stay invisible. 

In the case of air conditioning, Anthony emphasized that it's an industry that has been around for 100 years and is only becoming more important (and resilient) as people look for new ways to cool buildings. This means there is job security there, along with opportunity and healthy compensation – characteristics that deserve recognition. 

The Value of Storytelling

The field service sector must do a better job of selling itself to potential employees and perhaps that starts with telling better stories about exactly what the market has to offer its employees. Anthony pointed out that in his job, he has worked with everyone from big tech companies in Silicon Valley to major sports facilities. Not everyone can score a nice job at Apple or play professional sports, but service technicians get a backstage pass of sorts to all of these facilities. 

“So, what are some of the jobs that are cool? What do people want now? It's easier to get in through the mechanical room than it is through the front door, and I think that's when we want to change the narrative of the profession,” he said. “We need to start with the end in mind. We need to start where these individuals want to be a part of these industries.”

Anthony also cautions that field service organizations need to be more realistic about how younger workers view their careers. Most people are not going to stick with a job for years at a time, as was the historical norm. In many cases, people change jobs every two years or so. To retain those employees (who are expensive to recruit and train) within your organization, it is important to offer more than just a good salary. People want a real path for advancement, and schedules that allow them to have a rich personal life, too.

Manager-employee relationships are also critical, along with development conversations and making sure there is a career path in place. Managers need leadership training (something Anthony says Comfort Systems has made a regular part of its culture). 

“The reason that we really focus a lot of attention on training is that we understand the value of our leaders, and if you can teach a leader to not be a manager, but to be a leader and to learn,” he said. Promoting someone to management without helping them with those leadership skills can put them at a disadvantage – and it can negatively impact the experience of employees, ultimately contributing to turnover. 

Another area of our discussion was that focusing hiring on specific technical skills or experience is cutting field service off from a lot of qualified candidates that have other good qualities – reliability, leadership skills, customer service skills, etc. Non-traditional recruiting can help address technician shortages while also improving teams by adding members with new skill sets and different perspectives.

“It's about the qualities that the person is bringing, the experiences that the person is bringing, and not just where they worked before and the things that we’ve looked at historically when evaluating talent,” Anthony said.

Anthony had much more to share and his insights are well worth a listen. Check out the rest of the conversation here.

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Q&A: Expert Advice for Optimizing the Digital Customer Experience

August 14, 2023 | 6 Mins Read

Q&A: Expert Advice for Optimizing the Digital Customer Experience

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

While field service remains an in-person business in many ways, digital experiences make up a huge part of the overall service lifecycle – from appointment scheduling and online help desks to chatbots and full-blown remote service, as well delivery of service or consumption-related data and post-service surveys. The flow of digital and physical touchpoints must be seamless, the experiences smooth, and the information exchange easy, accurate, and always available. 

Easy-peasy, right? We know it isn’t, but it is the tall order of customer expectations. I recently posed some questions to author and consultant Alfonso de la Nuez about how to avoid missteps that can lead to customer defections before you even get a chance to impress them with your excellent in-person service. Alfonso is the Chief Visionary Officer at UserTesting, advising on improving customer experiences. He also wrote the book The Digital Experience Company: Winning In The Digital Economy With Experience Insights. Let’s hear how his digital experience expertise translates to the field service environment.

What are some of the key factors that drive a successful digital experience, from a customer perspective?

The first thing sounds simple or maybe trivial, but it's understanding your customers and what situations they are going to be in when they are interacting with the brand. I know in your industry, these companies are actually going to have to interact with a service manager or someone face-to-face, but if you can understand what the customer is going to need or would like to do independent of the moment when the product is getting fixed, that is key. 

For a customer to have a great experience, it is all about expectations. Understand what the customer needs and what is convenient to them, and what they may do with your products. That is what we are looking for here, convenience vs. a revolutionary technology that is going to change everything. Can you relate and engage with customers throughout the customer journey? Do you understand what the customer journey is like? Are they going to contact you through a website? Are you optimized for Google searches, and is the website going to tell the story of what the customer needs?

Your website should be designed in such a way that will anticipate the needs of those users and those customers. I would also argue you have to design the site with a professional look and feel as well. The first thing we are looking for is convenience, content, ease of use, making sure the information is there for people to easily make decisions. But the next thing is to make it look professional, because that does make a difference projecting trustworthiness and affects the customer decision. A great website also needs to be mobile friendly, since a lot of customers are using their phones to browse.

In field service, the digital experience includes a number of facets -- customer self-service, online scheduling, diagnostics chats, and much more -- that often lead into an in-person experience (having a technician arrive at your location to fix something). What are some ways that organizations can ensure their digital and in-person exchanges are both mutually satisfying for the customer and also consistent? 

We always talk about online experiences, but the customer experience is a combination of online and offline interactions. The real art and science here is in combining the two and making sure they are not isolated. Maybe on the website you have an account where you can login and or provide feedback on the experience. Their data may be there along with the phone number for your representative. That should be present in a customer portal. You should be able to sign documents and pay bills and be invoiced automatically. 

In person, knowing that customer is also important. I like how the cable company Xfinity does it. They have an iPad and they can see the customer account, greet them and have access to that online information about them.

Going back to that customer journey, you have to understand that many times things start with a search. They find you online. Can you use technology to schedule and confirm the appointment, and create convenience for the customer by providing them with another confirmation the day before? You can mix online and offline and offer a lot of convenience to customers that way.

What are some of the biggest mistakes companies make when designing their digital interface and experiences?

I think the biggest mistake by far is when companies design interfaces for themselves instead of their customers. It is very typical to look at the design and content from the perspective of the owners of the website. What you have to do is dumb it down completely and make it so a grandma can understand it.

I often see two issues. One is there is so much technical information it is hard to understand unless you are actually a technician. The other is just finding information on the site. A lot of times, the content is not well laid out. Content needs to be organized, and there should be a search function on the site. You need to keep the menu options limited and focus on the customer journey, prioritizing the content we know they will need. 

Another mistake is not prioritizing the digital channel, or not worrying enough about the website. If you just throw a website out there, customers can tell and it will come back to bite you. You should invest in a professional looking and easy-to-use website.

How can companies make sure their digital experiences are NOT creating friction or frustration for customers, and how can they ensure there is a process in place so that there is a timely intervention when a customer needs to interact directly with someone who can help them?

This goes back to my point about the digital channel not being a priority. If you hire on the cheap, or just offer a chatbot for customer support, if it is not really working that is counterproductive. It produces a bad brand experience.

I would highly recommend if you don't have a real proper bot that is working well with a team of people behind it that can provide support, just take it out. Make people send an email or contact you by phone. If you try the bot just to try to avoid costs and it doesn't work, it will be worse. People are sick and tired of talking to robots.

The good news is that with artificial intelligence (AI). This is about to change big time, because new AI technology is going to take bots to another level. To me it is really one of the things that many of these brands can do to support people in a proper way without turning them off by making it obvious that this is a chatbot. AI will provide much better bots.

Having said that, there is an art and science to building chatbots. Usually, you want to set it up to support the main three to five things people want to do on your website. If what they need is not on that list, there should be a button for them to click that says Other. You don't want them to feel left out of the support picture. You want to channel them through those options to see if they need to talk to an agent. Well, the agent will need to see what information they provided before they speak to them.

Brands must acknowledge that delivering great experiences is not easy. It is hard. Even completely digital companies have a hard time with this and invest millions to do it properly. It takes time and expertise. Maybe you need to outsource it, but you have to start by understanding that is not easy to do. It is a big cultural challenge for many of these companies.

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Are You Prepared to Quell Your Customers’ Security Concerns?

July 31, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Are You Prepared to Quell Your Customers’ Security Concerns?

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As service organizations adopt more remote technology, and our world is increasingly connected, cybersecurity has become a bigger deal for this industry. Back in May, I spoke to Charlie Hales at Waterstons at length about security.

I was reminded again about how the importance of cybersecurity is growing for service when I saw the most recent Circle of Trust report from security firm Utimaco. It is based on an international consumer survey, and highlights just how connected everyone is, and how worried they are about their data as a result.

According to the findings, most respondents are worried about data security (more than 80%) and a little more than a third have been the victim of data loss, identity theft or digital fraud. At the same time, more than 66% of respondents own a mobile device and 38% report using smart devices in their homes.

In fact, despite being worried about security, people are pretty enthusiastic about connected devices, particularly smart TVs, virtual assistants, energy saving devices (like smart thermostats), and security systems. Only 26% of respondents felt knowledgeable enough to make informed decisions about digital security.

These insights have implications for field service on a number of levels. First, we know customers are concerned about data security, while they are also being asked to provide their information to more providers on a larger number of devices. This goes beyond just giving your credit card number to Amazon or Target; all sorts of sites and devices are interacting with personal and financial data all the time. 

In addition, more people are engaging with smart devices – everything from connected cars and appliances to home security systems and smart utility meters. These non-computer devices are connected to home and business networks in rapidly increasing numbers.

Field service has been at the forefront of taking advantage of what is often called IoT, with machines interacting with operators, other machines, and service technicians over the internet. This connectivity is at the heart of remote service initiatives and puts field service right in the middle of the growing cybersecurity threat.

Some Customers Balk at Network Access

One of the big obstacles in remote service has been connectivity – customers are sometimes hesitant to allow outside parties or vendors access to equipment on their networks, both to protect trade secrets and to ensure internal security. The Utimaco report backs up some of these objections: When asked if they have ever been a victim of data loss, identity theft or hacks related to a smart home device, 41% of US respondents said yes.

For businesses and customers already grappling with their own highly exposed networks, granting access to service providers can seem like inviting catastrophe.

But, there is a safe way forward for field service providers and their customers – and service organizations not only need to take appropriate actions but also become adept at quelling the concerns of their customers.  

First, field service providers must make sure their own house is in order by implementing up to date security technology, working with their software vendors to make sure client data is safe, and maybe hiring an outside provider (since in-house cybersecurity talent is hard to come by) to audit their security infrastructure, make recommendations, and deploy better solutions. 

If you want to be able to remotely monitor and connect to equipment operating in a customer facility or home, that work on the back end will help prove you are trustworthy enough to have that access. In the case of commercial clients, you may very well have to provide significant documentation around your own security capabilities. 

Second, make sure the connected equipment is also sufficiently secured. In the past, we mostly had to worry about computers and mobile devices having onboard security. In the IoT world, connected vending machines, industrial equipment, and home appliances represent potential security threats – not because they hold valuable data (although in some cases, they might), but because they can be leveraged as launching pads for attacks on other organizations. Or they can provide a gateway into an otherwise secure network.

We have already seen some IoT and smart building-based attacks. Back in 2016, the Mirai botnet launched a massive denial of service attack using IoT devices. In Germany in 2021, a building automation engineering firm was hacked and lost control of its building automation system devices. A similar attack in Finland knocked out the heat for two housing blocks in the dead of winter. 

Those types of incidents are a good reminder that service organizations need to take these threats seriously and implement the processes and tools that are readily available to safeguard their remote solutions and, ultimately, their customers.

Do you have any experience with cybersecurity issues, or found strong solutions to secure remote service platforms? Reach out and let me know what your experience was like.

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Are You Creating Successful Gen Z Field Technicians?

July 24, 2023 | 5 Mins Read

Are You Creating Successful Gen Z Field Technicians?

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

There is a fair amount of handwringing among employers in just about every industry around what to do about the incoming group of Gen Z employees. These young workers (in their 20s to very early 30s) are generally seen as very technology-savvy, but also very difficult to manage.

To evolve with the times, companies have done everything from adopting new perks, flexible schedules, to creating new programs and processes around diversity, ethics, mental health, and employee engagement. On the other end of the spectrum, some companies have dug in around the “No one wants to work” post-pandemic position that “these kids today” are lazy and want to be coddled by their employers.

You can see some of these viewpoints reflected in a recent survey conducted by ResumeBuilder, which found that three-quarters of managers find it difficult to work with Gen Z. 

There can be a lot of negativity in this kind of coverage, though, which overlooks some key points. First, this type of generational complaining has been going on for a long time (as this Inc. story points out). Second, these sweeping generalizations about workers of a certain age (any age) are not very helpful. And third, in many cases, meeting Gen Z where they are in terms of workplace expectations makes the work environment better for everybody, while also helping field service organizations recruit and retain young technicians.

But what are some of the reasons that managers think Gen Z is difficult? According to the ResumeBuilder survey, the top reasons were that they lack technological skills, lack effort, lack motivation, lack productivity, are easily distracted, have poor communication skills, and are easily offended.

This was a cross-industry survey, so the first point (they lack technological skills) is one that field service organizations have already been dealing with, addressed with solutions such as developing technicians via apprenticeships, working with trade schools, on-the-job training programs, etc. 

As far as the other challenges go, though, a big problem seems to be that different generations are speaking different “work languages,” for lack of a better term. Workers in their 20s have entered the workforce during a time of significant disruption and volatility across pretty much every facet of their lives – political, environmental, economic, and social environments included. They have also watched their older family members struggle as work becomes more demanding and ubiquitous thanks to our always-connected culture, while pay has stagnated and the cost of living (particularly housing) has ballooned.

As a result, younger workers are more likely to put up boundaries around their personal lives and time, while also asking for better pay and a company culture that allows them to enjoy (and maintain) their off-hours. While we do have to be cautious of too many generalizations, I think that as a group these younger workers have also not necessarily bought into the type of striving that their predecessors have valued – the idea that putting extra time and energy into your job is going to provide a path to upward mobility. This can come off as a lack of motivation, but it seems to me that it’s really an indication that the old incentives just aren’t working anymore.

Turning Perceived Weaknesses into Company Strengths

The real question we must ask ourselves is, how can we use this information to create successful Gen Z field service technicians? To do so, we need to focus on turning some of these perceived weaknesses into company strengths. Here are a few ideas:

Invest more in employee education. I addressed technical training above, but younger workers often lack interpersonal communication (or soft) skills – they are used to talking to people via text or online. Develop communication skills training (your older workers can probably benefit from a refresher, too) and put it in the proper context. Your goal is to help people (your customers) solve a problem. Gen Z has an abundance of empathy, which is a valuable commodity when it comes to customer service.

Invest in modern technology. If you haven’t upgraded your service management, scheduling, diagnostic, and/or communication tools for a long time, you are going to have trouble with younger workers that view your IT infrastructure as some sort of antique. Having modern tools in place is going to help your business in general, while also making it easier to hire and retain younger technicians.

Be open to new ideas. Younger workers are much more likely to question and criticize existing policies and processes if they don’t make sense. Forward-looking companies will resist being defensive and appreciate the fresh eyes. Some of those old policies/procedures are in place for good reasons, but others may have exceeded their sell-by date. Your younger technicians are more likely to thrive (and help you thrive) if they think their ideas are given serious consideration. 

Examine your company culture. Workplace culture in the U.S. has typically punished people for being human. Taking time off when you are sick, when your kids are sick, or when you need to deal with any type of issue (from an ailing parent to getting your car into the shop) is viewed negatively. For hourly positions, any time off work is time you aren’t earning, and at some companies your use of sick days or other PTO might be held against you when it comes to overtime or promotions. 

Is your company like that? It shouldn’t be. During the pandemic, a lot of employees took a hard look at how their employers treated them and did not like what they saw. Your employees (old and young alike) are human, and they need time to take care of their families and themselves. If your PTO policies are reasonable, your employees will be reasonable in following them. 

Give respect to earn respect. The survey also indicated that managers felt Gen Z was too thin-skinned and easily offended. But this generation is the most diverse we have ever seen entering the workforce, and their perspective on workplace behaviors is probably going to be very different, particularly in industries that have traditionally been more heterogeneous. For field service companies to thrive in the face of a shortage of qualified technicians, organizations are going to need to recruit more technicians from diverse backgrounds. For those employees to stick around, they must feel respected and comfortable.

New Gen Z technicians are offering employers fresh perspective, adaptability, and enthusiasm for problem solving. The things they are asking for in return – a livable wage, work schedules that give them time to have a personal life, and less toxic work environments – are not unreasonable. In fact, the existing employees who haven’t fought so hard for these things will appreciate them, too. 

Do you have experience training this new generation of technicians? What has worked and what hasn't? Please send me your thoughts and experiences. 

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A Toolset Plus Mindset Approach Equals Remote Service Success at RICOH

July 17, 2023 | 3 Mins Read

A Toolset Plus Mindset Approach Equals Remote Service Success at RICOH

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

The ability to successfully perform remote service can have a big impact on costs, customer satisfaction, workforce optimization, and even sustainability efforts. Incorporating remote service into your service delivery mix, though, requires both new technology and what can seem like a big cultural change within a service organization. 

A few weeks ago, I spoke to Darren Elmore, GM of Service for printer equipment specialist RICOH New Zealand. I had heard Darren speak at the Field Service Palm Springs event in the Spring and was impressed not only by what he shared related to RICOH’s remote service journey, but also what he had to say about some of the ways company’s tend to avoid innovation (which I wrote about here.) I then welcomed Darren onto the podcast for a chat about how RICOH has successfully increased its ability to deliver service remotely.

Darren said he started thinking about a remote first service approach a few years ago, while observing internal IT support operations at RICOH, where the majority of tickets were resolved remotely. At the time, RICOH’s field service operations were resolving around 25% of EM service requests remotely – and he thought they could do better than that.

He knew intuitively that in many cases, technicians would arrive at a customer site and pretty quickly diagnose a problem based on the equipment model and a few troubleshooting questions. “Well, if you're pretty sure you know what it is and it's not something that requires physical adjustment or a part to be replaced, how about talking to the customer and see if we can resolve it over the phone?” he said.

When the COVID pandemic began, the experiment quickly accelerated into a more formalized push for remote service that has paid off tremendously. As of 2022, the company had expanded from 25% remote resolution to 42%, and halfway into 2023 that rate was already sitting at 47%.

I have talked to a lot of service leaders about the incorporation or expansion of remote service, so I know that adopting new technology (which RICOH did) is only part of the story. Companies have a variety of options, some choosing mixed-reality tools like IFS Remote Assistance that allow for a virtual “hands-on” feel and others using more pared down remote access or even video chat solutions. I asked Darren about the balance of new toolsets vs. new mindsets that are required to really make remote service a successful endeavor.

As you might expect, he emphasizes the importance of change management to succeed from the mindset perspective. Before you deploy remote service tools, you have to talk your team through what you are trying to achieve – the “Why?” of what you plan to do. That messaging has to get to the technicians actually doing the work. 

“[T]he mindset has to come before the tool set if you want the buy-in from the teams that are going to be using the tools, otherwise you are just investing in a tool set that metaphorically, it's just going to count the dust and you won't get the take-up that you need,” Darren said.

As a result of expanding its remote-first approach, RICOH has been able to not only save money and improve productivity, but it has also managed to reduce emissions as part of its sustainability initiatives by having fewer truck rolls. Darren also said that remote service has boosted its customer satisfaction scores. “We conduct surveys, post completion of the service request. And in the free text field, we've had some really good comments,” he said. “I remember one not too long ago where we had an end user saying how great it was that they felt they were part of the solution, they were able to actually take part in the resolution. But again, that's us leveraging off the tool set and technology that we're able to do things that five years ago just weren't possible.”

The company’s success thus far can certainly be attributed to its understanding that such a change requires not just the toolset but the mindset as well. And there's more to come. Darren sees a lot of potential in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models for remote service resolution and customer-led self-service. We covered a lot of ground in the podcast, so be sure to listen to our whole conversation here.

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Can 3D Printing End Parts Obsolescence? 

July 10, 2023 | 4 Mins Read

Can 3D Printing End Parts Obsolescence? 

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

3D printing is one of those technologies that was perpetually on the cusp of widespread adoption, but never quite got there. In the past few years, though, it does seem to have reached a tipping point. There are auto manufacturers and aerospace companies, for example, that are printing parts for their vehicles, and the technology has taken off in some surprising places (like manufacturing dentures).

But in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when global supply chains were shut down, a lot of people began experimenting with these printers to address a short-term problem – part and product availability. That opened a lot of eyes to a key benefit of 3D printing: flexible, decentralized manufacturing in relatively small quantities. 

Which is why I have been wondering how field service could potentially benefit from on-demand manufacturing, particularly in industries where wait times on spare parts can degrade service performance.

Is there a business case to be made for field service organizations to invest in 3D printers and create their own spare parts? Short-term (and maybe long-term) the answer is probably no. Even in highly specific applications like HVAC service, there are so many different parts made of different materials, it would be impossible to justify the cost of buying multiple printers just to create a few one-off parts. That doesn't mean that 3D printing can’t help field service, though. 

There are examples of companies testing out 3D printing for spare parts applications, but so far they tend to be in industries that rely on in-house mechanics rather than field service engineers – automotive, aerospace, defense, etc. Companies like Airbus and Boeing have reverse engineers and printed parts for older aircraft when parts become obsolete. Porsche also launched a program a few years ago to print custom parts for owners of vintage cars.

In some cases, companies are directly printing the end use part, rather than creating it in a machine shop or trying to find an aftermarket part. In others, they use 3D printing to recreate molds, tools or dyes that would otherwise be extremely expensive to reconstruct. 

It is unlikely we would see field service technicians printing parts at a job site – the equipment is too persnickety and (depending on the material) slow. But it could help augment parts warehouse/depot operations for long-tail or obsolete parts. Right now, if a part is hard to get, service organizations are faced with either a long wait time (to find a part, or get one shipped, in some cases internationally) or to create something in a machine shop for large, expensive industrial use cases. 

3D printing would have an advantage for hard-to-find parts that can be printed – and not every part and material is printable – or for accelerating the creation of new tooling/molds. Instead of waiting weeks, you can cut that time to days or even hours.

The sweet spot seems to be high-value, low-volume parts with long lead times on either shipping or manufacturing, which would generally limit profitable parts printing to heavy industries. 

For example, IMI Critical Engineering, an oil and gas service company, hopes to use 3D printing to help reduce its reliance on stocking expensive, low-utilization spare parts. You can see the benefit here: the parts are very expensive and used in very specific facilities and, although they may not fail often, when they do they need to be replaced very quickly. The company was able to print metal parts that meet industry standards faster than machining them and is evaluating rolling this capability out to multiple facilities. Similarly, Shell Nigeria was able to reverse engineer and print an obsolete seal cover for a mooring buoy at an offshore site, cutting lead time from 16 weeks down to two, and reducing replacement costs by 90%. 

On the other end of the spectrum, UK-based Rowse (an electrical and pneumatics equipment supplier) used 3D printing to create a replacement bracket for its label printers that couldn't be sourced anywhere else. Printing the bracket saved the company the expense of having to buy all new printers.

Most field service organizations do not operate machine shops, though, and probably don't have the engineering expertise on hand to create a part from scratch. There are third-party manufacturing service firms that do have that equipment and expertise, though, and FSOs struggling with increasing spare part sourcing issues might want to start talking to their suppliers about solutions that leverage outsourced 3D printing where it makes sense (mainly for obsolete parts that won't raise any intellectual property concerns or issues with manufacturer agreements).

Even though we may never see 3D printers in the back of technicians’ vans, printed spare parts might be one way that suppliers and manufacturers can help the field service industry address supply chain snags, parts shortages, and reduce long wait times.

Do you have experience with 3D printing spare parts, or other novel ways to solve parts shortage issues? I would love to hear about them.

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