A Short Guide to Customer Experience Management for Field Service Operations
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- 2 min reading
In field service planning, companies are driven to implement new solutions for automation, communication and business intelligence by the sheer volume of data involved in providing top-class customer experience. Yet not all have made the leap, and in terms of the evolution of field service management, organizations can be divided into three groups.
- First there are proactive businesses, which harness the potential of existing technologies and data pools to deliver outstanding and comprehensive customer communication and optimize operations. For example, they use chatbots for some levels of customer interaction, and implement advanced data collection and analysis to predict and prevent issues before they become a problem.
- Then there are the efficient companies, which have already deployed field service management solutions to integrate their systems, so they can automate and optimize planning, task management and customer communications.
- Finally, some organizations still work on a manual basis, juggling multiple systems and focusing too much time on maintenance and problem-solving to give customer experience the attention it deserves.
What your organization needs to know about enhanced customer experience in field services
Understanding customer journey mapping is vital for the delivery of excellent customer experience. This is a process by which customer interaction points and motivations are analyzed in order to plan and enhance service delivery. This paves the way for clients to take the lead in many aspects of service planning – for example by changing a technical visit, using the channel that best suits them at a convenient time – and even switching quickly between one channel and another. In such an example, the customer-led re-scheduling should be automated on the provider side, so field service resources can be optimized. No more downtime for engineers waiting for new instructions to be written up manually in the event of a rescheduled service visit or no-show.
Comarch Field Service Management addresses these issues by making it easy for clients to access service visit information, change the appointment to suit them, and keep up to date with every alteration.
Alongside customer journey mapping, integrated virtual customer assistance should also receive careful attention. According to Gartner, 25% of service and support operations will deploy such integrated systems by next year, letting web portals, mobile applications, field service management systems and chatbots automate work order generation and reducing the number of direct call center interactions. The employees freed up in this way can focus their efforts more on analyzing and understanding customer behavior and motivations, and dealing with the more complex issues that might be beyond the abilities of chatbots underpinned by artificial intelligence. These same employees could thus become customer experience ambassadors, using the analyzed data with which they work to present personalized offers and solutions to clients.
There is no doubt that customer experience management presents field service teams with by opportunities and challenges. Automation will optimize some operations, and the role of human players will change. The trick will be to strike the correct balance that addresses the demands of today’s customers in a convenient and timely manner.
Alongside customer journey mapping, integrated virtual customer assistance should also receive careful attention. According to Gartner, 25% of service and support operations will deploy such integrated systems by next year, letting web portals, mobile applications, field service management systems and chatbots automate work order generation and reducing the number of direct call center interactions. The employees freed up in this way can focus their efforts more on analyzing and understanding customer behavior and motivations, and dealing with the more complex issues that might be beyond the abilities of chatbots underpinned by artificial intelligence. These same employees could thus become customer experience ambassadors, using the analyzed data with which they work to present personalized offers and solutions to clients.
There is no doubt that customer experience management presents field service teams with by opportunities and challenges. Automation will optimize some operations, and the role of human players will change. The trick will be to strike the correct balance that addresses the demands of today’s customers in a convenient and timely manner.
