If you work in any facet of the service industry, you will know how mission critical it is to be able to deliver on customer promises on time, every time.
As consumers become increasingly savvy about the brand choices available to them, reliability and the ability to be able to offer and deliver on tight time slots can significantly differentiate any field service company from its competitors.
Which is why the results of research we commissioned recently into service standards make for such fascinating reading.
How does your service company performance compare with industry averages? Here’s an overview of the key findings…
Who is using fleet management technology? – the haves and the have nots
Conclusion 1: There is a stark contrast between how much large operators and smaller companies are exploiting the latest field service technologies. Despite the affordability of the latest solutions, it is the larger companies with more resources and bigger budgets that are taking more advantage of the tools available.
Companies with 500+ field engineers:
- 89% use dynamic routing and scheduling processes that allow schedules to be changed according to activity during a day and the emergence of new jobs.
- 84% use real time telematics data
- 63% use intelligent scheduling
Companies with 50 or less field engineers:
- 24% use dynamic routing and scheduling
- 17% use real time telematics data
- 17% use intelligent scheduling
See full Service Standards report here
How do service companies communicate with their employees in the field?
Conclusion 2: Mobile apps and integrated all-in-one devices are becoming more widely used but the phone and even paper work schedules are still being used – with all the driver safety implications and inefficiencies that that implies.
- 41% notify their workers of job schedules by text
- 34% are still using the phone to communicate work schedules
- 17% use mobile apps like Via App to communicate to their mobile workers
- 6% still use paper dispatch notes and work schedules (68% of which are smaller companies)
- Only 2% send job details directly to the driver’s in-cab satellite navigation device
See full Service Standards report here
Where are customer service standards failing?
Conclusion 3: Basic mistakes are still letting customers down on an alarmingly regular basis.
- Almost half (42%) of all service companies admit their drivers still turn up at the wrong address. This is a weekly occurrence for 5% of companies!
- 33% of large employers suffered mobile workers turning up at the wrong address on a monthly basis
- 43% of all companies and 28% of large operators have experienced two mobile workers arriving at the same job.
- Only 13% of those companies who are already using technology to improve their service standards have a monthly address issue.
See full Service Standards report here
What are the most common customer complaints?
Conclusion 4: Poor communications, poor response times and overly long time slots are the main causes of customer complaint. This concurs with previous TomTom research which revealed that 78% of UK consumers would be less likely to use a company again if they failed to offer specific times or acceptable timeslots for deliveries or job attendance. Read the results of our previous survey here.
- The most common causes of customer complaint were poor communication (28%), poor response times (23%) and overly long time slots given to customers for jobs (23%).
- For companies who used paper based dispatch notes, inflexible and poor availability of time slots was the most common complaint from customers (40%)
- Just 11% of larger companies – who have the resources to offer customer tighter time slots – suffered from customer complains about time slots
See full Service Standards report here
How are KPIs being set and met?
Conclusion 5: The focus on ‘first time fix rates’ is sharpening with remote diagnostics and 3D printable parts now on the horizon.
- 54% of service companies cited ‘number of jobs completed’
- 16% set ‘first time fix rate’ as a KPI
- 47% of companies who are using dynamic scheduling, intelligent response and app based communication state ‘first time fix rate’ as their main KPI
- 13% used ‘number of calls attended’
- 77% of service companies think they are generally meeting their KPIs
See full Service Standards report here
How can fleet telematics help drive service standards higher?
The latest fleet telematics systems help field engineers to provide a faster, more reliable service and increase their billable time. Companies can address all the issues highlighted in our research by establishing faster and more accurate timeframes for response and optimising route planning to maximise the number of jobs completed.
Find out more about how telematics could help your service company to improve efficiencies here.