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Preventative Maintenance for Business Promotion – Step 1

This series of blogs discusses the application of preventative maintenance in order to maintain our field team’s product and service promotion effectiveness. [1]

Step 1 – Checking Overall Mechanical Condition and Wear

We add great value when our field service team takes proactive steps to identify opportunities to help our customers and bring those opportunities to their attention.  Through their proactive efforts we can stand out from the crowd by helping our customers to be measurably better off.

Consistency is Key

Like the equipment that we service, our proactive business development efforts by your field team are subject to wear and tear.  Unless properly maintained, those efforts will fail prematurely.  To ensure that our field service team’s proactive efforts are working at their highest level, we should perform preventative maintenance on a regular basis.  Step one of that maintenance is a general assessment of the overall “mechanical condition” of the initiative.

A Proactive Approach

A high level assessment before completing the maintenance not only gives us clues to the overall condition of the equipment but can also reveal possible areas of impending failure that might otherwise be overlooked.  That’s why it is a good idea for our field professionals speak to the customer before preforming a maintenance service to inquire on any issues they may have experienced and any changes that have occurred since the last time a service was performed.  It is also why a common practice is to look around the equipment for signs of possible problems such as stains or residue caused by possible fluid leaks, environmental issues that may impact performance and to listen to the experience of the operators of the equipment.

We can do the same for our proactive business development initiative.  We can look for signs that there may be issues lurking in the background unseen.  These could come from looking at the program metrics and by talking to the field service team who are working within the system for example.  Program metrics may show a reduction in the number of proposals generated or a spike in emergency, unplanned service requests.  Talking to the team may uncover areas of frustration that until this point have not surfaced.  The results of this high level assessment may provide clues of issues that need attention that could be overlooked otherwise.

Next time, we will consider the parts of the business development efforts that can “wear” overtime and that may need refurbishing to keep everything working in tiptop condition.

Let’s Connect

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“Good is the enemy of great.”

– Jim Collins

[1] This series of blogs is based on an article published for Field Service News – https://www.fieldservicenews.com

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Technology’s Revolutionary Impact on the Relative Importance of Soft Skills

If you are in the service business, then you know a little bit about change. Just about everything to do with field service has been impacted by technology; and it has changed the way we do business. Technology is also having a revolutionary impact on the relative importance of soft skills.

Technology has allowed us to improve efficiencies. It has enabled us to get a more accurate picture of the effectiveness of our business practices. And it has allowed us to empower our field personnel. Most of these changes have been good for the customer, for us and for our field teams.

Closing the Competency Gap

As the pace of technology increases, we can see the shift it is having on the relative importance of soft skills. And it truly is revolutionary. Emerging technologies in the field service business are reducing the competency gap between top service professionals and less skilled service providers. The result is that it is becoming harder to differentiate on technical skills. With remote diagnostics, artificial intelligence, visual reality and embedded information in the serviced equipment, the field service professionals rely more on their tools to troubleshoot and repair and less on their experience and technical expertise. This opens up the door for less “qualified” individuals who use these same tools to give comparable levels of technical service.

This means that, even though it is highly competitive now, it will become even more so in the future. Customers will have an even more difficult time distinguishing between service providers. Service professionals and service organizations alike will have to rely more on the service experience that they create when interacting with a customer to differentiate them from their competitors. The basis of competition will shift from who is doing the best job of servicing the equipment; to who can create the best service experience while doing the job.

It’s All About The Brand

This is not to say that technical competence will go by the wayside. Obviously, it won’t. Technical competence will remain important. But as technology levels the playing field between service professionals of different capabilities, technical competence of the individual and the organizations that employ them will no longer be a factor of differentiation. The winning service organizations of the future will be the ones that create a service “brand.” They will clearly define the service experience they want to create and invest in the processes and soft skills training of their field service team to achieve it.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

– Buckminster Fuller

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Position Technician Promotion of Services as a Valuable Service – 4 Steps

service technician selling program

Many firms perceive and describe this role as “selling”. In my last blog I explained why this perception can limit the success of the initiative. In this blog, I would like to discuss why we should approach technician promotion of services as a valuable service and the 4 key components that will help ensure our success.

When a technician recognizes an opportunity for the customer to make an improvement and takes the initiative to speak to the customer about it, he/she is performing a valuable service – a service every bit as important as that technician’s ability to fix or maintain the equipment. When a firm perceives and describes the technician’s role as part of the service, many good things happen. The technicians more readily buy into the role, customers experience a higher level of service and the service firm can create a substantial and sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors. Here are 4 things that you can do to ensure that everyone approaches product and service promotion by technicians as a service and not a sale. Read more

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Are Your Employees Empowered to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service?

customer service expert CanadaThink that your employees are empowered to deliver an exceptional customer experience?  Don’t bank on it.  Your policies may be letting you down. I learned this lesson recently during a trip to a bank. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was off to the UK on business on an early morning flight on Monday.  To my dismay, I realized that I did not have any British currency.  No problem, I reasoned, I just need to go to the bank.

As it turned out, my branch was closed by the time I arrived.  Fortunately, another bank on the other side of the plaza was open.  By coincidence, I used to have all of my accounts with the open bank until about three years ago and I still had a Visa card with their name on it.

I waited my turn for the lone teller.  When I got to the wicket, I explained that I would like to purchase some pounds sterling.

“Certainly sir, how much would you like?” came the very pleasant reply.

“£200 should do it, thanks.”

“No problem, just put your bank card in the slot.” she directed.

Read more