How do customers measures success in the digital age?
Customers expect superior service! If they don’t get it from you, they will go elsewhere. Better, faster, more efficient field service is the key to guaranteeing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Offering an appointment window from 8am-5pm without ETA notifications is a surefire way to ensure customer dissatisfaction.
Service organizations and manufacturers must equip field teams with the skills, parts, tools, and insight necessary to resolve every issue the first time they interact with a customer. First-time-fix solutions, transparency, and self-service are how customers measure success nowadays.
Who’s in charge of keeping customers happy?
Today's customer wants what they want when they want it. This means that field technicians, and not the management or executives, are in the hot seat when it comes to keeping customer satisfaction ratings high.
As such, best-in-class companies (i.e. those with the highest customer satisfaction ratings) are more likely to provide customers and staff with the following tools: self-service customer portals, options for real-time live customer service interaction, artificial intelligence to provide for much narrower estimated-time-of-service windows (ideally with real-time updates on ETA), and an all-around customer-focused approach.
93%of all private end customers want to know the estimated time of arrival (ETA) of a service technician.
Put the Customer in Charge of the Service Experience!
In the future, the top performers will be the organizations that continue providing real-time customer consultations that feel like mutually productive partnerships.
The best way to envision this is simply to think like a customer. A customer is in need of a repair. This is stressful. They want the stress to be gone, which means they want the repair to be done now - regardless of whether it’s the weekend, evening, or a holiday not. They want to know exactly when the technician will arrive, how long the repair will take, and what, if any, follow-up might be needed.
How is the digital transformation redefining the service experience?
Providing this level of real-time customer service requires the use of cutting edge AI-equipped field service management software that can be integrated into the latest third-party communication and scheduling apps (i.e. Twilio, Waze, e.g.).
For companies that have grown complacent about their ability to provide service within the service-level agreement (SLA) timeframe, it is time to do better - much better.
45% of best-in-Class companies have self-service customer portals in place.
Internal metrics have become yesterday's news in favor of customer satisfaction ratings, which are today's gold standard. With the help of a new breed of field service management software, companies can transform themselves into cutting-edge customer service providers with a loyal and growing customer base and a ready, regular stream of new word-of-mouth referrals.
