Field Service – Coming of Age

I have been attending trade shows and visiting customers at Librestream since 2013, and it’s exciting to see the shift in conversation regarding video-enabling service teams. The field service shows are great events, and every year the shows evolve in many ways. One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is the response from service executives on video-enabling their operations. The evolution of the message over the years looks like this:

“This is a cool idea.” – “We need to look at this.” –  “We have a group evaluating this now.”

This evolution of priorities is in response to what is happening within all industries. I’m constantly reading, and hearing that organizations with service teams are facing pressure to perform faster and more efficiently than ever before. Video-enabling service teams has help address the following challenges:

1. The aging workforce – less available experts.
   In a report I read by The Service Council one fact really stood out to me, “That’s 7 out of 10 organizations indicating that the loss of talent and knowledge in field service will be a major challenge in the coming years.” With video enablement companies can bring off-site experts on-site virtually, and create mentoring opportunities.
2. More complexity in day-to-day products.
   Virtually everything these days is more sophisticated than it was before. Take your car for example, in an article in by the Daily Monitor it says, “Complex systems: Newer cars are heading that way too. Making it worse is the fact that the technology in the cars is advancing way faster than the local mechanics can catch on.” This complexity means it’s more important than ever to leverage experts within service, especially manufacturers of complex assets, and they can help overcome the growing product complexity.
3. Improve efficiency. It’s evident that video enablement is also helping companies improve effectiveness and efficiency. Consider Diebold Nixdorf and their recent video enablement where they have already identified an approximate 250% increase in ROI – in a year – with the use of video enablement. Read the case study by Samsung here.
4. Meet evolving customer requirements and service level agreements (SLA). I hear it again and again in all industries, “My customers are demanding alternative support models.”  Some are as extreme as “I’m not renewing support and you can bill as repairs happen, but it will need to be capped at 80% of last year’s agreement.”-OR- “I’ll pay you when it works, but will not (or even worse, charge you back) if it is not working.” In any case, these are drastic departures from the field service of the past.
5. Create new field service revenues with video enablement. Another great value video-enabling service teams has provided for companies is a new service where organizations can leverage experts to not only service their own assets, but also competitive products as a service, generating new revenue opportunities.

Results don’t lie. Video-enabling within field service really does have an impact on these areas and more. In a recent report by Aberdeen Group, it states that “The Best-in-Class are 72% more likely than peers to have visual collaboration capabilities.” And because of that, video-enabled field service companies are seeing a 38% higher first-time-fix rate, and 28% higher customer satisfaction.

There’s still a lot going on this year. If you missed us at Field Service East and West, you have a chance to meet us at Field Service Europe from Nov. 29 – Dec. 1 in Amsterdam.

This blog post was written by Jereme Pitts – COO at Librestream Technologies Inc.