Why keeping field service operations changes in place post-pandemic matters

The threat of infection has caused us all to rethink safety procedures and equipment handling practices. With vaccines on the way, we have many customers thinking about a post–pandemic work environment. 

The opportunity is to adapt the underlying safety practices introduced for the pandemic into improved customer experiences. 

Below are three COVID-19 practices Next Service customers have implemented that can be adapted to improve customer engagement. 

1.  COVID-19 Pre-Job Safety Survey

Designed for both compliance and possible liability shielding, these surveys primarily deal with safety, infection status, and environment.  

This is an opportunity to improve customer engagement by extending this into a pre-job survey with personalized questions.  

Well-designed questionnaires can prompt the customer to disclose information that may impact the job. Ask questions about expectations, context, and how they define a successful outcome.  

Confirm the purpose of the visit and ask open-ended questions. When we assume what a customer is thinking, we run the risk of disappointing them.  

Why it matters: 

• Personalization improves customer experience and engagement. 
• Quality control measures ensure the right technician, right part, and right time. 
• Surveys provide insight into the customer-defined win conditions, which enable your service team to exceed expectations. 

2.  Field Service Tracing

Recently in Field Service and Technology Forecast: 5 Things to expect in 2021, I reflected on how service team traceability is critical to contact tracing efforts to slow the rate of infections.  

For years we have utilized location tracking on personal devices. We refresh our smartphone incessantly when ordering a car hire or scheduling a home delivery.  

Tracing has become part of service expectations for consumers and businesses alike. 

Why it matters:

• Utilizing a customer app that exposes your location-tracking information improves customer experience. 
• Utilizing location data promotes transparency, establishing your company as a trusted service provider. 

Optimize route planning by taking advantage of geolocation services to schedule jobs based on technician and customer locations.

3.  Checklist Used to Encourage Behavior

COVID-19 checklists covering temperature checks, hand washing, and surface wipedowns are what I call “green checklists.” These are habitual to-dos to keep us safe.  

On the other hand, “red checklists” with reminders to avoid face touching, socially distance, and sneeze safely are just as important and need to be included and checked off to ensure safe practices.  

These checklists are designed to modify behavior and are now common in field service organizations. Utilizing checklists to improve customer experience reduces customer service training time and increases team adoption.  

We are now starting to see customers include items in their green checklist like “greet customer with a smile,” while red list items could include “don’t leave rubbish onsite.”  

Why it matters:

• Promoting proper service team behavior and using checklists will improve performance.  
• Customer service training supported by checklists will improve customer engagement.
• Creating personalized checklists helps team members improve performance.  

What Is the Point?

With vaccine rollouts underway, we can look forward to a time when we are free of the COVID-19 safety practices put in place to slow the infections.  

Why not utilize the same techniques and practices to improve customer experience? After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…and so much more (e.g. increased ROI) when it comes to safely and effectively running your field service management operations. 

In Conclusion 

Modifying people’s behavior can be difficult, especially for a field service team. Providing support tools that reinforce positive customer experiences is an extension of the safety behavior checklists implemented for COVID-19. 

Modern field service management solutions like Next Service use custom forms and checklists to embed conditional logic for field validation and presentation.  

The ability to rapidly change behaviors by deploying checklists to the field helps many of our customers meet the changing demands of field service. 

Thank you for your attention.  If you found some value in this article, please connect with me on LinkedIn to catch future posts.  

Feel free to ask for advice on how Next Service can help your field service business with digital transformation.  

You will have noted that customer experience is a theme of the post. We have a deep commitment to customer engagement and positive customer experiences at Next Technik.  

It is part of every conversation we have, every service we provide, and every product decision we make. 

Learn more about how the Next Service field automation software built on and for NetSuite improves service team performance using Next Technik propriety dynamic forms and checklists.  

Daniel Perry 

Next Technik (CTO), Field Mobility Native SuiteApp for Oracle NetSuite. 

Klugo (Chair), Oracle NetSuite Solution Provider dedicated to enabling ERP for Field Service. 

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About Daniel Perry 

A start-up generalist with extensive experience in product development, marketing, sales, service delivery, business operations, commercials, and finance. After successfully co–founding several start-ups in the cloud ERP sector, Daniel now regularly provides advisory services to early-stage start-ups or entrepreneurs still in ideation. 

“Culture is strategy, align the hearts of your team by being a compelling leader focused on vision, values, mission, objectives and key results. Technology enables outcome, people achieve outcomes, technology must support people”.