Customer Service was good, but how about Field Service technicians/engineers?

Hi Everyone --

Namaste.

Hope you, family and friends are doing well.  Wishing everyone a happy and safe Navratri celebrations. Our season of festivals starting, hoping corona virus leaving the world sooner.

In this blog, I will discuss about my recent experience with my internet service provider, as a customer.

What do you guess from below image?.... These folks are field service technicians or engineers, who are working with internet service provider as full-time employees.  Of course, everyone maintaining social distance for sure.

Here is the story... 

I raised a ticket to shift my internet connection from one place to another place. As usual, I got a confirmation number for this request with my preferred date and it was honored.

On the day of shifting, first technician called me, asked about the address, checked my availability, came to my address, evaluated the options and confirmed that shifting is possible.  I was all set.

Day goes...

Team 1 (2 folks - Cabling Team) called me, asked about my address, confirmed my availability, came and setup the cable inside the house. So far so good. No issues.

Team 2 (2 folks - Router team) called me, asked about my address, confirmed my availability, checked whether cabling was done, came and setup new router and wifi modem inside the house. OK!!!

Team 3 (One person - Final verification) called me, asked about my address, confirmed my availability, checked whether router setup was done, came and validated router gets all signals. He asked me to verify whether everything works fine and did a speed test.

Everything happened sequentially as per plans, and the job was done.  As usual, I was a happy customer, since everything was working as expected.  I was little bit annoyed by the number of phone calls, since I am sharing my address to various technicians from the same company. But, this is the reality, even Amazon or Flipkart delivery people call many times to confirm the address and availability. :)

Shifting complete and all work done as expected.

So, whatz next for these field service engineers?.. These folks were hanging around in our complex for few mins. I thought they must be taking some rest, since we have a good shadow here. Mango tree shade is always good and it pulls you to relax :)

Time passed and it is around an hour... I went and asked them: guys, do you need anything from me or waiting for something from me?.  They smiled and said, NO...NO..  Everything was fine.  I offered some water for them. They felt comfortable and they were very happy. Humanity is required everywhere. :)

I work on Customer Service domain and build products/features for Field Service domain too. I am also aware of different personas like, field technicians, supervisors, dispatchers, back office, front office etc.

Time passed and it was more than 2 hours now.. They were in the same place. I went and asked again. Guys, whatz happening?. This time they opened up to all my questions.  They were clearly waiting for the next job to be assigned. They were waiting for the calls from their back office so that they know where to go next. They completed two jobs in the day and waited for more jobs to be assigned. Do you think, they were happy. ? 

 I also learnt a lot from them, asked about how is their job nature, issues in their job, what could be done to make their life better, types of issues they fix, various customers they face, collaborations between technicians etc.... Obviously, I am not going to bore you with all the stuffs. :D

So, what is the summary:

•  Good collaboration is required between technicians and back office people, so that they know about customer, address details, their previous job status, and know more about previous jobs status as well. Avoid multiple calls and save cost. This is applicable for everyone. Good collaboration is a key factor between teams, particularly everyone in cloud or consumer business.

• When jobs are not assigned to them, they could be given enough videos or documentations or good knowledge management solutions so that they could access from wherever they are. Also, they could help other technicians and gain some knowledge by staying connected.
  

• These days, we track Uber cars and Uber eats. In similar fashion, we could track technicians as well. In other words, technicians could be given "where is my customer" options too.
  

• Finally, they are also human beings. If they are happy, they could act as sales rep too, and add more revenue to the company. Cost center becomes revenue center with happy customers and happy field technicians, if you choose the correct field service automation solution. :)
  

 

 Thatz it for today.

Thank you for reading. See you in the next one. :)

Nandri.