Ah, the pivotal service technician, very much the lifeblood of any service department or organization. But when we think of the service technician we often only associate them to one thing: repairs. In the third edition of Field Force Friday, Josh explains why only thinking of techs as repair people is too shortsighted, and how varying service technician roles really make them five employees in one.
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For your convenience, enjoy the video transcribed below:
Hey everyone, I’m Josh Kasombo, and welcome to another episode of Field Force Friday. Last week Adam dug into how Original Equipment Manufacturers and dealers can work together to build a strong dealer network. If you missed that one you can click on the link below and you can watch that, I’ll be right here when you get back, and keep coming back every Friday for more episodes of Field Force Friday where we cover everything in the world of field service.
Let’s get started on this week’s video.
This week we’ll be talking about something, or rather I should say someone, that your organization relies on 24/7-365. That’s right, your service technicians. These are the guys and gals that ride out every single day and go out to battle for you on behalf of your organization.
Now you may be thinking that your service technicians do maybe one thing— just repair. Well I’m here to tell you today that’s wrong. Your service technicians are really five employees in one that you have the ability to take advantage of every single day.
Okay, so you may be thinking, “Well I perform a lot of different functions in my role every single day, what makes a field service technician different?”
Well, what makes a field service technician so different is that with every hat or every role that they play they directly affect the efficiency, the success—pretty much everything that has to do with your service organization.
From salesperson to spy, your service technicians are really the Swiss Army knife of your service organization. Being able to recognize this and take advantage of it is the key to your success. Let’s take a look:
Okay, so our first role we’re going to be speaking about is the Master Technician. The Master Technician is the one we all know and love. It’s an oldie but a goodie, but it doesn’t make it less important. When your service technicians are out on the field they’re like a surgeon for equipment. They have to be precise and they have to be knowledgeable about every piece of equipment that they’re fixing on a daily basis.
Let’s say you broke your arm in the middle of the day, you have to go to the ER. Obviously you want a trained, a very knowledgeable physician to help you and heal your arm and make sure you can get out there and be on your way. This is the same way that our Master Mechanics, our service technicians, handle themselves on a daily basis. This is something that they do, this is something they’ve been doing well, and this is something that isn’t going to change any time soon.
So for our next hat of our service technicians, we’ll be talking about our spokesperson (Go team go!). So, for our spokesperson you have to realize that if you have everything planned out, if your service technician goes out to the field and makes the perfect fix for whatever piece of equipment is broken, if they leave a bad impression, that’s bad for your company. You’re going to lose that business, you’re going to lose that word-of-mouth that’s going to lead to more sales in the future. That’s why it’s so important to remember that your service technicians are now the face of your company.
In a day and age where almost all of our communication is digital it can be really hard to get that physical connection with our customers. Our service technicians are the people that are going out to the field and are meeting with these customers. They’re the people that they’re going to be seeing on a daily basis. That means that these faces have to memorable, they have to be professional, they have to be knowledgeable, and that makes them 100% your spokespeople. So it’s important to realize that and leave that memorable face in the field.
So our third hat that our technicians will be putting on is that of a salesperson. If your technicians are out on the field and they see there’s something else wrong they can add that to the invoice. Why leave the field and leave your customer with something that’s broken when you can add it right there on the field, get your sale, and help the customer too.
Technicians that are able to recognize what’s wrong in the field and explain it to their customers make effective salespeople, because they are an adviser to that person. You want someone you can trust and that’s someone you’re going to buy from. If you’re going to buy a big screen TV and you have a friend that works at Best Buy, wouldn’t you want to buy it from them? It’s the same thing for your customers, they want someone they can trust, and that’s what makes your technician a good salesperson.
Our fourth hat is the Spy, while this one might sound a bit devious, when your technicians are out in the field they’re collecting a lot of information. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can collect information about your customers’ equipment, their likes, their needs, their wants, something like that. That gives you information that you can use to do better sales or do better marketing.
Similarly, you can collect competitor information, wouldn’t you want to know what your competitors are doing out in the field? Something that maybe your customers are going to leave you to go them for? If your technicians can collect this recon, this information, that gives you an edge.
So our last hat is that of the field researcher. We’ve all been to the store or out and about at the mall and we run into the person that wants us to take a little survey so that they know how the store is doing, how the mall is doing, things like that. Our service technicians can perform this same kind of function while outside in the field. They can get their tablet out, take a survey, and see “Was this good? Was this good? Was this bad…How can we do better?” Obviously this is going to help your service organization perform better in the long run because they’re going to know what to do better, what they can fix, and that’s going to help you in the long run.
As you can see, our technicians wear a lot of hats out there in the field. While it might seem fairly mundane to send a technician out to the field to fix a piece of equipment, it’s important to realize that you’re essentially sending five employees in one when you’re sending a technician out there. Would you not use four out of the five of your employees single day? Of course not! So it’s important to realize that your service technicians are incredibly versatility and incredibly useful to your organization.
Okay, that’s it for this week’s Field Force Friday. Thank you for joining us, and have a great weekend.
