How you can move beyond traditional uses for field data to stand out among your competitors.
When it comes to field data and how service organizations are using it, we often get stuck talking about the things that need to take place. A mobile service app, for example, moves the processes you’re already doing to paper. And that’s awesome! Automating service tasks like tracking inventory and recording technician hours speeds your service process from start to finish, makes technicians more accurate and efficient, and eliminates extra trips to the back office and dual data entry.
But, what we don’t talk about a lot is the extra data a mobile service app lets you collect. I’m talking about the data you always wish you had, but never had a way to collect.
Creative Ways to Collect the Data You Want with a Mobile Inspection App
Equipped with a mobile field service and inspection app, you can set yourself up to enter the next phase of service success. Here are six ideas you can use to start collecting the data you always wanted.
1. Measure Customer Satisfaction with On-Site Surveys
If you’re looking to boost your customer satisfaction rating, what better way than to get feedback directly from your customers? Create surveys as forms in your mobile inspection app, then have customers fill it out onsite.
Do this at every service visit and you’ll accumulate scores of customer feedback data which you can use to improve service strategies to build loyal and happy customers. Use the feedback to guide future decisions and measure which strategies are working to help you run a better business.
2. Track Equipment Performance Data in Real Time
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a tool to guide manufacturing and service businesses, companies are exploring ways they can use IoT sensors and telematics to improve equipment performance. IoT sensors provide an endless flow of data from equipment to manufacturer. With this influx of data, companies receive insights into how equipment can be modified or upgraded.
Access to troves of equipment performance data can also inform service best practices and guide more effective preventive maintenance programs and profitable service contracts.
3. Use Telematics Data to Predict Equipment Service Needs
In the past, if a piece of equipment had a problem, a technician would come and fix it, but there would be downtime. Now, IoT sensors built into the equipment indicate when repair is needed so it can be serviced before it even goes down.
This trend of using telematics and IoT sensors to trigger predictive product support will touch service businesses in nearly every industry, including equipment distributers: “Distributors must close the gap between the demand for product-support services driven by telematics data, and the ability to provide those services,” said Rod Sutton in his Construction Equipment article “Plow the Field for Telematics.” In order to become a leader in the manufacturing space, distributers will need to integrate telematics into their existing product support structures.
4. Inspect Equipment Automatically
Most service-based businesses need to inspect regularly the site or equipment they service. That’s nothing new. But, being able to collect inspection data automatically from a remote location is.
As IoT sensors become more advanced, remote diagnostics may become a real possibility for service organization. Self-diagnostics and reporting sensors would allow for automated equipment inspections, meaning techs could simply log into the equipment’s portal to inspect its performance levels remotely.
While remote auto-inspections might be a ways away, it’s important to keep it on your radar as a possibility for using data and machine intelligence to manage your service business in the future.
5. Document Competitor Information
Usually, in a room full of equipment, not all of that equipment is from your business. While on site, techs could take photos and perform a competitive analysis to determine how your equipment compares.
For example, if you’re servicing one of your own hospital generators, but you notice there are several other brands of equipment there, your techs could track where it’s from and why the hospital chose their equipment over yours. If each of your technicians documented and took pictures of all competitor equipment they come across, you could analyze the most popular brands, and then determine how to differentiate yourselves.
6. Evaluate your Account Potential for Every Customer
Service techs are the eyes and ears of your business. Use their privileged position in the field to gauge the growth potential of each customer. Give them the tools they need to predict whether a company’s service needs will change over time.
For example, if a technician is working on a break-fix work order, but sees that the equipment would benefit from regular preventive maintenance check-ups, he can sell a service contract onsite, and then quote and invoice the customer right on his mobile device.
As an additional incentive, businesses can track which techs are upselling most effectively and reward the top performing techs for noticing and executing new opportunities.
3 Steps to Make your Data Work for You
Now that you have some ideas of new and creative ways to collect data in the field, here are steps you can take to prepare your organization for the influx of data. Because having the data is only the start. What you do with it is just as important. Use these strategies to make your data work for you.
1. Plan
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- —know what you’re already measuring and what data you already have, then make a plan for what you wish you knew about your organization. Map out the steps you’d need to take to make that knowledge visible.
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2. Measure
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- —use your field service software to measure the data you set out in your plan. Determine whether you’re the information you’re collecting is giving you the data you need.
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3. Analyze
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- —once you’ve collected the data, analyze it through service portals. Figure out what you could be doing better to improve the results of the data. Use the insights to guide future decisions about service and production.
Benefits of Taking Your Data to the Next Level
By employing the power of the field workforce for mobile data collection, service companies can get real-time feedback about real customers and projects. It’s more important than ever for field service organizations to have strategies in place to measure their operational efficiency, and becoming data driven is the best way to make those measurements clear and actionable.
What sort of data do you wish you had? What are your creative ideas for getting the information you need? Tweet your ideas to @msidata!
The Essential Mobile Guide for Performing Field Inspections
Updated from August 2013
