Fine-tune your service operations now for improved service revenue, employee satisfaction, and customer retention
With this year’s economic fallout, companies are scrambling to make ends meet. And it might have a bigger impact than you think.
A recent study found that 69% of respondents felt their companies were affected negatively or very negatively by the challenges 2020 has presented. Of course, this has resulted in companies halting spend on business travel, hiring, and new technology.
But the truth is this might be the perfect time to adopt new technology, so your contracting service business can come out of this year even stronger.
Contracting firms struggling through the current economic climate can be proactive and prepare for the eventual return to profitability. But where should you focus your efforts now to get the highest return for your contracting business?
Use these three lessons from experts in the contractor field service industry to achieve unprecedented levels of revenue and customer satisfaction.
Invest in your customer experience
When business slows and you’re looking at making expense cuts, be careful when considering cuts that could negatively impact customer experience (also known as CX). A study of stock performance during the 2008 recession proved companies with higher quality customer experience came out the other end with even greater market share, while their competitors suffered major losses.
In fact, companies that lagged behind in customer experience had a 57% drop in the total return of their stock, while customer experience leaders achieved a positive stock return of more than 6%.
Bottom line: companies with a high-quality customer experience are more likely to withstand a recession than those with a low-quality customer experience.
One way to achieve a great customer experience is consistent communication, even through challenging times. That’s the strategy facility service provider, ABM, uses to stay top-of-mind with their customers. “Communication is key for us,” says Rick Yelley, operations coordinator at ABM. “Staying in front of customers is going to open the door to more opportunities.”
If an industry leader like ABM uses communication to keep customers happy, you should probably look into doing the same.
To scale up your customer communications without the manual effort, look into self-service customer portals. A robust self-service customer portal, connected to your Vista ERP, provides customers with immediate access to the information they need.
In the portal, your customers can request service, review their service history, and receive automated notifications of upcoming service. With this much information at their fingertips, your customers can get the answers they need, without having to tie up your customer service line.
Adopt automation
In April, the U.S. unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since the Great Depression. Many companies are still weighing the need for more layoffs, even as the economy bounces back.
It’s an unfortunate situation when companies have to make the tough decision to layoff employees. But you can make the best of a bad situation with strategic automation technology investments.
Automation can improve the productivity of your entire service organization – regardless of the number of employees on staff.
“If you have the liquidity and the capitalization, invest in automation right now,” says Jim Henderson, executive partner at Currie Management Consultants. “When hiring comes back, if you’ve automated, you’ll have to hire less, and you’ll be in a more profitable position.”
Take advantage of the opportunity to streamline your service operations with automation technology now, and you’ll hit the ground running when the economy rebounds. And as a Vista user, you should look into field service automation that seamlessly connects to your Vista ERP.
With Vista-integrated field service automation, you can reduce or completely eliminate paperwork in the field. This means your techs can provide all the work order details your billing team needs with just a few taps on their mobile device. And your back office staff doesn’t have to waste time re-entering data into multiple systems. All the information is available in Vista, ready for invoicing.
Power up your technicians
Though some service organizations have had to lay off some field technicians, other companies are using the downtime to level up their technicians’ skills and educate them on how to best use technologies available to them.
If you’ve been hesitant to implement a new system for your technicians, now might be the best time to put a new system in place.
Jim Henderson explains why: “People resist adding new systems for techs because they don’t want to take techs out of productive work. If your productive work is down right now, it is the perfect time to get your techs trained on a new system because you don’t lose productive work and get the gains of a new system.”
Now during this lull period is the time to gear up your service organization to reach unprecedented levels of productivity.
Ask yourself: which processes can be simplified or digitized to deliver services faster, cheaper, and better? And can you invest in technology and training that will improve technician performance quickly?
With answers to these questions, you’re well on your way to boosting technician efficiency and improving the overall customer experience. And to get these answers, look into a business intelligence system that pulls data from both your field service software and your Vista ERP. Then you’ll have a complete view of technician performance and can track improvement over time.
Conclusion
It can be hard to make buying decisions during a recession. But one investment that will always offer a great ROI regardless of the economic situation is improving the customer experience.
Now is the time to stay in front of customers and make sure you’re meeting their changing needs. Make investments to streamline your field service operations to boost the customer experience. Provide education and training to your technicians so they’re better equipped to service customers when the economy rebounds.
Recessions come and go. But with these three lessons learned, your company can weather any storm.
For even more expert advice on maximizing your service revenue, watch the 60-minute webinar recording.
Webinar Recording: Maximize Your Service Revenue Through Major Disruptions
With input from dozens of field service organizations like yours, we’ve put together strategies and recommendations to support your service operations through this challenging time.
Watch the 60-minute webinar recording now to discover our best service revenue-generating ideas.
