5 Ways to Optimize Field Service for Better Client Satisfaction
The one rule to grow your business is to keep your clients happy. This will not only give you repeat customers, but you can count on your clients’ word of mouth for more business if they’re satisfied with your service.
A McKinsey survey stated that customer satisfaction could boost your revenue by 15% and lower the cost of service by one-fifth.
But here’s another interesting fact, Capgemini saw that though 79% of utility companies thought they were doing their best to keep their customers happy, only 7% of the customers agreed that they found their customer service up to the mark.
A better customer service experience can do wonders for your business, especially in field service management businesses, where clients come first. Here are five simple ways in which you can increase your customer service experience:
Speed up the response time!
You know that when your clients call you for help, their patience with their technical issue has already worn out, and they want a solution at a moment’s notice so that they can resume their business operations smoothly.
The race to provide help to multiple customers may mean shortening appointment windows and their times. While it may look like you are rapidly handling customer fixes, sometimes it might compromise the quality of work.
Instead of being reactive to calls and focusing on completion, the focus should be on the quality of the fixes and preventing future service failures. This also translates to managing different dispatching schedules and manually updating field service scheduling calendars for your customer service executives.
A field service scheduling software can transform this headache and give you access to reaching your customers fast by enabling fast and accurate technician assignments based on their qualifications.
Empower customers with self-service!
Thanks to the power of the internet and information being available at the click of a mouse, clients increasingly expect that they can DIY a problem. This also applies to field service executives, where problems are more of a technical nature. Customers often want to solve problems themselves or demand the knowledge of how they can do it themselves.
Suppose a customer executive can help the client remotely. In that case, that will be the first choice — empowering customers will help them feel more satisfied and be happier with your service when it’s needed.
Recognize the human element in field service!
Field service is a profession where your customer service executives are not anonymous, like in a call center.
While efficient service is the need of the hour, research has also shown that if the customer service executives are viewed as trustworthy and amiable by the clients, they will be repeat customers. A good field service manager should have great people skills, along with technical know-how.
Prevent service failures, especially repeat problems!
Using a field service management software also means you can prevent service failures from occurring instead of responding to failures after they occur.
This is because the software will state the customer’s problem and the history if the same problems have occurred before, which can help match the customer service executive to the client’s problem.
Create a service-centric culture!
In a survey conducted by McKinsey, it was found that 91% of customer service executives working in field service said improving customer service was one of their top goals at work. Companies can capitalize on this desire to service customers. This can be done by providing the proper education and resources customer service executives need to deliver better client experiences.
Faster response time, personalized services are essential for an improved field service experience. These recommendations help develop a customer-centric approach to an operational problem, which will enhance customer satisfaction.
Author Bio:
“Akhil Rajan is a Customer Success Specialist at Zuper, an intelligent workforce management platform for service-oriented businesses. Working with customers on a daily basis, he has a deep understanding of their needs and pain points and so he is able to contribute to the marketing strategies for Zuper with the content he writes. He writes on topics like how to increase workforce utilization, how to reduce the service turnaround time and increase workforce efficiency, customer adoption, cost reduction strategies, etc – to name a few. He is often found buried in books or playing chess in his free time.”
