Just how proactive is your field service team? Perhaps the best way to find that out is to take a test to evaluate your performance against the Proactive Service® best practices.

As service leaders, our long-term success will be determined by our ability to deliver an exceptional service that our customers value and are willing to pay. As importantly, it must be a service experience that differentiates us from our competitors. Engaging our technicians in proactive business development is one such strategy that can deliver on these prerequisites because, if approached correctly, it can help our customers be measurably better off for having engaged us. Customers that recognize the unique value we provide, reward us with more business, with their recommendations to others and with their loyalty.

The question becomes, how well are we doing in our efforts to differentiate our business in this way and what additional steps can we take to become even better? The answer can be found by:

• Comparing our business to industry best practices
• Realistically evaluating our performance against each practice
• Identifying actions and timelines to make improvements where needed

We have created a self-evaluation checklist that will allow you to evaluate your progress against Proactive Service® best practices. It is available for anyone who would like to download it from our website. It covers six key areas of performance measurement. These are:

Business Promotion as a Service: To get enthusiastic buy-in from the field service team, our field team must recognize that making recommendations to help a customer achieve their business (or personal) goals are a valuable service. It is a service as important as their ability to repair and maintain equipment.

Understanding of the Company’s Services: Field service teams often have a limited understanding of their company’s overall capabilities. As a result, opportunities are often overlooked and this opens the way for competitors to fill the void.

Processes and Systems: Our success will largely depend upon our ability to assist our field service team in identifying, promoting and quoting recommendations that will help the customer. Failing to respond in a timely manner to an opportunity, not keeping the technician informed of progress and dropping the ball on follow-ups of quoted opportunities are just three examples of how we can sabotage our own efforts.

Interpersonal Skills: Our field service team are our ambassadors for our business so how they interact with our customers truly defines the service experience we provide. Not only must we help our customers to be better off, but we must do so in a manner that communicates this value and assures the customer that they are in good hands. The field team must recognize that customers make these assessments based on how the service is delivered – through the countless and often seemingly insignificant interactions they have with their customers as they go about their day.

Coaching and Development: Proactive Service® as a business strategy is not a one-time event, but a way of doing business that needs ongoing support and attention. As managers, we must recognize our role as leaders of the initiative and provide coaching and opportunities for practice to reinforce the key skills. We must use every opportunity to communicate the value of what we are doing and the positive impact it is having on the customer.

Customer Feedback: As a valuable service, it is important that we ensure that the customer sees value in our efforts. We must measure our performance in terms of revenues, customer satisfaction scores and retention but that is only part of the feedback equation. For example: Do we meet with them to discuss our performance and review the recommendations our technicians have made and the impact that has resulted? Do we ask them if they see value in the recommendations that our technicians are making?

Many forward thinking service firms struggle with getting the enthusiastic engagement of their technicians in business development because they have not adequately addressed one or more of the above areas. To get greater insight into where you are strong and to identify possible opportunities for improvement, download our “How Proactive is Your Service Team” self evaluation worksheet. Any questions? Just contact me. I would be delighted to hear from you.

As always I welcome your questions and your feedback. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible
for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

– Theodore Roosevelt

The post How Proactive is Your Field Service Team? – Take the Test appeared first on jimbaston.com.

During our workshops, we discuss the importance of the quality of the written word and how it helps the customer recognize the value that we provide in the work performed. This easy acronym – I-CARE –highlights the 5 steps to create work orders that shout “value”.

When I have the opportunity to speak with service managers, one of the discussion points that inevitably comes up is about the quality of the work order summaries written by their service technicians. It seems that in many organizations, the quality of the written summaries of work is all over the map – from very poor to excellent. When I ask if they have clear and simple guidelines to help their busy technicians to consistently write well, they often admit that those guidelines are still on the “to do” list.

The quality of the written work order summary is important for a number of reasons. One reason is that the customer relies on the summary to give them a sense of the quality of the work that was performed. Because of the nature of our work, it is unlikely that our customers will be able to objectively assess the quality themselves. A clear, concise and comprehensive summary will communicate more value than a simple “fixed unit” on the report. Another reason for complete and concise reports is that the report may become an important document if there is ever a dispute about what work was actually performed. Yet another reason is that a complete and concise report will save time in the long run. Think of your own organization. How many times has the technician had to be interrupted in the field to answer a question about the work performed that could have been prevented if the work order summary description was more complete?

To help you address this problem, I suggest that you introduce the I-CARE approach with your team. It is a simple, easy to remember acronym that will help your technicians write work order summaries that will communicate the value of their work.

Add your own example to provide context. You may also wish to remind your technicians to:

• Remember that everything they write on the work order goes to the customer so spelling and grammar are important
• Include all materials and relevant consumables
• Omit obvious facts (e.g. “drove to the work site”)
• Refrain from language that may create doubt in the customers mind (e.g. “seems to be working”)

Perhaps the most important question of all is to ask your team to imagine that they are the customer who will receive the invoice that will follow. Based on the quality of the work order summary, how comfortable do they feel about paying the bill?

I hope you find this helpful. If you want to see other suggestions to improve the customer experience for your customers, send me a quick note and I will be happy to send you a copy of our Pocketbook of Proactive Service®, which includes I-CARE and several other ideas for improving the service experience for your customers.

As always I welcome your questions and your feedback. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“The difference between the right word and the almost
right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

– Mark Twain

The post I-CARE – 5 Steps to Work Orders that Shout “Value” appeared first on jimbaston.com.

1. Knowledge:  We must clearly define our expectations of what we want our technicians to do.  Often we assume that our technicians know what is expected and overlook the importance of this step.
2. Skills:  We must ensure that our technicians have the skills to act in the manner we ask of them.  Engaging in proactive discussions with customers may be uncomfortable for some of our technicians and they may lack the skills to do so effectively.
3. Perception:  We must ensure that our technicians understand why we ask them to act as we do.  Speaking to customers about our services and capabilities may be perceived as a sales task by our technicians.  They need to understand that helping our customers operate their facilities more effectively is a service, not a sale.
4. Tools and processes:  We must make certain that the technicians have the tools and are supported by our processes to do what we want them to.  When our processes do not support our technician’s efforts, they will perceive that what we are asking is not that important and quickly lose heart.
5. Motivation:  To get our technicians to enthusiastically embrace a proactive service approach, they must want to do it.  Otherwise, at best they will simply go through the motions or, at worst, not act in the manner we would like them to at all.

As mentioned above, this next and final webinar called Maintaining the Service Experience (Tuesday, February 26^th, 2013), will focus on our role as managers to motivate and support our technicians to create and maintain momentum for change.

For more information on this last webinar in the Transforming the Service Experience Series, click the link below:

Tuesday, February 26^th: Maintaining the Service Experience

Note: This webinar is open to everyone.  Non CMCEF members are welcome to attend.  The webinar will commence at 11:00 AM EST and is scheduled to be one hour in length.

Once you’ve attended the webinars, I would love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Until next time,

Jim

The post CMCEF Webinar Series – Part 3 Maintaining the Service Experience appeared first on jimbaston.com.