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.

Do you:

1. Position business development as an important service activity to be performed by your service technicians? When technicians recognize the valuable service they perform when making recommendations that will help the customer, they will be more likely to engage them in conversation rather than thinking that it is the salesperson’s job.

2. Have a fail-safe mechanism for handling leads from the field? When our office team does not follow up opportunities, we are in effect telling the technicians that we were “only kidding” when we asked them to explore ways to help the customer.

3. Encourage your technicians to regularly follow up on recommendations they have made in the past? Our customers are busy and sometimes they forget. Our technicians provide a valuable service when they remind them.

4. Formally or informally meet with your key customers to review past performance (including recommendations) and help them use that information to plan/budget for the future? This is a great opportunity to enlighten your customers of the value of the service your techs are providing and engage them fully in the process.

5. Set aside time in your regular service meetings to discuss and practice customer service and business development skills? We wouldn’t dream of letting our customer’s equipment run without any maintenance. We should take the same approach to skills adoption. Regular maintenance will help maintain an exceptional level of customer service.

In our experience in working with service firms, many have found it helpful to use our ‘How Proactive is Your Service Team Checklist‘ to regularly analyze their performance against key measures. It helps them focus on what matters most in an industry that is easily distracted by the demands of the day-to-day realities of the business. The complete Checklist consists of 15 key questions.

We will look at some of these questions in more detail in subsequent blog posts.

In the meantime, I would like to offer all readers of this blog a complimentary copy of our ‘How Proactive is Your Service Team Checklist‘. If you are currently a subscriber to Baston’s Blog, you do not need to do a thing. I will send you a separate link to you to enable you to download a copy of the Checklist. Look for that shortly in your in-box. If you are not currently a subscriber to Baston’s Blog and would like a copy of the Checklist, simply click here to subscribe and upon verifying your subscription, you will receive a link to your complimentary copy. It is our stated goal to provide a regular blog that offers value to its readers. It is my hope that you will find Baston’s Blog helpful and worthwhile, but if you do not, please remember you can unsubscribe at any time.

I’d 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.

Jim

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

Stephen R. Covey

The post 5 Questions to Help you Evaluate How Proactive your Service Team Is appeared first on jimbaston.com.