What makes a perfect field service visit? If you’re in the business of field service, you’ve probably given that question a lot of thought. At The Service Council, we asked 180 organizations for their view of the perfect field service visit, and discovered that when it comes to serving customers onsite, perfection is less subjective than it might seem.
Topics: mobile, News, Field Service, Mobile Hardware, mobile devices, Mobile Apps, field agents, mobile maturity
With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft has been in the news. By most accounts, Windows 10 has been well reviewed and received. Perhaps not garnering as much news is Microsoft’s foray in CRM field service with the acquisition of FieldOne Systems. (Note: Microsoft has also recently acquired FantasySalesTeam, a sales gamification tool). My take on the deal:
Topics: fieldone, News, Field Service, service automation, microsoft
Our community has grown quite significantly since we started The Service Council 5 years ago. Along with growth comes a greater variety of interests when it comes to our research. In order to ensure that we are:
Topics: agenda, News, Field Service, communications, research, service business
This week we’re tracking the PTC Live Global event in Nashville. There are a lot of announcements made and discussions being held across all of PTC’s businesses, but our major focus resides with PTC’s updates on IoT and Service Lifecycle Management. Today’s post will focus mostly on strategic business announcements made in keynote sessions that impact service organizations.
Topics: Internet of Things, Service Management, ColdLight, News, Field Service, PTC, ServiceMax, Perspective, ThingWorx, LiveWorx, IoT
It’s been a busy couple of weeks with some major events in the service management and field service spaces. Hence the slight lag in my reporting. Between May 13-15, John Carroll and I had the opportunity to attend Maximize 2015, ServiceMax’s major user event in San Francisco, CA. The event was extremely well attended with over 600 participants from brands such as Coca Cola Enterprises (Europe), Schneider Electric, and GE Software. Several TSC members and research panelists were also in attendance.
Topics: GE Software, SightCall, maximize, News, Field Service, PTC, ServiceMax, Perspective, IoT, Coca Cola Enterprises
Today we heard the news that ClickSoftware was being acquired and taken private by Francisco Partners. Personally, I have covered ClickSoftware and worked with their team over the course of the previous 10 years and wish them the best as they enter this new journey. ClickSoftware has been, and continues to be, a key player in the field service automation space, and I look forward to tracking their progress moving forward. Over the course of the previous 12 months, two major software providers focused on field service, in TOA Technologies (by Oracle) and ClickSoftware, have been acquired. Most of the field service providers that started off as scheduling optimizers have now been accounted for. There aren’t many independent enterprise-focused field service software companies left.
Topics: field workforce, mobile field service, News, Field Service, Perspective, IoT, clicksoftware
Intro: I have attended The Service Council Symposiums in the past as have several of my colleagues from Xerox and other companies.
Topics: Service Products, Internet of Things, self-service, Predictive Analytics, News, Perspective, Customer Journey Mapping, Self-Support, service cost, service collaboration, big data, IT, Omni-Channel Customer Service
Wrapping up my analysis of the 2015 symposium (Part 1: here), Day three began with a keynote delivered by Joe Brown, Senior Design Lead at Ideo. His topic was “Designing New Service Opportunities”. Joe introduced us to the seven rules of brainstorming. These certainly are helpful for creating some structure in the brainstorming process. There were a series of statements throughout his discussion that have merit. They are as follows: find the right problem to solve, test ideas in minutes not months, 70% of all change efforts fail, the biggest roadblocks to change are behavioral, don’t get ready- get started, when initiating change take baby steps and make the changes temporary until proven.
Topics: News, Service Innovation, Perspective, Perfect Service Visit, service design
The fourth of four symposiums I have attended was kicked off by John Carroll at noon on Tuesday, March 10th. No complaint on the weather or the venue in San Diego they were both beautiful. Ron Kaufman was introduced as the MC for the three days. Ron performed an admirable job of learning the background of each of the speakers he introduced which enabled the attendees to better know each presenter. Our first keynote, Erica Javellana of Zappos!, discussed the creative beginnings of Zappos! by their founder Tony Hsieh. Tony was looking for a certain type of shoe to purchase and when he couldn’t find them, decided to start a company and make them. Erica went on to discuss the ten core values that the employees created which shaped their culture and a set of values that they could then use to hire and fire. The processes, values and culture that Zappos! has put in place give us a solid look at what we will be experiencing with upcoming generations entering the workforce. Following Erica’s talk there were several captivating panel discussions to choose from and enjoy. Karl Hohmann of ServicePower and I chaired a breakout session discussing Hybrid Workforce Strategies to accommodate Third Parties and Contingent Labor. We enjoyed interacting with twenty attendees, 10 having had previous experience with third parties. The discussion was lively and could have gone much longer with good discussion on the pluses and minuses of these topics.
Topics: service workforce, contingent labor, net promoter score, Talent Management, News, Perspective, service culture
Yes, it’s March, and that usually means lower productivity and a heightened sense of chest thumping tied to respective college basketball teams, atleast in North America. (I am very guilty of this given that my alma mater is a No.1 seed). While pockets of fans are tuning in across the rest of the world as well, these fans are probably much more interested in the madness of the Cricket World Cup taking place in Australia and New Zealand.
Topics: Customer Experience, Hewlett Packard, collaboration, HP, Ingersoll Rand, Vivint, Internet of Things, Talent Management, Safelite Autoglass, Xerox Corporation, News, Aging Workforce, customer value, Perspective, Zappos, knowledge management, KONE Elevator, Service Data, big data, Millenials, customer experience design, IoT, Smarter Services