The perfect service visit

A recent survey of 260 field service operations leaders gives insight into ‘the perfect service visit’: what drives customer satisfaction and how should it be measured?

It is well known that field service operators who achieve high levels of customer satisfaction are rewarded with superior customer loyalty and improved revenue growth. What is less clear is what exactly drives that high level of customer satisfaction, how field service leaders are measuring it and what is the interactive nature of those specific metrics.

Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions recently collaborated with The Service Council to survey 260 field service operations leaders around the world. The survey focused on how service-oriented businesses were approaching the issue of revenue growth and more specifically how they were driving revenue growth at the point of service.

What makes a ‘perfect service visit’

In pursuit of greater understanding of the connection between high levels of customer satisfaction with improving loyalty and revenue growth, Honeywell wanted to understand how field service leaders perceived the idea of the ‘perfect service visit’ as a function of customer satisfaction.

The approach was to determine which aspects of a field service visit helped companies to drive and define a strategy to improve customer satisfaction overall. As a leading data point and indicator, Honeywell began the survey into customer satisfaction looking at ‘first-time fix’ rates. The Service Council has documented the connection between first-time fix rates and customer satisfaction and shows that companies achieving less than 50% first-time fix have an average customer satisfaction rating of just 57%. This is in comparison to companies that have a 90% or greater first-time fix rate and a commensurate customer satisfaction average rating of 94%.

But what are the other components that make up the perfect service visit? In Honeywell’s survey, three more well-known metrics were chosen that also contribute to customer perceptions of a high-quality, high-value service experience:

1. On-time arrival,
2. Repair/visit completed within 4 hours or an agreed timeframe, and
3. Billing accuracy.

These three metrics were added to the first-time fix metric and Honeywell asked survey respondents to rank them in order of their perception of importance to their customers. The rankings were one to four (with one being the most important and four being the least). The following table illustrates a slight departure in the ratings from the Asia Pacific region with the rest of the world and highlights the metrics that customers of the surveyed organisations rank as being the most important from a field service perspective.

Metric	North America	EMEA	Latin America	APAC
First-time fix	1.8	2.2	2.1	1.9
On-time arrival	1.9	1.8	1.9	1.8
Repair/visit complete within 4 h or SLA	2.8	2.3	2.7	2.7
Bill accuracy	3.5	3.7	3.4	3.7

International ranking of customer service metrics.

How advanced document imaging can improve the billing process

As illustrated in the results, billing accuracy is vital in relation to customer satisfaction levels for field service businesses, and they need to have the right technologies in place to facilitate accurate and timely billing.

Mobile imagers give field service workers a fast and reliable way to convert paper documents into electronic forms. Combining mobile imaging with wireless communication gives backend systems the documentation they need to start various processes hours or even days earlier than when paper-based processes are used. Transmitting document images wirelessly not only gives office workers a head start, it also saves considerable data entry time and prevents manual data entry errors.

One of the most beneficial uses of mobile document imaging in the field service industry is to capture billing details and then send the electronic image to headquarters for processing. This process provides several major benefits. First, it provides critical information needed for downstream planning and optimisation. Second, it shortens the billing cycle, because the billing department does not need to wait for a field service worker to return with paper documentation to begin preparing an invoice. Third, the process enables the organisation to work with electronic records instead of paper documents. Electronic forms are more accurate and cost less to prepare, process and archive.

Understand what customers want to improve service visits

Naturally there are many more facets of a customer facing interaction that are going to impact the perception of value and satisfaction other than these specific metrics above. However, until field service operations teams dig into the most important elements of their services that drive the highest level of customer satisfaction for their customers, they cannot begin to make specific investments to improve the workflows that impact these results. Regardless of whether the answers are improving workflows that are customer-facing or those that are between the back-office operation and technician, understanding what specific customers seek in one or more types of service offered is the starting point to truly improve bottom line performance.

In general the linkage between customer satisfaction, the right to earn more loyalty and the revenue growth associated with that is clear. The next step is to define the customers, the specific services they desire and their measures of customer satisfaction. Those companies that do this best, and build their customer-facing and back-office workflows to accentuate those customer values will not only win the hearts and minds of their customers, but they will earn the right to create a long-term, profitable relationship that increases value for both parties.

Image credit: ©Kurhan/Dollar Photo Club