Data is no longer a buzzword in the service industry. Acknowledging the value of customer data, service providers are happy to have tools like CRM software suites that are capturing detailed customer information across various touchpoints. But are businesses putting these data to good use?
Forrester reports state that around 73 percent of data within a company or enterprise goes unused for analytics. Can businesses afford to do that? Can they stay casual about letting so much data go unused? The answer is a self-explanatory 'No.'
As there has been a lot of talking about big data across all service industries, so enterprises do understand that data has a huge potential, and it can be a game-changer provided it has been rightly read, understood, and analyzed in relevance with clearly defined business objectives and verticals. But implementation is far more challenging in practice than in theory.
Before discussing how service-focused businesses can best utilize data analytics, here is a quick draft explaining the loss that a company knowingly or unknowingly bore by not adopting a data-driven approach.
The cost of unused or misused data
The cost of misused or unused data can take the form of lower operational efficiency and productivity, lost revenue opportunities, service quality issues, and more. Whereas, if enterprises can successfully leverage data analytics in their operations, they can optimize their service delivery, customer satisfaction, and profits to achieve or retain their best-in-class status.
In the same context, AberdeenGroup has found that the adoption of analytics technology has helped field service organizations to achieve an 18 percent increment in service profits, a 42 percent increment in customer retention rates, and a 44 percent improvement in SLA (service-level agreement) performance.
Data analytics and customer experience
Every interaction between a brand and its customer generates data. And a tool like CRM can effectively capture and represent that data through data visualization techniques such as Frequency distribution table, Bar Chart, Pie Chart, and Pareto Diagram. This way data becomes easy to read and understand even for people, who are not skilled with data analytics techniques.
Once the data or information is in place, it can provide insights into a range of business verticals like financial matters, competition analysis, customer experience, R&D, etc. But because the competitive edge of a field service business gets defined by factors like on-time service delivery, customer gratification, prompt redressal of customer complaints, easy accessibility, etc., so this blog will particularly focus on data analytics and its relevance in regards to customer experience (CX).
What is the customer experience?
It is not a tricky question, and there are numerous ways to elaborately answer it. In her 2017 Forbes article," What is customer experience?", Blake Morgan writes “Customer experience can include a lot of elements, but it boils down to the perception the customer has of your brand. Even if you think your brand and customer experience is one thing, if the customer perceives it as something different, that is what the actual customer experience is.”
Perhaps this definition is the crux of every concept around customer experience. In the end, customer experience is how a customer perceives a brand or service provider. Thus the power belongs to the customers, and this realization pulls out the next important question «How do customers make perceptions about a brand?’
For any service provider, it is important to identify the key touchpoints through which customers are interacting with the business because, with every interaction, the customer is forming a perception about the brand. Talking about the frontline touchpoint of customer interaction in field services, it is the field workforce that is connecting with the customers or clients at the ground level.
Empowering the frontline field workforce with data
The efficiency of the frontline workforce is vital in creating the customer experience. If they set-up poor interactions and dealings with customers, then this will lead customers to perceive a negative image for the brand. On the other hand, if the frontline workforce helps customers and delivers services with passion, then they will surely create a strong perception of the brand.
Thus companies must empower their field services team with the right tools and other necessary support. Real-time access to data or information is one necessary and vital support that the service team requires. Thus, data analytics is relevant not just at the managerial level, but even the service team should have tools to quickly interpret data that can improve their efficiency. They must know whom they are serving, what are the expectations of the customers, predict the probable pain areas, and offer satisfactory response or resolution to it.
CRM integrations for a bird-eye view of the business
CRM is designed to capture customer data and use it to manage the customer experience, but a positive customer experience develops when customers are served successfully. This is where field service management software comes in handy. FSM software includes a vast range of functionalities to improve the efficiency of the field workforce by enabling them to stay productive. The top-line built-in functionalities of a well-developed field service management software include:
Along with these functionalities, the field service efficiency can be further enhanced if at the ground level data analytics can be made part of the operations. Thus, what businesses need is integrated software that has the capacities of both CRM and FSM. Because as a standalone entity, even the most advanced CRM or FSM software will still have gaps in the ability to address the CX concerns across the customer lifecycle.
Integrating CRM data analytics into a field service software can provide the service team with the capacity and power to leverage the data captured through CRM and enhance the quality of the service. It will provide the field workforce access to data such as recent customer conversations, frequency of service, no. of service calls, open issues, cost of service and parts, transactions, customer-specific requirements, etc.
This way their efficiency will not be limited to their routine maintenance jobs, rather they will acquire added capabilities to identify sales or revenue-generating opportunities, and perform upsells and cross-sells.
The role of CRM data analytics in achieving service excellence
How can service efficiency be improved by integrating CRM and FSM abilities into one common software so that CRM data analytics can be made available to the mobile workforce?
Personalization for customers
Customer insights offered by CRM data analytics can be used by the service team to deliver more personalized services. For example, it becomes easy for the service manager to assess the schedule preferences of a larger customer base, and accordingly, he can assign the service-jobs among the technicians. Customer preferences can be recollected from their past interactions with the business. If in the past a customer was satisfied with the service of a particular technician, then the manager can quickly browse that information in-service history and repeat the same technician for that particular customer to bring in the trust factor.
Prompt service delivery with better know-how
Deploying analytics can help service technicians to resolve the problems faster. Diagnosing the problem from the scratch is time-consuming, but when service history is known through data patterns analysis of similar cases, the technician can execute faster diagnosis and improved maintenance practices.
Work assignment
CRM data analytics are great for creating visually descriptive trends across different verticals, including the performance analysis of the service teams. The performance of each individual member in the team can be analyzed with an accuracy of their field activities data such as travel time, check-in and check-out time into a job, productive hours, completed work orders, pending jobs, etc.
Anticipate service requests
In the field service industry, preventive maintenance is a great way to build a positive customer experience. This is much needed in a business that has sales service offerings. Although the support of IoT is needed to deliver maximum results, basic data analytics can go a long way in facilitating maintenance forecasting. Through analytics of operational and maintenance data, businesses can anticipate the service needs of customers, offer them preventive maintenance, and considerably reduce the downtime.
The conclusion — optimize business operations
It can be concluded by saying that for companies that function through field services, field service excellence is much needed to improve customer service. Efficient services can build a more loyal brand reputation. While field service management software is a must-have tool to achieve better scheduling, worker assignment, and better workforce engagement. But an FSM software can be better-powered when integrated with CRM data analytics, as it facilitates a data-driven approach in every functionality of FSM. This way more accuracy and transparency can be achieved; the accountability among the team members can be improved and operational costs can be brought down significantly.
Forrester reports state that around 73 percent of data within a company or enterprise goes unused for analytics. Can businesses afford to do that? Can they stay casual about letting so much data go unused? The answer is a self-explanatory 'No.'
As there has been a lot of talking about big data across all service industries, so enterprises do understand that data has a huge potential, and it can be a game-changer provided it has been rightly read, understood, and analyzed in relevance with clearly defined business objectives and verticals. But implementation is far more challenging in practice than in theory.
Before discussing how service-focused businesses can best utilize data analytics, here is a quick draft explaining the loss that a company knowingly or unknowingly bore by not adopting a data-driven approach.
The cost of unused or misused data
The cost of misused or unused data can take the form of lower operational efficiency and productivity, lost revenue opportunities, service quality issues, and more. Whereas, if enterprises can successfully leverage data analytics in their operations, they can optimize their service delivery, customer satisfaction, and profits to achieve or retain their best-in-class status.
In the same context, AberdeenGroup has found that the adoption of analytics technology has helped field service organizations to achieve an 18 percent increment in service profits, a 42 percent increment in customer retention rates, and a 44 percent improvement in SLA (service-level agreement) performance.
Data analytics and customer experience
Every interaction between a brand and its customer generates data. And a tool like CRM can effectively capture and represent that data through data visualization techniques such as Frequency distribution table, Bar Chart, Pie Chart, and Pareto Diagram. This way data becomes easy to read and understand even for people, who are not skilled with data analytics techniques.
Once the data or information is in place, it can provide insights into a range of business verticals like financial matters, competition analysis, customer experience, R&D, etc. But because the competitive edge of a field service business gets defined by factors like on-time service delivery, customer gratification, prompt redressal of customer complaints, easy accessibility, etc., so this blog will particularly focus on data analytics and its relevance in regards to customer experience (CX).
What is the customer experience?
It is not a tricky question, and there are numerous ways to elaborately answer it. In her 2017 Forbes article," What is customer experience?", Blake Morgan writes “Customer experience can include a lot of elements, but it boils down to the perception the customer has of your brand. Even if you think your brand and customer experience is one thing, if the customer perceives it as something different, that is what the actual customer experience is.”
Perhaps this definition is the crux of every concept around customer experience. In the end, customer experience is how a customer perceives a brand or service provider. Thus the power belongs to the customers, and this realization pulls out the next important question «How do customers make perceptions about a brand?’
For any service provider, it is important to identify the key touchpoints through which customers are interacting with the business because, with every interaction, the customer is forming a perception about the brand. Talking about the frontline touchpoint of customer interaction in field services, it is the field workforce that is connecting with the customers or clients at the ground level.
Empowering the frontline field workforce with data
The efficiency of the frontline workforce is vital in creating the customer experience. If they set-up poor interactions and dealings with customers, then this will lead customers to perceive a negative image for the brand. On the other hand, if the frontline workforce helps customers and delivers services with passion, then they will surely create a strong perception of the brand.
Thus companies must empower their field services team with the right tools and other necessary support. Real-time access to data or information is one necessary and vital support that the service team requires. Thus, data analytics is relevant not just at the managerial level, but even the service team should have tools to quickly interpret data that can improve their efficiency. They must know whom they are serving, what are the expectations of the customers, predict the probable pain areas, and offer satisfactory response or resolution to it.
CRM integrations for a bird-eye view of the business
CRM is designed to capture customer data and use it to manage the customer experience, but a positive customer experience develops when customers are served successfully. This is where field service management software comes in handy. FSM software includes a vast range of functionalities to improve the efficiency of the field workforce by enabling them to stay productive. The top-line built-in functionalities of a well-developed field service management software include:
- Dispatch and service scheduling
- Appointment setting
- Calendar-based scheduling
- Automated scheduling optimization
- Issue and record completion of work orders
- Contract management
- Service inventory
- Warranty management
- Invoicing and service billing
Along with these functionalities, the field service efficiency can be further enhanced if at the ground level data analytics can be made part of the operations. Thus, what businesses need is integrated software that has the capacities of both CRM and FSM. Because as a standalone entity, even the most advanced CRM or FSM software will still have gaps in the ability to address the CX concerns across the customer lifecycle.
Integrating CRM data analytics into a field service software can provide the service team with the capacity and power to leverage the data captured through CRM and enhance the quality of the service. It will provide the field workforce access to data such as recent customer conversations, frequency of service, no. of service calls, open issues, cost of service and parts, transactions, customer-specific requirements, etc.
This way their efficiency will not be limited to their routine maintenance jobs, rather they will acquire added capabilities to identify sales or revenue-generating opportunities, and perform upsells and cross-sells.
The role of CRM data analytics in achieving service excellence
How can service efficiency be improved by integrating CRM and FSM abilities into one common software so that CRM data analytics can be made available to the mobile workforce?
Personalization for customers
Customer insights offered by CRM data analytics can be used by the service team to deliver more personalized services. For example, it becomes easy for the service manager to assess the schedule preferences of a larger customer base, and accordingly, he can assign the service-jobs among the technicians. Customer preferences can be recollected from their past interactions with the business. If in the past a customer was satisfied with the service of a particular technician, then the manager can quickly browse that information in-service history and repeat the same technician for that particular customer to bring in the trust factor.
Prompt service delivery with better know-how
Deploying analytics can help service technicians to resolve the problems faster. Diagnosing the problem from the scratch is time-consuming, but when service history is known through data patterns analysis of similar cases, the technician can execute faster diagnosis and improved maintenance practices.
Work assignment
CRM data analytics are great for creating visually descriptive trends across different verticals, including the performance analysis of the service teams. The performance of each individual member in the team can be analyzed with an accuracy of their field activities data such as travel time, check-in and check-out time into a job, productive hours, completed work orders, pending jobs, etc.
Anticipate service requests
In the field service industry, preventive maintenance is a great way to build a positive customer experience. This is much needed in a business that has sales service offerings. Although the support of IoT is needed to deliver maximum results, basic data analytics can go a long way in facilitating maintenance forecasting. Through analytics of operational and maintenance data, businesses can anticipate the service needs of customers, offer them preventive maintenance, and considerably reduce the downtime.
The conclusion — optimize business operations
It can be concluded by saying that for companies that function through field services, field service excellence is much needed to improve customer service. Efficient services can build a more loyal brand reputation. While field service management software is a must-have tool to achieve better scheduling, worker assignment, and better workforce engagement. But an FSM software can be better-powered when integrated with CRM data analytics, as it facilitates a data-driven approach in every functionality of FSM. This way more accuracy and transparency can be achieved; the accountability among the team members can be improved and operational costs can be brought down significantly.