If you’ve ever heard of the Aberdeen Group, they’ve recently published their document titled ‘ Five Steps to Drive Innovation in Service,’ which is very applicable if your  niche falls under the field service industry.  Most of these steps, though, are correlated in how it’s applicable to most businesses catering to field service.

 

Below you’ll find Aberdeen’s five steps for innovation and how they can be easily applied to your field service.

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1. Listening to the team in the field

 

At the top of the list, it should be well considered that communication with your dispatched team should be a priority. With all the improvement and innovation in the service industry, there are still some errors that are inevitable to it.

 

Whenever there’s a problem encountered, mostly—as a boss—you’re left with two choices while they’re on the field; get over with the error and move forward or address it and apply all efforts necessary to change it.

 

Of course, one of the primary goals with any technology or software is to get the most out of it—to utilize it to its full extent and potential. For example, if a service rep uses a CRM software and she can’t express her frustrations or suggested changes, chances are she’s going to feel indifferent towards it. Apply that now to your field service technicians, and they’ll most likely be frustrated with the system.

 

In purview of using the systems, you must allow your business and team to have openness in terms of communication and the willingness to hear from them. Listening to your team, especially if they are out on the field, will allow you to easily point out flaws, address them, and apply necessary changes.

 

2. Use new resources to create new offers

 

When it comes to your team that’s out on the field, it’s undeniable that they can make wonders with their improvisations—just imagine what they can do with some duct tape and WD 40.

 

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Your team can see the flaws in your system as well. And with their knowledge and expertise on the given niche, they have great ideas and better solutions for how they can fix it. Oftentimes, they find unconventional ways they can solved such tasks.

 

But how does this apply to your business and how can you utilize it? You take their expertise and use it as a new resource. Did you find an unconventional yet effective way they are improving your HVAC services? Good! That’s one way to start! You can offer it is a new form of service. This process does not need to be tedious. Like we’ve said, there’s an integral factor between you and your team: communication.

 

3. Engage customers

 

While Aberdeen merely suggests forums and interactions with your customers, there’s actually more to it that you can do.

 

If you’re in the field service business, this is pretty obvious.

 

Your customers will usually call your business if there’s a problem they need to fix. While they’re at it, it’s sometimes overlooked that the customer’s have more problems that needs to be addressed. Say improvements to their home, more troubles with their HVAC, and other things in between.

 

Prior to your dispatching of your team, there should be a briefing in between which will help them play an active role in engaging with your customers.

 

4. Have someone else in charge

 

 

While this view is very unorthodox, this is obviously effective. It actually makes a lot of sense, though. If your team is out on the field, and you’re the only one to manage them and you’re sitting at the office, you won’t do much of a great job in handling them.

 

If you do, however, have someone else in charge that’s in the field, it opens up new lanes for engagement and improvement. However, it should be noted that these persons should be customer-centric and that they ensure their service processes would improve productivity and not the other way around.

 

5. Work in collaboration to find new offers

 

Arguably one of the easiest and fastest way to acquire collaboration within your organization is to make sure that there are regular meetings between the officers and those who are in the field. The latter are more knowledgeable of what the needs of the customers are and the former can implement new changes in the system to cater to these services.

 

Keep in mind that those in the service or field and those in the office have opposing views. So, it’s best if someone has to moderate it!