How is IoT Redefining Field Service?

In the traditional service model, there is a proportional investment in overhead costs. To grow the service business, you must also grow the service technician footprint. This means that service providers often encounter high operating costs to hire and train more technicians to meet the increasing demand. Further, traditional field service relies on a reactive model—meaning that technicians are dispatched upon equipment error. This approach hinders field service success on several fronts. First, it increases customer downtime, and subsequently causes higher costs, reduced efficiency, and lower customer satisfaction overall. To combat some of the setbacks of traditional models, service leaders explored how to detect equipment issues proactively. Today, predictive and condition-based maintenance programs can detect issues before they become significant problems, allowing for streamlined resolutions at optimal schedules and costs. Further, IoT-enabled remote access and control allow users to connect with devices from afar, reducing the amount of technician dispatches needed to solve a problem and dramatically improving the mean time to resolution.

Connected service solutions are proving highly effective in eliminating blind dispatches and increasing first-time fix rates—reducing operating costs and improving productivity. When technicians have access to better tools for success, they can optimize call planning, reduce truck rolls, and tackle any challenge they may face in the field. IoT also provides real-time data and insights that can help field service leaders make informed decisions, improve service quality, and boost customer satisfaction. The real-time data provided by the IoT can help service organizations communicate and interact with their customers more effectively—and even tailor their offerings to provide a customized and valuable experience.

IoT can help service organizations improve the availability, reliability, and quality of equipment, which in turn increases the customer’s productivity and profitability. Service providers can also use IoT to monitor, diagnose, and fix issues with their equipment from anywhere, without having to initiate a truck roll. By reducing the number of dispatches, service providers can achieve:

• Higher first-time fix rates, saving technicians time and effort—and allowing them to swiftly move onto the next issue to keep operations running efficiently.
  Lower mean time to resolve, boosting customer satisfaction and the overall efficiency of service operations.

• A strong connected strategy can serve as a partner to service organizations, helping them boost revenue through more efficient operations and enhanced customer loyalty. By leveraging the IoT, service providers can offer proactive, personalized, and predictive services that meet or exceed customer expectations and create long-term value.

Remote machine diagnostics provide critical device information for better call planning and quicker mean time to resolution. By gaining visibility into real-time machine performance, historical data, and contextual information, service organizations can turn data into action. By leveraging remote diagnostics, organizations can achieve:

• Up to 50% faster response time

• Up to 92% first-time fix rate

• Up to 47% decrease in maintenance incidents

• Up to 83% faster resolution time

• Up to 75% less time spent on site

Connected field service can empower your technicians with productivity solutions that help manage and control incidents, optimize call planning and on-site reactivity, and improve first-time fix rates. Through harnessing the power of smart connected products, organizations have increased field service productivity and . Maximizing customer uptime while minimizing technician dispatches is a sure-fire way to increase revenue at your organization. Streamlined service procedures, fueled by remote condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, free up time and effort that might have been spent on return service visits or traditional equipment diagnostics. So not only are customers satisfied with more comprehensive support and less downtime, but your service can also without needing to increase staffing levels. The IoT can reduce the need for on-site visits, saving time, money, and resources for both the service providers and customers. By improving communication between field technicians and customers, problems can be solved quickly and remotely, eliminating costly truck rolls and boosting first-time fix rates. IoT-enabled service organizations can also make it easier to maximize uptime. By using predictive maintenance, it’s easier to schedule service during idle hours—meaning valuable machine uptime won’t be interrupted. For service providers looking to achieve their sustainability goals, IoT can help in a variety of ways. By reducing the number of truck rolls, organizations can associated with service visits by minimizing fuel consumption, emissions, energy usage, and waste generation. Further, IoT can help streamline the scale and deployment of parts. This enables service teams to place materials in optimal amounts and locations that minimize distribution and logistics costs expenses as emergency shipments. Sustainable maintenance is also an excellent way to cut costs. Sustainability is directly tied to efficiency — so by reducing truck rolls, extending the healthy, usable lifetime of assets, and optimizing asset performance, you can significantly streamline service operations and reduce unnecessary spending.

Blind dispatches represent a major cost for many field service organizations. What if product data could be used to take action before any downtime occurs? IoT solutions for field service can make sure technicians arrive at the site with the right tools and parts to tackle multiple calls in one dispatch.

Service organizations can begin their IoT journey by connecting their products with the option to expand beyond remote condition monitoring. Service leaders have demonstrated proven value by introducing:

• Condition-based service, which increases uptime by performing maintenance on an as-needed basis instead of a calendar year, decreasing technician dispatches.

• Remote diagnostics, which can lower the costs associated with service by reducing truck rolls and improving FTFRs.

• Remote access and control, allowing users to connect to and interact with devices at remote locations, lowering the need for multiple dispatches and shortening mean time to resolution.

• Predictive service, which continuously reduces unplanned uptime.

The specifics of connected field service might be unique to the needs of individual teams, but all service organizations face similar industry-wide challenges. Whether they are confronting a worker shortage or a daunting digital transformation initiative, connected field service is one of the first steps in the right direction for many organizations.