What are the best ways to ensure honesty with customers in field service engineering?

Throughout my years of experience in service engineering, I've found that fostering open communication is crucial. Establishing clear expectations, providing transparent updates, and addressing concerns promptly contribute to building trust with customers.

1. Transparent Communication: Clearly share project details, challenges, and progress to build trust. 2. Accurate Quoting: Provide realistic estimates for costs and timelines to manage expectations. 3. Regular Updates: Keep customers informed about any changes or setbacks promptly. 4. Thorough Documentation: Maintain detailed records of work performed, including resolutions to unexpected issues. 5. Quality Assurance: Ensure the delivered work meets or exceeds agreed-upon standards. 6. Professional Integrity: Admit mistakes, take responsibility, and work towards resolution. 7. Ethical Decision-Making: Uphold ethical standards in all business decisions, avoiding compromises.

I have found thru the years that that honesty isn’t always found at the point of sale and quite often the first point of contact post sale is the service engineer. The service engineer must be empowered to make decisions in the moment. The service manager should give clear guidelines in regards to what is permissible and what they should be contacted prior to adjusting the future expectations.

Be transparent about your scope and limitations. Document and report your work accurately. Explain your decisions and actions. Apologize and correct your mistakes. Respect your customer's privacy and confidentiality.

Transparency if not properly managed, might being mis-characterized by some customer as a lack of capacity and could negatively affect a vendor's business. Field engineers should be taught on information management.

Visibility and transparency is the key. Ability to provide historical data on asset help them plan and budget in a better way.

Don't BS your customers. They may not have been able to resolve the issue you were called for, but they're no dummies. If your dishonest they will know. At the end of the day they will be happy their machine is fixed. Also you were called to fix their problem, don't make it their problem again.

The best way is to keep communication going. I always try to explain what it is, what I am doing, what I expect to find. I also give a verbal report of findings and potental improvments before I leave site.

Sometimes, you may have to make decisions or take actions that may not be obvious or agreeable to your customer, such as choosing a certain solution, changing a plan, or charging a fee. In these cases, you should explain your rationale and reasoning behind your decisions and actions, and how they benefit your customer or the project. You should also provide evidence, facts, or examples to support your claims, and avoid any vague or misleading statements. Explaining your decisions and actions helps you build trust and credibility with your customer, and shows that you are not hiding anything or taking advantage of them.

This has a greater positive impact than some realize. Not only does it speed up the corrective action, it shows character and builds trust.

Maintaining a proactive approach, being honest about any challenges, and delivering on promises further solidify a reputation for integrity in the field.