Customer Relationship Management will go the Next Mile with Crowd Service
Brand is enhanced by the service processes in place for any organization. With customer at the center of the economic model for business sustenance and growth, one cannot ignore to see the relevance of customer service processes, which play significant role in customer retention and loyalty.
SAP acquired Coresystems recently for taking its Field Service module to the next generation of customer service providers using strong work force management processes with crowd service concept.
Let us see how we can understand Crowd Service in simple terms –
When the number of devices getting connected to Internet is growing at such a large pace customer service teams of organizations cannot provide the needed service, support and customer satisfaction, if they wait to plan the resource and schedule the job, only when the customer service team receives a phone, email or FAX.
Organizations have to prepare the ecosystem to handle the next-gen customer needs with appropriate digital technology. This is where it makes sense to prepare a crowd of technicians using partners, subsidiaries and freelance personnel.
If the crowd can be available in the cloud infrastructure - enabled mobile tools, and the devices connected to internet with IOT (Internet of Things) sensors for creating alerts as part of predictive maintenance (planned & unplanned; covered by warranty/contract), the service process will follow an automated path of generation of alerts, identification of engineers based on skill, authorization of checklists, maintenance performance and closure of WO (Work Order) with invoicing.
This is the concept of Crowd service. Let us see how it impacts the customer and in what ways. To cite an example - Automating a large job with customizable checklists will standardize the work of engineers and increase the quality of service. In Crowd service the organization should be able to create multiple WOs and schedule them as per availability of engineers for the particular task from the pool of certified partners, subsidiaries or freelance team, if he has the necessary language qualification and passport/social security identification authorized by digital tools.
Traditional field service deals with new age problems with some improvements in resource allocation and route scheduling. These improvements will not impact customer until, the changes in new field service processes start supporting the service technicians before, during and after the service is delivered. To cite an example - the inclusion of mandatory skill certificates which are valid up to a specific period for specific equipment type, is an example how the process tries to add value to customer before even the service technician is identified/dispatched for the service.
New processes allow the organizations to interact with customers in new ways. Customers realizing the benefit will not only see the improved quality of service but also will see the difference it has brought to their productivity. This can see transformation in the ways equipment manufacturer/OEM as a business partner gets invited to advice on capital investments because of FSM (Field Service Management) solution integration to ERP inventory/warehouse. To cite an example – The service engineer has a view of the part in the inventory or a new quote to a vendor for new procurement and hence can schedule the job for closure in optimum time. Mobile data solutions ensure engineer onsite complete the job faster as they have access to all the information at their fingertips.
Crowd service helps to reduce costs and improve the cash flow by increasing efficiencies in information management, planning and service delivery.
Compared to paper based invoicing Automation software accelerates invoicing by weeks or months as the steps to record expense and tracking of the same are embedded in one single FSM solution.
The embedded diagram below tries to give a high level picture of how the different components might play out.
(Views are personal)