Working the Field: Field Service Research Summary
September 24, 2008
Edited by Stacy Straczynski
Customer expectations for faster, or even instantaneous, service are putting more and more demands on field service organizations, making it more difficult to ensure on-time arrival and high productivity. In addition, the recent U.S. economic downturn has made it harder for Americans to pay for their utility and telecommunication services, placing more demands on field service organizations to provide revenue collection enforcement to minimize risk.
In the Field
Field service plays an essential role in linking customers to a utility. Most field service organizations are responsible for connecting and disconnecting service, when customers move in, out or around the company's service territory. In addition, field service often assumes the responsibility of disconnecting customers for non-payment and reconnecting meters once accounts are brought current. Field service is the critical liaison between the customer premise and the utility.
Field service is typically responsible for obtaining any readings required outside the billing cycle—to initiate and finalize accounts, or to investigate high usage—and often, for obtaining re-reads to correct a reading and enable billing. The introduction of AMR (Automated Meter Reading) or AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) technologies can directly eliminate much of the special reads and reread work of Field Service. More sophisticated AMI or smart-metering devices can even accomplish some of the physical on-site Field Service workload through remote service connects and disconnects and tamper/theft detection.
However, until this level of automation is implemented on a wide-scale basis, most companies are left with the need to send employees into the field to provide these services on an as-requested or as-needed basis to keep the business running smoothly. Additionally, once AMI/AMR is implemented, field service duties shift to AMI/AMR meter maintenance.
Field service organizations must evolve with the introduction of automation and continually look for ways to be more efficient and effective, and the Improving Field Services 2008 study by Athens, GA-based The Ascent Group, Inc. demonstrates that this is occurring., The Ascent Group conducted its second benchmarking project to evaluate field service performance and practices to better understand how utilities are dealing with the challenges facing the Field Services function and its day-to-day operations. Fifty-one companies participated in the research.
Study Findings
Most utilities are focusing on four basic approaches to field service improvement:
• Implementing automated mobile dispatch systems or service order management systems to better manage staffing and balance workload.
• Tying laptops or other mobile devices into the CIS to provide real-time information and update capabilities in the field.
• Reducing costs through productivity improvement, elimination of field trips, cross training, and safety improvement initiatives.
• Automated meter reading or smart metering—whether it's a large-scale implementation or AMR/AMI to address "high read cost" meters, unsafe meter locations, and high-turnover premises, any degree of automation lightens the load on field service organizations. Remote disconnect/connect technologies dramatically reduce field trips, especially for utilities with high levels of delinquencies or seasonal transition.
Field Automation Increases Productivity and Effectiveness
Automating service order fulfillment is an effective way to reduce cost, improve safety, and increase customer satisfaction. Systems easily eliminate manual entry of field-collected data, make data available on a real-time basis to both the field and the office, reduce errors, and eliminate the paper piles.
Automation also brings more robust performance measures for field service. Management can track order completion times, productive time, travel time, service level performance, appointments met and missed, as well as backlog.
Forty-three percent of participants have implemented some form of field automation—mobile dispatch systems, laptops, field service handhelds, or automated service order processing. Another 31% have some form of field service automation plans in the works.
Setting Service Level Goals and Service Order Priorities
It is critical that service organizations issue field service orders wisely. Many problems can lead to an ineffective service order system—including a lack of priority working service orders, impatient or poorly trained customer service representatives and the failure to work or close service orders on a timely basis.
When any of these problems occur, unnecessary or out of date service orders can quickly pile up and overwhelm the system, rendering it virtually useless. A sign that this is happening is when duplicate orders are placed, communications with dispatchers increase in the hopes of gaining priority on an order and "special request" service orders are used improperly in an effort to move to the top of the service order pile.
Field service organizations must set realistic service level goals for all order types to ensure that all service orders are worked in a timely manner. Identifying high priority service order types is the first step in setting these goals. For instance, working all "service on" orders on the same day as requested. This goal will help them do all that is possible to complete the orders on the date requested, including making sure there are enough employees available to perform the work.
It's equally important that all service order requests are worked or properly addressed so orders don’t hang in the system perpetually. Keeping a close watch on backlog and order age should help Field Service organizations keep their commitments.
Look for Opportunities to Reduce Field Trips
Participants divulged recent improvements that have helped them reduce trips to the field. The implementation of AMR/AMI technologies (27%) unsurprisingly topped the list. "Automating service order routing and assignment" was also equally a popular among the panel. Twenty-three percent of companies mentioned initiatives to implement automated dispatch and service order management software and hardware.
Field automation offers many opportunities to optimize and even eliminate service orders. However, there is opportunity to reduce the number of field trips through process improvement and training. Companies should search diligently for ways to eliminate trips through better data integration between service order request system and billing system. For instance, systems can automatically match read in/read out orders and soft close accounts through the use of estimates or prorated readings.
Editor's note: To obtain more information on this study, visit www.ascentgroup.com. To download the rest of the research summary, visit www.ascentgroup.com/research.
Improving Field Services 2008 is published by the Ascent Group, a management consulting firm with extensive experience in customer service and call center performance improvement, benchmarking, and best practice discovery and a leading publisher of customer service journals and reports. Visit our web site to learn more about our publications at www.ascentgroup.com.
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