For service leaders, knowledge management must be a top priority. One reason? As field workers retire, companies are losing significant amounts of “tribal knowledge” that isn’t well-documented anywhere except in those technician’s minds. Customer expectations are higher than ever, and service organizations simply cannot afford to operate in a massive brain drain. Another reason is that companies increasingly recognize how powerful the collective knowledge of their workforce could be, if only every employee could access it. Knowledge management is power in the field.
But wait a minute, what is knowledge management?
Gartner defines knowledge management as “the formalized management of intellectual assets, enabling effective action through their use… which promotes a collaborative and integrative approach to the creation, capture, organization, and use of intellectual assets”.
The lack of knowledge at the point of service results in extended downtime for customers, secondary service visits, low productivity and lost revenue. Proper knowledge management benefits all stakeholders:
Customer Satisfaction
With real-time access to customer service history and equipment details, technicians will be able to diagnose and resolve problems faster, improve utilization and productivity, and resolve more customer issues on the first visit. Customers will have a better service experience, improved product uptime, and faster answers using self-service customer portal.
Money in Your Pocket
Field service organizations that leverage knowledge management have higher first-time fix rates, better Service Level Agreement compliance, and improved profit margins.
Dynamic Checklists Empower Your Service Technicians
Service technicians generally find themselves on their own when providing field services. However, this does not mean they have to be without access to key knowledge and insight. Nowadays, thanks to checklists and file libraries, they can remain connected to the know-how they need to provide quality service. Dynamic checklists enable workers to perform efficiently and effectively thus maximizing productivity and customer satisfaction.
Checklists also ensure conformity and compliance and guarantee that processes are standardized across the board. This means that all your customers receive the same level of quality service regardless of the level of experience and expertise of the assigned technician.
Service Excellence and Efficiency Through Shared Knowledge
With knowledge management, you can ensure that all team members share the same data by applying information captured in the field to business processes and practices. Whether online or offline, your employees in the field will have access to all the necessary information to ensure that your customers receive the right response on the first visit.
Centralize Knowledge Base in Cloud
Even if different teams create the content, having a centralized warehouse to publish the content makes it more effective to manage, maintain, and share. Data Silos, fragmented content, and disparate applications cost more and lower the user experience. With cost-effective and secure cloud storage, field service organizations can keep the information consistent, up-to-date, and available in real time, anytime and from any location.
Integration
A connection between key business tools provides your service technicians with access to the same information as your back-office team while they are on site with customers. This means, for example, that they have a complete overview of a customer’s history, previous product issues, and all the necessary handbooks, guidelines, SLAs, and more. And all of this adds up to a higher first-time-fix rate and more efficient customer service.
Capitalize on Knowledge Accumulated by Field Service Technicians
Integration with your CRM makes it possible for field service technicians to provide increased customer insight and overview to back-office employees. With shared access to information like follow-up visits, device models, upgrades and more, field service workers and back-end representatives can work together to increase cross-selling and upselling initiatives.
By linking field techs with each other and with back office personnel, mobile technology keeps everyone within the organization in sync, transcending the limitations of geography. Whether you have technicians that are retiring, off sick, or busy on another job, automating and sharing data reduces the risk of having a single point of information. A connected mobile device helps build an easily accessible knowledge base so field workers can access information anywhere, anytime, regardless of their location.
Knowledge is the key to success for any business. Collecting valuable field service information like documentation, product manuals, video tutorials, and invaluable accumulated knowledge from experienced service technicians empowers your field staff, and leads to increased employee and customer satisfaction.
Contact FIELDBOSS for a free demo and start building your knowledge base today.
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