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While some businesses wind down to take a break during the winter holiday season, it’s not the same for field service professionals. Field service technicians experience a busy winter attending to a range of heating, plumbing and utilities callouts caused by hazardous winter conditions – from burst pipes and boiler breakdowns due to freezing temperatures, to power outages and overloaded circuit breakers owing to excessive holiday lighting.
These emergencies, if not addressed promptly and correctly, have severe health and safety consequences for both customers and field service professionals. Ensuring that issues are resolved fast is critical, whether it is a field emergency in utilities, business services, telecoms or manufacturing.
Rev up field efficiencies with remote diagnostics
Cold weather callouts can be challenging for businesses relying on expensive, specialized scanning tools when assessing and repairing equipment onsite. To offset these costs and make emergency repairs more efficient, field service enterprises can instead capitalize on mobile data capture solutions that work on consumer smart devices.
These inexpensive devices deliver the same scanning performance as dedicated scanners along with other advanced capabilities, at a fraction of the cost. This can help increase the speed, accuracy and intuitiveness of a field service technician’s daily tasks. For example, finding the right parts in the van with augmented reality feedback visually highlighting them on the device screen. More so, during winter emergencies where faulty boilers and other equipment need immediate attention.
See how scanning-enabled smart devices help field service professionals achieve increased visibility, improving first time fix rates.
Increasingly, customers have come to expect the convenience of avoiding service delays by diagnosing and resolving boiler, electronic, internet or white goods issues on their own. They are also concerned about keeping safe in a post COVID world, and are happy to fix or install items themselves, especially those that don’t warrant the skills of a certified engineer.
Which is why remote assistance is a trend that’s here to stay, transforming how field service businesses respond – moving from reactive mode to taking proactive measures. In fact, a McKinsey study states that field service organizations that capitalize on new technologies can improve productivity by 20-30%.
Self-service convenience cuts callout costs
Bring cheer to customers and field service professionals this holiday season by equipping customers with intuitive scanning functionality on their personal smartphones or other smart devices. Make it a win-win situation by enabling customers to save on expensive callouts with self-service on scanning-enabled smart devices to:
Promptly locate asset-related warranty and maintenance information
By offering customers an easy-to-use scanning app, or enabling scanning through your website, customers can instantly find asset information by scanning barcodes, serial numbers or asset labels on items. They have access to important contract terms, maintenance schedules and warranty information, which feature on their smartphone screens without them needing to call or search for it elsewhere.
Troubleshoot technical issues
By gaining access to their equipment’s barcode or serial number, customers have access to the information they need to rectify minor issues, or install parts on their own. With augmented reality (AR) overlays added to their scanning app, customers can gain direct access to the right manual or video on their smart devices and no longer need to wait on a field technician to visit and solve the problem.
According to Gartner, boosting the stickiness of self-service channels is important, so that customers don’t have to call the company if they want to resolve issues themselves.
This video demonstrates how providing self-service convenience to customers minimizes technical visits and maximizes service agent efficiency.
Schedule a frictionless first-time onsite fix
In the event that a remote fix is not possible, when customers have the scanned equipment information and relayed it back,dispatchers now know exactly what device needs maintenance. This information comes in handy in advance of an onsite visit by a field technician to ensure that they have the tools and parts needed to fix the issue. As the technician can resolve the issue first time round, the business saves time and resources by eliminating needless revisits and expensive callouts.
Spread the cheer, not the chill this winter. Power your field operations, empowering customers with Scandit’s smart data capture remote assistance solutions. Contact us to find out how your business can reap the benefits of remote assistance.
