This article first appeared on CustomerThink, authored by Mavenoid's VP of Product, Galina Ryzhenko.
Field technicians are the most expensive resource in product troubleshooting. Variable costs such as travel, hourly rates, materials, and skill level can further drive up costs for product companies. In 2022, overall field service costs increased by nearly 10% as the price of gas increased by 47% and equipment by 18%. Correctly diagnosing the exact issue that needs solving, choosing the right technician, gathering the necessary materials and spare parts, and ensuring product problems get fixed during the first visit can significantly improve your bottom line.
AI has optimized many business areas, but field service is still largely unexplored. Since on-site support will always be needed for the most complex product support issues, such as repairing tower cranes or HVAC systems, and skilled labor shortages are expected to grow over the next decade, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of field technicians is becoming increasingly important.
A Growing and Expensive Skills Gap
From 2022 to 2032, the need to replace skilled workers who leave their positions is expected to be 20 times greater than the number of new jobs being added to the market. This rate of churn is estimated to cost over $5 billion every year in talent acquisition and training costs, although the lost productivity during new hire training could amount to much more.
For product and device companies, this churn can mean inflated field technician labor costs, longer resolution times by untrained workers, and an inability to meet demand—especially for seasonal products. Considering the last two points on resolution times and unmet demand, your company stands to gain improvements in profitability and the customer experience by investing in intelligent support for field technicians.
Three Uses for Automated Support for Field Technicians
1. Visit Preparation
The most effective AI-powered product support solutions are trained on specific manuals, help articles, and other support content for each of your products. Virtual assistants, whether used by customers, live agents, or field technicians, can surface the exact troubleshooting information needed to reach a resolution.
Visit Assessment: Reviewing possible solutions might reveal that steps can actually be taken safely by a customer themselves or remotely by an agent. In both cases, a technician may determine they don’t need to travel in the field.
Reviewing Steps: AI-powered product-support virtual assistants provide customers with step-by-step troubleshooting guides they can use before scheduling a visit. If a visit is deemed necessary, field technicians can familiarize themselves with steps previously taken by the customer, helping technicians plan carefully and reducing time wasted on-site.
Required Tools and Parts: Automated support indicates the details and context of a visit so technicians can take necessary tools and replacement parts for troubleshooting. Knowing what to bring ensures a single site visit doesn’t turn into two.
2. Upskill Field Technicians Using AI-Guided Support
In their Voice of the Field Service Engineer Report, Service Council found that 42% of field technicians felt they were not coached on areas where they could improve. Intelligent and industry-specific support tools can help ramp up new field technicians quickly and assist seasoned technicians in increasing their efficiency. Specialized support tooling gives immediate access to both official product knowledge and organized tribal knowledge from product experts.
Official knowledge includes the documentation in manuals, help articles, and other support content used to train an initial AI model. It’s where most product and device companies stop when creating knowledge bases.
Organized tribal knowledge is the practical information usually siloed in the minds of experienced field technicians or product experts, structured and taught to AI. It includes information on fixing problems in specific scenarios and under unique circumstances that you won’t find in a product manual.
Consider, for example, a lawn care product company that needs to significantly increase the number of technicians in its fleet during summer months. Intelligent AI-powered support can be used as a training tool to familiarize new hires with product lines in the short time between spring and summer. More importantly, field service leaders can relax knowing that the new hires can access every available product resource from any device.
3. Continuous Feedback Loop
In the previously mentioned report by Service Council, only half of the respondents agreed that their organization prioritized training or was interested in collecting technician feedback. Specialized AI-powered support tools help companies create a powerful feedback loop from field technicians to administrators and management.
Troubleshooting Trends: Managers can gain insight into trends such as which problems technicians are facing most frequently or emerging product issues.
Evaluation of Knowledge and Processes: After troubleshooting on-site, field technicians can report quantitatively or qualitatively on the effectiveness of knowledge resources and processes.
Data collected by field technicians is fed back into an AI-powered support tool, where administrators or product experts can use it to develop more effective knowledge and processes. By continually repeating this cycle and evaluating the success and failure rates of previous troubleshooting, the support tooling—and the field technicians who use it—become increasingly effective over time.
Increasing Efficiency with AI-Powered Support for Field Technicians
Field service faces challenges like an aging workforce and rising material costs, and traditional approaches to support may fall short. Fortunately, modern AI technology can enhance your technicians’ performance and address these challenges directly. By helping all technicians reach their full potential, specialized AI-powered support tooling boosts productivity, improves customer satisfaction, and increases profitability, making it crucial for product and device companies.
To access the full article from CustomerThink, click here.
