How to Achieve Service Excellence with Customer Self-Service

In the field service industry, most companies aim to delight their customers by providing service excellence. While this may sound simple enough, achieving service excellence is far from a simple task. In fact, it requires a timely understanding of what your customers want, and the ability to identify and adopt current solutions on the market that align with these expectations. Luckily, ServicePower publishes yearly blog posts that detail the most current trends in the field service industry, helping you stay up to date with the shifting expectations in the industry. 

In 2020, our research has shown that embracing digital transformation is necessary to meet your customers’ expectations, and can ultimately improve your customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. To this extent, field service customers are increasingly self-sufficient and want to be able to access information regarding their services on their own terms. This has led to an increase in the importance of customer self-service, including technological features such as a customer portal. Before we dive into how to achieve service excellence with customer self-service, let’s establish what service excellence is and why you should care about it. 

What is Service Excellence?

Service Excellence is the ability of a company to consistently meet the expectations of its customers. However, customer expectations are not static and this is not a one-time endeavor. This means that your company must keep a finger on the pulse of your customers’ needs and be ready to adapt your services to align with their new expectations. 

Why is Service Excellence Important?

In 2020, Service Excellence is integral to the success of your field service company. With the rising importance of the customer experience, it is critical that your company provides service excellence that fosters a positive experience for each and every customer. By doing so, you can improve customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. For instance, with a positive emotional experience, customers are six times more likely to buy, twelve times more likely to recommend the company, and five times more likely to forgive a mistake. 

Delighting your customers has never been more important than increasing your revenue and improving your reputation. So how can your company achieve service excellence and provide a positive customer experience?

Customer Expectations for Service Excellence in 2020

Achieving service excellence requires you to listen to your customers’ changing needs so that you can adapt your services to meet their expectations in a timely manner, ideally before the competition does. In 2020, service excellence means listening to and embracing your field service customers that crave autonomy. For instance, in the United States, 88% of customers expect brands to have an online self-service solution. 

With the majority of your customers asking for self-service options, it is apparent that customer self-service is an integral part of a positive customer experience. Moreover, self-service solutions are not only beneficial to the customer, but they are also beneficial to your field service company. According to Aberdeen, companies with self-service programs can boost customer profit margins by 6.8% a year. By investing in field service software that meets your customer's expectations regarding self-service, you are able to boost your own profits and achieve service excellence worthy of a positive emotional experience and all of its lasting benefits. 

Customer Self-Service in the Field Service Industry

With the digital transformation of the field service industry in full swing, it’s nearly impossible to provide service excellence without digital self-service solutions. However, that doesn’t mean that every self-service solution on the market is able to satisfy your customer's needs and provide service excellence. There are certain features that are necessary for a self-service solution to offer in order to satisfy the modern field service customer, including:

• Self-Scheduling Capabilities
• Real-Time Communication
• Custom Notifications and Job Status Updates
• Technician Location Tracking
• Customer Claims Access

The foundation of service excellence is satisfying your customer's needs, and investing in field service software with these five features enables your customers to manage their own needs anywhere, anytime.  

ServicePower’s Customer Engagement Portal

As the coronavirus makes field service jobs and in-home repairs even more complex, field service companies must prioritize safety first. This includes investing in field service software that enables customers to protect themselves and communicate with technicians in real-time. 

ServicePower’s Customer Engagement Portal empowers customers to manage their own safety and provides them with the autonomy that they crave. With full self-service capabilities, truth-based appointments, real-time technician tracking, custom updates, and real-time communication, customers can manage their own needs in a safe and timely manner. 

In fact, the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management Report recognized ServicePower’s popular Customer Portal for shortened interaction times for customers and warranty claims. This means that your field service company can provide service excellence by empowering your self-sufficient customers to access the information they want, precisely when they want it. 

Summary:

By embracing the digital transformation and investing in a high-quality customer engagement portal, your field service company can satisfy the expectations of your modern and independent customers, achieving service excellence. Moreover, investing in a customer self-service solution equipped with self-scheduling, digital communication, job status updates, technician location tracking, and customer claims access, will ensure that you can provide a positive customer experience that improves your customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. 

Experience ServicePower’s high-quality customer engagement portal for yourself with a custom demo.