Field service is not yet another area of your business that simply “costs” money. You can work on it to make it an essential part of your service that could bring any benefits and improve business results. Don’t look at it as a necessary evil – try to use it to your advantage.
Your field employees can be turned into customer service ambassadors that can help you create better relationships with your customers and make them loyal to your business. You have to adopt a customer-focused model and show personal investment in their needs to gain their loyalty. Here is how.
1) Use field service management software
Any business that wants to succeed needs to adopt new technologies that can streamline various processes. Luckily, there are also a lot of cost-effective field service management software tools that you can use for this purpose.
Such tools offer automated processing, increased cost-efficiency, greater productivity, better responsiveness, and greater accuracy. All of these things will lead to a better service which improves customer experience. This will reflect on customer loyalty – happy customers are loyal customers.
2) Make a good first impression
When customers have talked to your salespeople and your customer support about scheduling the field assistance, the next step is for your field employees to get out and meet them. Even though your sales team and support have made a good impression on them the physical interaction becomes crucial.
This is why you need to train field employees to present your company in the best way possible when meeting customers. They need to look presentable, be respectful, communicate properly, answer questions, and be professional to leave a great impression.
3) Make sure that your technicians show up on time with all the equipment they need
It might sound like an obvious thing to do, but think about the actual practice and how often it happens that a field employee shows up late due to bad organization and management. At the same time, think about how many times you sent employees who weren’t up to the task and then had to send someone else to replace them.
When a field employee or a technician is on site, they are responsible for managing and meeting the expectations of customers. If they don’t have adequate equipment or are sent to the site late, it will be on them.
4) Give your customers gifts in advance
Most businesses like to give their customers gifts after they have used their services. Although this can be a good thing to do, the better option is to give those gifts in advance as a surprise. Give your employees on the field some inexpensive but meaningful gifts that they can give to customers and set the tone of the relationship.
Customers will be amazed by this kind of gesture and look at the whole thing from a different perspective. They will focus more on the positive sides and have a more enjoyable experience.
5) Train field employees
Field service needs to be perfect because it’s your brand’s physical connection to the customers. Your customers need to see professionalism and competence on your part. Make sure that your employees get regular training so that they can provide state of the art installations, useful consultations, and a service that will blow people away.
6) Ask customers for their feedback
Getting customer feedback is incredibly important. Not only will it show that you care about what people think but it will also let you see things from the customer’s perspective. This can help you improve your service and earn their trust. Do this with short surveys by contacting people when your field agents have left the site, or have employees on site carry short 2 minute surveys.
7) Provide good support
Field services are very specific because customers usually have more questions and issues bothering them. The process usually involves strangers coming to the customer’s house to provide them with a service. This is why people need to be offered more information, advice, and guidance preemptively to ease their concerns and help them understand what you will be doing for them.
With these strategies, you will be able to improve customer loyalty, earning a stable base of customers. Furthermore, in this kind of business referrals are the best way to acquire new customers.
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