Equipment dealers earn more from service and maintenance on machines and equipment than from initial sales. The margins on sales have come under pressure in recent years, while the revenues from service and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly interesting. Thorough automation of the field service department helps you increase service revenues.
Customers demand top quality service
Anno 2019, customers expect the service department to have excellent accessibility, be there for them immediately and provide top quality service. If you don't, there is always a competitor to take over the service and do meet expectations. Good field service automation is a must-have to provide top quality service. By automating service contracts, you can schedule every inspection and preventive maintenance in a timely and efficient manner. With information on the location, skillset and availability of mechanics, you can assign work orders to the most appropriate resource. And the field service application gives the technician a complete picture of the customer, the object and the work to be performed.
The right mechanic with the right parts
When equipment fails or malfunctions, it often costs the customer money. In many cases it means that work stops, projects are delayed or extra costs have to be incurred to bring in other machines. Therefore, it is enormously important to customers that the service department solve problems quickly and at once. So you need to have a technician available immediately, with the right skills and with the right parts. Automation helps you select the most suitable mechanic and check that this mechanic has all the necessary parts. Collecting data on breakdowns, problems and work orders and analyzing this data also gives you an increasingly complete picture of which parts and work are needed for which breakdown or problem.
Provide a great service experience
Service technicians can almost be thought of as account managers. They regularly visit customers on location, they build relationships with people and are very well informed about what is happening at the customer. That's where opportunities lie! With the right field service solution, you can make even better use of these opportunities. Enable service technicians to instantly create new work order(s), get the customer to sign and email service reports. With a field service application, technicians also see which other equipment also needs maintenance or replacement soon. With that information, they can approach the customer proactively. This personal and proactive attitude strengthens the relationship with the customer, increases satisfaction and increases the likelihood of new sales deals.
Conclusion: equipment sales are increasingly the foot in the door for many dealers. While the sales deal itself does not necessarily make a lot of money, it is the starting point of a relationship with the customer that is highly profitable in the long run due to the revenues from service, parts sales and new equipment sales.
Arend Jan Boersma is Senior Consultant at Dysel and specializes in optimizing and automating (field) service processes.
