“Successfully navigating the digital storm means radically changing how your business runs - delivering the best customer experience at the lowest possible cost, while grabbing the new service opportunities as soon as they appear on the horizon.”

(This guest blog is authored by Aly Pinder, Senior Research Associate at Aberdeen Group. The views expressed in this blog are the author's own.)

Not fixing problems the first time is the top complaint that customers have about field service work, Aberdeen’s research shows. Punctuality and how long it takes to get an appointment are customer satisfaction factors as well, but first-time fix or the lack thereof is still the top complaint.

In response, field service organizations are investing heavily in mobile solutions with the aim of providing their field agents with the right tools and information to get work done effectively and efficiently. In Aberdeen’s Field Service 2013: Workforce Management Guide (February 2013), 57 percent of organizations said investing in mobility was a top priority to improve field service performance. Organizations want mobile tools that:

Telefónica’s strategy highlights how customer experience is rising up telcos’ agenda

As telecoms markets across the world become increasingly competitive, customer experience is the new buzzword. But it isn’t just talk. Aiming to build deeper, stronger relationships with customers, some telcos are taking concrete steps to turn their mobile workforces into an efficient and productive competitive weapon.

A great example of this trend is a recent move by Telefónica, one of the largest telecoms groups in the world, to prioritize customer experience measures within a broad IT transformation initiative.  The Madrid-based group has made mobile workforce management the second technology piece to be selected out of more than a dozen technology elements involved in the transformation initiative. Telefónica announced on April 10^th, that it will deploy TOA Technologies’ mobile workforce management solution across its footprint in Latin America and Europe.

To maximize customer satisfaction these days, everybody in an organization – from the sales team to the field service team – needs to get on the same page. That’s the big lesson from a recent survey conducted by NICE Systems; it offers some valuable insights into how customers interact with service providers and what they expect during those interactions. The study explored how and why customers communicate with a broad range of businesses, including telecommunications, healthcare and insurance, in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Here are some highlights:

Stick around an organization long enough, and you get to see the wheel re-invented over and over again. From the boardroom to the bullpen, people come and people go. Institutional memory fades or gets lost. The same problems keep cropping up over and over again, the same mistakes recur and the search for solutions repeats itself. Until now. Technology might offer organizations a way to invent a wheel once and be done with it. Maybe, just maybe, enterprise social platforms offer a way to institutionalize institutional memory, truly and permanently.

**This post is guest authored by Sumair Dutta of the Aberdeen Group.

Mobile devices and applications are changing the way we communicate, interact, learn and collaborate, both in our consumer and in our professional lives. With the aid of the enhanced capabilities built into smartphones and tablets, we are no longer tethered to a desktop or workstation to access vital content, share information or communicate across multiple channels. This reliance on mobility is creeping – nay, exploding – into our professional lives as well. We are transporting the behaviors exhibited as consumers into our work lives. On a basic level, we demand access to email and other communication while on the move. Beyond that, we desire ready access to enterprise applications for internal, HR-related work or external, customer-facing activities. Organizations are responding slowly. In a recent survey of over 200 organizations on the topic of enterprise mobility, 45 percent reported that they had a B2E mobile application strategy in place, primarily to improve employee productivity while enhancing communication and collaboration. More and more organizations are putting protocols in place for employees to access enterprise applications (via apps or the Web) on employer-supported or employee-owned devices.

In field service, where mobility plays a vital role in determining success, devices get all the love and publicity. We are inundated with information about how the latest devices (e.g., the Microsoft Surface, Blackberry 10 products, the iPad 128GB) will impact field service. The fact is, the form-factors (general size, shape and layout) inherent in these devices, as well as the applications available on them, have already transformed field service. Five years ago, there were two real options for mobile handhelds – either ruggedized mobile devices running on Windows, or the more consumer-oriented Blackberry or Palm devices. The functionality of these consumer devices was often limited to communication, and they offered very little to enable technicians to get work done. There were no real rich applications developed for these consumer devices, and most work was done on paper or a laptop.

Last year, the British Parliament earmarked £100 million for a public education program that would persuade UK citizens to open their front doors when smart-meter installers come knocking.

Just for context, £100 million is enough to produce 10 seasons of Downton Abbey or to support the Queen, Prince Charles and entire Royal Household for three-plus years. Yet, in one of the worst British economies in 50 years, lawmakers saw fit to spend this boatload of money on getting ordinary folks to make – and keep – appointments with utility companies.

Why? The United Kingdom has set the ambitious goal of installing smart meters in every residence over the next six years. (The European Union wants smart meters in 80 percent of the continent’s homes and businesses by 2020.) Smart meters promise to give consumers a better handle on their household energy usage, helping them lower utility bills. On a macro level, the smart-metering program aims to promote greater energy efficiency as part of a nationwide green initiative.

How do you measure and improve field service performance?

Regardless of company and regardless of industry, COOs look to the rate of first-time fixes as one of the key performance indicators for their mobile workforces. According to Mobility and the Consumerization of Field Service,  a new report by independent analysts at the Aberdeen Group, 220 organizations from a broad cross-section of industries collectively report a first-time fix rate of 72 percent.

Recently I left my desk - an ultra-modern ergonomic workspace with a dual desk-conference table and built-in monitors - to hit the wilds of Vermont and the Appalachian Trail. I exchanged climbing five stories of stairs twice a day for rough mountain trails. My microwaved Whole Foods take-outs were replaced by freeze-dried trail food. And I lived to tell the tale.

The Appalachian Trail (A.T.) is a 2,180 mile long trail, stretching from Georgia to Canada. Thru-hikers complete the entire trail in 5-7 months, at an impressive speed of over 20 miles a day. The hike requires significant planning - after all, you'll be carrying all you brought with you throughout your hike, on your back. There are no shopping malls nearby to buy supplies you forgot to pack. No supermarkets or restaurants when you are hungry. No water faucets, showers, restrooms, electricity or garbage cans. No pharmacy or doctor. What you do have is flimsy cell reception, unpredictable weather and wild animals that would love to share your precious food.

Above all, there's the walking. Walking eight to ten hours a day, up or down a steep mountain (the total elevation gain of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is equivalent to climbing Mount Everest 16 times), on rocks, tree roots and occasional mud.

I realized that when you walk on a surface so different from the flat floors we are accustomed to, you must focus on your next step. For me, focusing on my next step thousands of times a day was a meditative experience. Out of the quiet focus came some interesting reflections on both the technology and human topics I deal with regularly on the job at TOA Technologies: reliability, redundancy, planning, invention, innovation, partnership and management.

Here at TOA Technologies, our hearts go out to everyone affected by Hurricane Sandy last week. The storm’s death toll now stands at least at 110, with an estimated $50 billion in property damage from the Mid-Atlantic to New England. Even in Ohio, hundreds of miles inland, many of us at TOA corporate headquarters personally felt the effects of the severe weather systems – power outages, flooded roads, downed trees and more. But nothing here can compare with the devastation wreaked along the Atlantic coast. All of us feel moved by the plight of those who’ve suffered injury, lost loved ones or found their homes and neighborhoods inundated.