Service Express leverages on-demand labor to deliver world-class service

Service Express + Field Nation at a glance

Customer

Service Express, a leading third-party maintenance provider with 6,000+ customers and 800+ employees

Challenge

Efficiently finding and deploying qualified technical resources nationwide

Solution

• Augmented full-time workforce with on-demand labor to meet clients’ needs across the country or in areas with limited coverage
• Find and vet nationwide, on-demand technicians to support server, storage, and networking equipment for midsize to enterprise customers nationwide

Results

• Partnered with Field Nation since 2012
• Expanded business faster into new regions 
• Consistently achieved exceptional customer service metrics, including:
  • SLAs of four hours or less
  • 97% first trip repair success
  • 99.8% inventory accuracy
  • 99.5% calls returned within 30 minutes
  • A net promoter score of over 90
• Tripled revenue per engineer ratio

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As a leading third-party maintenance provider, Service Express specializes in data center maintenance for server, storage, and networking equipment. The company has more than 4,000 customers, over 800 employees, and offices throughout the U.S., Asia, and Europe.

Rob Miller is the Chief Customer Officer at Service Express. His team handles everything related to service and support.

According to Miller, “Our goal is to provide the best experience for our customers, partners, and employees. Ultimately, we strive to ensure that all interactions, whether internal or external, provide the best possible experience.”

The company’s focus on service delivery excellence has paid off, resulting in impressive customer experience metrics, such as:

• 97% first trip repair success
• 99.8% inventory accuracy
• 99.5% calls returned within 30 minutes
• A net promoter score of over 90

Long-term partnership supports service delivery goals

Service Express began working with Field Nation in 2012. Over the years, the two companies have developed a close partnership.

“Throughout our partnership, we’ve collaborated with the Field Nation team, developed goals, and conveyed our expectations. In turn, Field Nation has tailored the platform based on our needs,” Miller said.

“In turn, Field Nation has tailored the platform based on our needs.” – Rob Miller, CCO, Service Express

Initially, Service Express chose Field Nation to fulfill service requests in areas where they didn’t have a brick-and-mortar location. The company has experienced many benefits from using on-demand labor to complement its staff of full-time engineers.

“The ability to use on-demand labor to seamlessly cover our staffing needs is a huge advantage. With access to the Field Nation marketplace, we never have to worry that we can’t run calls in a city,” Miller said.

What’s more, the experience of using a Field Nation technician is seamless to the customer. Customers initiate a service request by calling in or submitting an automated ticket. Either way, their experience is the same, whether the job is serviced by a full-time employee or an on-demand technician from Field Nation.

“From an operational standpoint, working with Field Nation is a finely tuned machine. The platform is super easy to use and our teams understand how to use it. This ensures that the experience is consistent for our customers,” Miller added.

Data and insights inform service delivery

Service Express leverages Field Nation to help deliver service in the most efficient and cost-effective way while tailoring the experience to what customers want.

Because of the easy access to robust data, Miller explained that Service Express is “all in” on using the Field Nation platform. The data is essential to helping Service Express understand the market, and the talent available to them and their customers.

Also, the platform allows Service Express to score different engineers so the company can quickly find the best talent.

“If there’s a project in a given city, we can easily find the top people to put on the project. We know their skill sets and their project history. That’s been hugely valuable,” Miller expressed.

Growing into new markets

Service Express has achieved double-digit annual revenue growth for two decades. The company’s success has been fueled primarily by organic growth, with a handful of strategic acquisitions.

Tapping into Field Nation’s nationwide network of field service engineers has supported this growth by allowing the company to scale geographically.

“Early on, we would shy away from deals outside of our core markets. But now we can build our revenue in new geographies until it makes sense to ‘plant a flag.’ We can meet our customers’ needs with a variable workforce from Field Nation, with full confidence that it will go well,” Miller said.

“We can meet our customers’ needs with a variable workforce from Field Nation, with full confidence that it will go well.”

On-demand labor also helps Service Express respond to sudden peaks in demand, such as after an acquisition. Field Nation gives them “burst capacity” with an on-demand workforce until it makes sense to staff up with full-time employees.

An efficient and profitable labor model

Working with Field Nation has allowed Service Express to transform its labor model to optimize efficiency and profitability.

Previously, Service Express would hire a full-time engineer as soon as they entered a market. It might take a year or two for the new hire to become fully utilized. Because Service Express uses a primary and a secondary engineer for each job, they would also hire a secondary engineer to help with on-call work. This was required to hit the company’s SLAs, which have an engineer on-site within 4 hours. Service contracts require them to achieve the SLAs 24 hour hours a day, 7 days a week.

“With Field Nation, we gain a ton of efficiency from a cost perspective. Using a variable workforce allows us to extend the next hire. When we do hire and the workload makes sense, we utilize Field Nation to back us up on calls. This also helps us improve our employee experience by sharing on-call work, and allowing our full-time engineers to take time off when needed,” Miller explained.

By leveraging on-demand labor, Service Express had tripled revenue per engineer since 2014. Service Express has achieved these efficiency gains while delivering an excellent customer experience.

By leveraging on-demand labor, Service Express had tripled revenue per engineer since 2014.

Of the company’s many service delivery achievements, Miller is most proud of its net promoter score, which is over 90.

“To achieve a world-class net promoter score as we have, every interaction with customers has to be on point. That would be impossible without leveraging the variable workforce in the way our customers expect. We couldn’t do what we do without the great partnership from Field Nation,” he concluded.

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