4 customer experience lessons from an industry leader

Recently, Field Nation hosted an executive webinar with Service Council entitled “Growing Profitably in 2021: Leveraging On-Demand Talent.” The webinar featured ideas from service industry leaders, including Rob Miller, Chief Customer Officer (CCO) of Service Express. He shared how his company leverages on-demand labor to create a differentiated customer experience.

Service Express, a leader in third-party maintenance (TPM), has achieved impressive customer satisfaction metrics, including:

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

To complement its base of over 600 employees, Service Express leverages a network of on-demand technicians through Field Nation. Here are four lessons from their service delivery journey.

1. Tap into techs across geographies

Service Express customers have distributed environments, often with data centers all over the country. Customers value localized service. Using on-demand talent allows Service Express to serve client needs, even in areas where they don’t have a brick-and-mortar presence.

“When we started out, we sometimes had to turn business down because we didn’t have resources in a given city,” Miller said. “Using on-demand talent allows us to bridge those gaps so we can say ‘yes’ to more work.”

Key takeaway: Having access to nationwide talent is a win for customer experience and for growing revenue.

2. Build loyalty with on-demand workers

To deliver a stellar customer experience, Service Express ensures that on-demand workers have similar training and tools as their full-time employees. This includes access to a knowledge base, support teams, an escalation path, and training. Paying on-demand workers well — and paying them quickly — is also essential. 

“We always try to look at things from an engineer’s perspective,” said Miller. “Our contract technicians value all of the things that our full-time engineers value. Just like employees, our on-demand techs love fixing customers’ problems and fixing gear. So we provide opportunities for them to do work they enjoy while removing things like paperwork.”

Key takeaway: Provide comprehensive support and generous pay to on-demand workers to earn their loyalty. This will help ensure that all of your technicians deliver the experience your customers expect.

3. Fine-tune the vetting process

When companies deploy on-demand labor, they have to build trust in their extended network, including how on-demand technicians will represent their brand. To support this goal, Service Express uses the Field Nation platform to gain visibility into how engineers are rated by other companies and what skills they have. Service Express also provides its own technician ratings.

“If you sell one thing and customers get another, that can hurt your reputation very quickly,” Miller added. “We use the vetting features in the Field Nation platform to get the best possible person on each call, which provides the best customer experience.” 

Key takeaway: Use data such as technician ratings to find the best on-demand talent. This will help you find techs that are the right fit for your job and improve the overall experience for customers. 

4. Improve SLA compliance 

Field service is a people and parts business, and both need to be aligned to deliver on service-level agreements (SLAs). Service Express primarily has a four-hour SLA, so customers expect same-day service.

“To hit our SLAs, we need to have parts immediately accessible. You have to make parts available, whether it’s utilizing forward stocking locations, onsite spares, or some other option. It’s critical to get the correct parts to those who are fixing the equipment.”

Key takeaway: Hitting tight SLAs requires having a good handle on your supply chain, as well as the labor to get the parts where they need to be. 

Want more insights into how to leverage on-demand talent? Learn about other companies that continue to find success and deliver exceptional customer experiences by implementing an on-demand labor model.