The latest service industry report from Aberdeen Group suggests that the most successful service organizations are making efforts to link service with all other branches of business — sales, marketing, resource management, even partner companies. The bottom line? Transparent communication between all levels of business is critical to increase revenues and customer satisfaction and retention for the top performing service organizations.

More than 120 service professionals were interviewed for Aberdeen’s report, “The Real-Time Service Enterprise: Leveraging Remote Connectivity to Drive Service Performance,” authored by Sumair Dutta and Aly Pinder, Jr. (The report is available for free download.; registration required). Top findings for the best performing service organizations include:

  • 80 percent workforce utilization, compared with 55 percent for less effective organizations
  • 21 percent year-over-year service revenue increases, compared to 6 percent increase for others
  • 2 percent year-over-year decrease in service costs, compared to 2 percent increase for others

Dutta and Pinder, Jr. offer several tips for service organizations to strengthen connectivity through all levels of business:

Start somewhere. “Even if connectivity is just in the form of basic location monitoring of service vehicles, it can enable basic routing and navigation which in turn can boost overall transit times and boost productivity.”

Your techs need access to good information. It’s important to provide technicians with critical case and customer information before they leave for a service call, increasing the likelihood that the tech will fix the problem correctly, the first time — important for customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

Nickel and dime parts inventory. Don’t make the mistake of other organizations that track technician and vehicle locations but ignore parts inventory.

More on field service management on The SmartVan.