Our customers move many needles.

We recently polled nearly 150 of our customers big and small to find out the kinds of results they’re seeing after implementing ServiceMax. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot trending up and to the right.

From increasing first-time fix rates on equipment out in the field to optimizing engineer productivity and managing inventory more efficiently, it’s clear ServiceMax’s roots, reach broadly throughout organizations.customer-stat

But while some of the metrics can get a little in the weeds (such as “post-sale attach rates” – which, by the way, go up 8 percent after using ServiceMax), to me all of it ladders up to three main business benefits: customer satisfaction, revenue and profitability.

Let’s dig in.

Customer Satisfaction

  • 13% reduction in the time it takes to repair equipment. Imagine a 13 percent reduction in Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) across your product range and then transpose that to headcount savings, or indeed driving additional productivity to generate new income streams.
  • 12% improvement in machine uptime. Thanks to proactively monitoring machine status, having the right spare part on the first visit, access to knowledge and social channels to discuss issues all of these benefits mean our customers are able to more often avoid taking machines offline to repair.
  • 11% increase in Net Promoter Score. This is the key measurement of how happy your customers are – in essence, how likely are they to recommend your product or service to someone else? Juicing this by 11 percent means more renewals, more referrals and ultimately, a growing and profitable business.

Revenue

  • 8% increase in post-sale attach rate. I mentioned this earlier. In a world where in some companies the only human touch your organization has with your customers is your service engineers then this is a very welcome revenue driver for your business. Basically, this stat indicates how much other “stuff” do you sell after the product ships. This number going up is a good sign for a service organization and equals more profit.
  • 11% increase in contract renewals. Again, happy customers means more of them wanting to renew, which in turn delivers the ‘golden shot’ in field service – namely, recurring revenue streams.
  • 13% increase in service revenue. The previous two points feed into this, but depending on the size of the organization, this can mean several million in added cash flow.

Profitability

  • 8% reduction in service costs. 8 percent! Just take a look at your P&L and remove 8 percent from your costs –when was the last time you made an investment that could do that?
  • 18% increase in technician productivity. As service organizations implement mobile-ready cloud-based management software and equip technicians in the field with customer and install base information right at their fingertips, it’s easy to see why productivity skyrockets. Just imagine what you could do with that kind of additional bandwidth in your field service team

This isn’t marketing bologna; these are existing customers telling ServiceMax what they have actually achieved!

A few percentage point increases here and there can mean millions in saved costs or added revenue.

I’ve been in and around field service organizations for nearly three decades and have always believed that a properly managed field service organization can have a dramatic effect on the overall business. A few percentage point increases here and there can mean millions in saved costs or added revenue.

The field service space is undergoing a massive shift thanks to the cloud, IoT and mobility and the above numbers are ones that can finally prove to c-level executives who crave these results that service is truly the next frontier.

And it’s results like these that make it no wonder Gartner just named us a Leader in their Magic Quadrant report for Field Service Management. Have a look for yourself.

ABOUT Dave Hart

Avatar photoDave Hart is the former executive vice president of corporate development at ServiceMax. Previously, he was vice president of global customer transformation at ServiceMax, where he worked with prospects and existing customers to understand and unlock the true value their field service organizations. Having started his career as a field service engineer, Hart has decades of field service management and customer transformation experience, most recently leading Pitney Bowes' entire European service organization. During his more than a decade at Pitney Bowes, Hart also managed the international DMT (Document Messaging Technologies) service group, UK GMS (Global Mailing Solutions) group, and national operations of Pitney Bowes Management Services.