by Ian Stewart | Nov 14, 2012 | Customer Experience
For the first time since the recession, field service organizations appear to be focused on the future and not just the current year or quarter, according to The Service Council’s latest study, The Role of Service Culture in Driving Service Revenue. It’s a...
by Darren Weiss | Nov 13, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Leitner-Poma, one of two major ski-lift manufacturers in the world, maintains 430 lifts across North America, New Zealand, and Australia. The trick to keeping all of them running smoothly? A year-round service operation that doesn’t quit. In fact, the offseason...
by Ian Stewart | Nov 12, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Google’s driverless car may be getting all the attention these days, but it isn’t the only concept out there aiming to shape the vehicle of tomorrow. Here are a few articles from the SmartVan archives on what fleets may look like in a few years....
by Ian Stewart | Nov 9, 2012 | Strategy & Leadership
Every week we run across dozens of interesting news items, blog posts, tweets, white papers, market data and trends — all tied to field service in one way or another. We don’t have time to cover them all, so we’re starting an occasional roundup to help readers keep...
by Marisa Wong | Nov 8, 2012 | Field Service Spotlight
Services are one of the last areas in which companies seek to innovate, Kamalini Ramdas, a London Business School professor of innovation and operations management, tells Harvard Business Review. Management tends to have a that’s how we’ve always done it...
by Ian Stewart | Nov 7, 2012 | Strategy & Leadership
Natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy always trigger a spike in demand for many field-based services, from cleanup and property maintenance to roofing and equipment repairs. Handling customers in those situations — people who may have lost their businesses or homes...
by Tiffany Kaiser | Nov 6, 2012 | Customer Experience
HubSpot reported that 92 percent of online users first turn to Web search engines to look up services and products. How, then, can service organizations capitalize on those inbound web leads and convert them into real business? Joe Crisara, a sales educator and...
by Darren Weiss | Nov 5, 2012 | Strategy & Leadership
Customers today expect a level of immediacy, and for many field service companies, that’s meant a race to narrow service appointment times. The latest tactic? Same-day delivery service. Amazon and eBay recently announced same-day deliveries in large metropolitan...
by Tiffany Kaiser | Nov 2, 2012 | Strategy & Leadership
Superstorm Sandy brought millions of business operations to a halt. Not FedEx however, which stayed up and running through the storm, largely by outlining a contingency plan, anticipating infrastructure outages and planning for the worst. Quartz interviewed FedEx...
by Ian Stewart | Nov 1, 2012 | Customer Experience
Winter’s just around the corner, meaning for HVAC contractors, it’s time to brace for a slew of heating repairs and installations. How best to prepare for this? Kirk Peterson, author of the ZenHVAC blog, tells us three tips for gearing up for cold season....
