In this blog series, we’ve been sharing best practices and benefits of taking a modular approach to service transformation. First, Daniel covered installed base understanding, followed by work order management. Now I’m here to tell you about your secret weapon for service transformation: Zinc real-time communication.

While communication may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about your service transformation journey, it is one of the easiest yet incredibly impactful steps. We have helped companies across industries find new ways to improve the efficiency and quality of service, while also driving a culture of connectivity among dispersed technicians.

Think about it like this: You got the right technician, to the right job on time, with perfectly optimized work schedules and routes. But now that they are on site, how can you further influence the metrics that matter?

That’s where real-time communication comes in.

Real-time communication provides a number of business outcomes, such as the ability to:

  • Connect technicians with the right experts to solve customer problems in real-time
  • Push critical safety and training updates to the field
  • Remove siloes between teams and departments
  • Get visibility into what’s happening in the field
  • Boost team comradery and employee engagement

With Zinc real-time communication your technicians can access documents in-app, message their manager to confirm a service, crowdsource an answer, or get instant help from a support expert when things don’t go to plan. This real-time connectivity to service and support teams translates to time shaved off of each job and a reduced need for repeat visits from not having the right expertise on hand. The DISH service team was able to cut support response times down to mere seconds, as well as break down barriers between techs in the field and support agents in the office.

Image: Zinc

And while we’ve seen amazing transformations with customers like DISH, Vivint and BioTek, real-time communication is still a bit of a best-kept-secret in field service.

For many companies, communication still happens over traditional means, like email, call centers, bulletin boards and intranets. This means that when a technician runs into a tricky problem, they have to send an email and wait around for a response or call into a support center and wait on hold. These processes waste valuable time and present poorly to the customer. Not to mention, they are frustrating for your technicians, which has led to many “going rogue” on non-compliant, insecure consumer apps like WhatsApp and iMessage.

With a real-time communication platform built for service teams and their unique use cases, you are able to drive results that just aren’t possible any other way.

That’s why no matter what part of the transformation journey you are on, effective real-time communication will enable you to deliver great service to your customers. And with a quick implementation timeframe — DISH’s team of 5,000 went live in just 2 weeks — it won’t take much time or resources away from concurrent projects.

Stay tuned for the next step of the modular transformation journey, where we will discuss the benefits of proactive maintenance. Click here to learn more about Zinc.

ABOUT Stacey Epstein

Avatar photoStacey Epstein is the Chief Marketing & Customer Experience Officer at ServiceMax. Previously, she was president of Zinc (acquired by ServiceMax in February 2019) and CMO at ServiceMax, where she helped fuel five consecutive years of triple-digit growth leading to a $1B acquisition by GE in 2017.