Video Tutorials: A Cheap, Brilliant Field Service SolutionWhen a product you own breaks or just stops working right, what’s your first move?

For some things, that’s easy. I don’t know anything about car repair, for instance. So when my car breaks down, I’ve got to call up the garage. But with other kinds of repairs — things around the house, say, or figuring out how to program the cable box — I usually give it the old college try before caving in to having someone come check it out.

And that’s an important point, because a lot of field service organizations probably waste a lot of truck rolls dealing with relatively simple fixes that, with just a little bit of help, your average Joe could probably take care of at home.

Mike Moore wrote an interesting blog piece the other day about how HVAC companies should start posting little How-To tutorial videos on their websites for common and easy repairs. That’s a sentiment we heard echoed last week, when John Ragsdale devoted most of his hour-long webinar to the value of video for field service organizations.

By spending just a little bit of time creating web tutorials that deal with some of the easiest repairs customers request, organizations can achieve three different goals at once: They can relieve some of the burden on their customer support centers; roll fewer trucks out for repairs that don’t require an FSE’s level of expertise; and solve customers’ problems faster, saving them time, energy, and money.

Denis Pombriant, in an interview with the SmartVan a couple of months ago, told us that YouTube is now the No. 2 search engine in the world, behind Google. When people want answers, that’s where  they turn. By putting answers to your most common questions online in the form of short video tutorials, you provide value to your customer at almost no cost to yourself.

Is your company taking advantage of web video? Let us know in the comments field.

More: How Much of Field Service Can Be Virtualized? Q-and-A with Denis Pombriant.

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ABOUT Ian Stewart

Avatar photoIan is a veteran journalist who has covered sports for various news outlets. Previously, he was managing editor for an electronic-book publishing company and a public relations writer.