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How does a field service company increase revenues, improve productivity and streamline operations? By focusing on the customer first.
That was the key takeaway from a Wednesday morning session at Dreamforce, the annual confab sponsored by Salesforce.com. Three large field service companies — Luminex, Topcon Medical Systems and Coca-Cola Enterprises — shared their insights about how they transformed their businesses with mobile technology. 
Bringing the Whole Team Closer to the Customer
The idea that customers should come first sounds simple enough. But when technicians are in one place and sales and parts folks are in another, miscommunication happens — and customers are the ones who suffer.
This was the case for Luminex, an Austin-based biological testing company, before it implemented technologies that streamlined its services earlier this year. “Integrated technologies have given visibility of all customer activity to all who touch the customer,” said Steve Nava, director of field services of the Americas at Luminex. “Our company culture has changed as a result because now we’re all closer to the customer.”
At Luminex, integrated technology has also boosted productivity, said Nava. With mobile devices in hand, field technicians can determine on-site whether they have the required part in their van or check for newly-scheduled service calls in their area once they’re finished with the current job.
Gary Yantsos, director of information systems at Topcon Medical Systems, a diagnostic equipment developer and supplier, told the Dreamforce audience that his company, too, has seen productivity improve after implementing mobile-focused technologies. Yantsos reports that his company’s productivity has soared 30 percent.
Cutting Through the Red Tape
Coca-Cola Enterprises, the soft drink distributor, has used mobile and real-time communications to connect techs in the field to those back at the office. Before adopting integrated software, most of the company’s field techs were clocking in at the start of the day and clocking out at the end — with little to no communication in between. Now, using primarily mobile devices, technicians can update their progress in real time — benefiting the team back at the office, said Lesley Morgan, associate director of IT development at Coca-Cola.
“The administrative time that we’ve saved is huge,” Morgan said. “We’ve increased on-site time and decreased administrative time by over 50 percent.”
With less time focused on administration, these three companies now utilize technology tools to spend more time with the customer and focus attention on the tasks at hand with all the necessary information — literally at their techs’ fingertips. Wins all around!
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