Taking an Innovative Approach to Communication

Service teams are an integral part of any telecommunications business. When these employees aren’t consistently able to access knowledge and information in real-time, whether they need troubleshooting help, info on new processes and procedures, or alerts to hazards in the field, it impacts both performance and engagement.

Telco companies are becoming aware of just how crucial innovation is as huge advancements and rising customer expectations are shaking up the industry. While there are various ways to innovate, one area is often overlooked — communication. Something as simple as the way companies share information with their employees and the technology used to connect teams has quite the effect on employee performance, productivity, and even engagement.

By turning an innovative eye towards communication, leaders can better support their teams in the field, drive performance across key metrics, and assist change management efforts as products, procedures and processes evolve.

Mobile Apps Provide Instant Answers and Support

When technicians are on the job, they need to be able to reach out to their team or product experts for help. Long wait times that accompany traditional support methods of email and call centers stifle productivity as well as frustrate technicians.

Providing modern communication technology that gives employees various modes for communication allows service teams to speed up issue resolution while on the job. Rather than calling a handful of colleagues to figure out how to fix a problem, they can send a quick message and photo or video of the situation to a help group and get support in real time. If the issue becomes too complex to message about, they can hop on a video call to work through it live.

Many companies are jumping on the modern communication bandwagon, leaving email behind for mobile-first apps that combine messaging, phone calls, group calls, video calls, content sharing, broadcast alerts, and even push-to-talk into one platform.

Most recently, DISH Network made the switch to Zinc Real-Time Communication to connect field teams with office-based support teams. With this easy-to-use platform, teams are able to share information, send alerts and get real-time answers while on the job.

Luckily, this trend is paying off big for organizations. When technicians are able to get answers fast, easily access key information, and constantly stay informed, it directly impacts business metrics. First time fix, mean time to repair, repair rate, job duration — all of these metrics get a boost when your service technicians are connected with their peers and support teams.

Ushering in Change Without Compromising Productivity

When the time comes to innovate, whether that’s introducing new products, new software for employees to use, or re-structuring the service model, it’s important that you don’t leave your frontline workforce out of the loop. These changes will inevitably affect them and being prepared with a change management plan is necessary to prevent dips in productivity and employee engagement.

This is an additional place where you can leverage a mobile communication platform. For example, say you are rolling out a new field service management solution. These implementations are disruptive, lengthy projects that touch multiple departments and often change the business processes that the workforce is accustomed to.

Having the service team connected on a single communication platform means they can easily work through any issues that arise when they start using the new service solution. With the ability to get instant support from solution experts, teams feel confident in their ability to use the new software.

From a top-down perspective, management can utilize broadcasts to push timely or important updates to teams so that everyone stays in-the-know, rather than left out on their own. These one-to-many pushes are incredibly valuable in both informing employees in real time, as well as providing accountability through engagement analytics.

As you look toward the next innovative advancement in telecommunication, don’t forget to consider the basics. Something as simple as the tools your employees use to communicate can be a great opportunity to make innovative changes that propel your business into the future.

ABOUT Kristen Wells

Kristen is the senior manager of corporate communications at PTC and editor of Field Service Digital. She is passionate about elevating the stories of women in field service and improving communication between the field and the office. Prior to ServiceMax, Kristen held content marketing roles at startups such as Zinc and cielo24. Kristen holds a B.A. in Communication with an emphasis on Professional Writing from the University of California, Santa Barbara.