The competitive world requires field service operators to efficiently render services while reducing their operational costs. Site visits or truck rolls form a predominant part of the service delivery, but should it be? Here’s a brief article.
What is a Truck Roll?
Site rolls or truck rolls refer to a scenario where a site engineer or field service technician is dispatched (typically in a truck) to address a customer site issue or to render any form of technical service.
Its Challenges
No activity provides favourable results just because it has worked in the past. The service market has evolved by leaps and bounds today, and the way of working must change to adapt to this ever-demand and competitive business environment.
Let’s understand why Truck Rolls could be a nemesis to not only cost savings but productivity:
Realize the Additional Costs Incurred
Every dispatch incurs a lot of expense, a lot more than what you may even have realized.
Labour cost, transportation cost, opportunity cost, and misc expenses that you may be spending now can easily be cut down to give room for better profit-earning opportunities, efficient technician training, utilization of technicians for various other productive and profitable tasks, and a lot more.
Truck rolls are a common factor in all things connected to service, but more so in the telecom sector. New service segments such as ‘fibre to home’ and digital content have increased both call centre volumes and the technician dispatches, exposing telecom service providers to many new challenges apart from the usual tasks such as unboxing, installation, and troubleshooting.
“The real cost of a typical truck roll is upwards of $1,000 each time” – The Technology Service Industry Association.
No Fault Found (NFF) Dispatches
When it comes to customer service, some of the reported issues are often solved in less than five minutes, as the given error may be very small in nature. This forces the field teams to spend time on tasks that may not need their entire attention or effort, making the company lose time and resources.
Tip – AR remote Visualization has proven to reduce NFF dispatches by up to 90%. Talk to us today to Learn more
Visit You Again, Sir
Most service calls prompt for at least one more additional visit to the customer service point. The reasons range many – wrong resources dispatched for the wrong issue (or the wrong spare part), knowledge gap among them due to lack of means to communicate effectively, failure to account for specific site scenarios, insufficient databases that require a whole lot of time and resources to access them, and so and so forth.
Dissatisfying Experiences for Customers
Time and cost are also precious for the customers, and they demand an issue be rectified at the earliest, at a reasonable cost, and by helpful service assistants. In the days of instant gratification, it is quite impossible to keep a customer waiting long for a TV to be repaired or a washing machine to get going. Repeated service visits and confused technicians are just not what the doctor ordered in these times, a fact all too obvious.
On the Road Accidents
Road accidents happen on a daily basis, and fortune may not favor every time. This especially occurs during overtime work or off-hours, a common scenario in cases of cell site outrages.
AR Remote Assistance
The above-mentioned bottlenecks were an inevitable part of the service journey around a decade ago. Times have changed now, to pave way for evolved thinking and the capacity for smarter practices, thanks to the tremendous growth of IoT 4.0.
And this is what AR remote assistance can deliver:
- A faster and effective means of diagnosing problems
- Effective and interactive collaboration between technician/customer’s and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
- Eliminate NFF dispatches for up to 90%
- Decrease operational costs
- Empowering agents to see issues the way a customer sees them, thus reduces customer effort, as he/she need not take the burden of explaining complex issues.
- Improved customer satisfaction
The AR remote assistance offered by ServeVis combines live real-time visual assistance with automated features. This means that visual assistance apart, companies have the benefit of a proper ticketing system whereby technicians and experts are assigned tasks based on location and type of issue. Access to customer and product-wise databases are now more easily accessible, thus helping in the early detection of issues and accurate diagnosis.
As we saw earlier, truck rolls majorly affect the telecom sector, though all industries bear the brunt. Remote visual support can provide a welcome relief to a sector where an average truck roll cost could range anywhere around $150-$600.
Deliver Better Customer Experiences, Minus the Cost
It may well be obvious, but it is worth stating again that customer behaviour has changed with the times. It is extremely important for companies to take note and take steps to evolve from old service practices which are not any more practical or profitable. However, productivity and profit-making are just near your doorstep. High time to bring it in.