Ken Staubitz
Are you confident all members of your field service team are performing each and every service call consistently? Does the field service team understand the steps they need to follow on every service call? The steps a technician needs to perform on every service call are commonly referred to as minimum call procedures, or total call procedures. As a service leader do you understand why this is important?
Whether you have established minimum call procedures for your staff or not, the following is a test I encourage every service leader to conduct with his team. During one of your team or service meetings role play the following scenario with your team: “You (role playing technician) were just given (e-mail, text, phone) your next service call to “ABC” company. Walk me through what you would do from the moment you are notified the call information all the way up until you leave the customer’s location.” The service leader is free to choose the product and symptom of “ABC” company that is pertinent to your organization. Next listen as the technician walks the group through the given situation. Repeat this scenario with multiple technicians from the same group so that everyone observes how each scenario unfolds.
As a service leader ask yourself a few key questions. For example, “Are the procedures in the role play consistent with your current minimum call procedures? During the call process did the technician(s) clearly communicate with the customer? If you were the customer would you be happy with how the call was handled? If you have current minimum call procedures in place for your team, were they being followed consistently by each technician role playing? If not, why weren’t they being followed? Ask each technician to show you a copy of your minimum call procedures? You will be amazed at the responses to some of these questions. Given the same scenario if you don’t have any form of minimum call procedures, did you notice a need for consistency? At the end of the entire role play it is extremely important for the service leader to provide the necessary coaching to improve the team.
Minimum call procedures create a level of consistency and standard for the manner in which your service team functions outside of your office. These procedures are more than the steps a technician performs as he services a piece of equipment. They should also include the call ahead process, the planned interaction with the client of any issue, or resolution, and the steps in which a call is closed out while at the client site. Without these procedures, each technician is on their own interacting with your customers and working on your customer’s equipment without any form of consistency.
If you are looking at implementing a total call process, then recognize some of your most productive and effective service team members by allowing them to help create these procedures. These technicians will be able to pinpoint areas of the equipment that should be inspected or cleaned on every service call. Involving your service team in this manner also helps create buy-in and allows you to communicate your point of view to the team.
After these procedures have been created it is then important to communicate these expectations clearly to the team. Distribute these procedures in writing to ensure that everyone has them. Once everyone has been informed of the expectation then the old saying, “inspect what you expect” applies. If you don’t inspect the adherence to these expectations, then more often than not, these procedures will be lost or forgotten, diminishing the consistency and service to your clients.
It is extremely common for service organizations to experience excessive call back rates, which contribute to excessive staffing levels due to the team’s ineffectiveness of servicing the organization’s clients. Many call backs are caused because the technician was in a hurry and didn’t perform the total call process and ended up missing something which caused the return service call.
Don’t be fooled in thinking that your clients (internal/external) won’t know whether or not the technician has performed his total call process. How many times have you heard your customers say, “…your technician Bill has never done all the things Jack has done to our machine” about your technicians? It’s not uncommon to find that Jack actually performed the total call and Bill merely serviced the area of the equipment that he thought was the symptom of the problem. Maybe your company routinely gets calls from a particular technician’s clients complaining that they placed a service call hours ago and have not heard from a technician, even though your minimum call procedures specifically state that a technician is to call his clients an hour after being notified of the service call.
Establishment and inspection of minimum call procedures will create a level of consistency in your service delivery methods that your service team and your customers will appreciate, differentiating you from your competition.
About the Author: Ken Staubitz is a service consultant with Strategy Development, with 14+ years’ experience in all levels of service operations and MPS service structure. Formerly with Modern Office Methods (MOM)in various service and operational roles; was MOM;s Director of Client Services where he oversaw all service operations & managed a staff of 60+ field service personnel. Ken served on the Lanier Dealer Advisory Council & was an E-Automate Service Committee member. At www.Strategydevelopment.com
