Many manufacturers have yet to understand how customers best adopt new remote service offerings. They get so hung up on, “will our customers let us do it?” The real question is, “How do we communicate the value so our customers want it?”
Even if the first introduction of remote service is about efficiency and cost reduction, [...]

The front page of yesterdays Wall Street Journal quoted the CEO from HP saying, “Our growth with come from services.”
Holy cow, what a concept!
Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to other equipment manufacturers to cure themselves of “Box-itis” and they might see the strategic role services plays within an equipment maker.
One can only hope…unless [...]

There is a big difference in using remote service technology as a support tool versus a value creation platform. Most equipment companies see remote service as only addressing the break/fix needs of the support group.
It is an uninformed and shortsighted point of view. That is, unless you are only interested in having the equivalent of [...]

I call these “Smart Service” offerings because they have a achieved a level of maturity in the market where they are tightly integrated with the products and services the equipment owner is selling to their end customer. They are successfully contributing to revenue growth.
See the remote service FAQ for more on the difference between Smart [...]

One of the most peculiar behaviors I have witnessed inside a product manufacturer has been the relationship between the support/service organization and the product development group. The relationship defines insanity.
I witness this repeatedly. Larry, the support manager, feels the pressure of maintaining warranty performance on the products he supports. Every so often, the support [...]

Are support and service synonymous in your organization? You would be among good company if it were. Many organizations view these business functions as the same. Of the ones that do differentiate, few actually leverage them for the opportunity they offer. Let’s look at the differences.
Support is what product manufacturers do to keep the product [...]

Most equipment manufacturers invariably want to benchmark themselves against peers within every aspect of their business and remote service is no exception. They often are not trying to determine how much catching up they have to make but really want to confirm a suspicion that they are no further along than anyone else even after one to three years of trying. It is an unfortunate but comforting feeling when they report amongst the managers that everyone else is struggling too and no is really living up to what they have led the world to believe.

NASA is the best remote service organization in (and out of) this world. They have to be. Field service calls are way too expensive.
Listen to the narration. He talks about the field service engineer (astronaut) fixing a loose power supply cable. Look closely at the long boom. That’s a person hanging upside down from it. [...]