Who should be thinking about
Remote Services?
Any service organization that is responsible for
keeping equipment, systems, and/or applications up
and running for their customers.
Remote service should be explored if you are
interested in increasing customer satisfaction, the
level of intimacy you have with your customers,
reducing service costs, and/or increasing service
revenue.
Some things to think about are: Would the
products we sell be better differentiated if remote
service was a product feature? Would my customer see
value in higher uptime? Do my customers spend a
significant amount of money maintaining the systems
themselves?
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What is the difference between
remote support and remote service?
Remote support is about keeping the product
running as advertized. It is a "tool" to supplant
the break/fix model of supporting products in the
field.
Remote service is about providing value-added
services and being more solutions focused towards
your customers. It goes beyond beyond break/fix and
helps customers improve their operations - not just
operating the equipment they purchased from you.
While implementing remote technologies is very
similar for both remote support and remote service,
implementing remote support programs versus
remote service programs is the difference
between a support tool and a value creation
platform.
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What is the difference between
remote service and Smart Service?
It is a level of maturity and depth of solution
you are providing to your customers. You're "Smart"
when you begin to leverage data from the installed
base to drive decisions about your business. Your
customers get "Smart" when they make decisions about
their business based on the information and
intelligence they receive from you.
Here is a brief example involving capacity
planning. An equipment owner needs to make budget
decisions on when to replace equipment, maintain it,
and/or add more instances of it to keep up with
demand. There have been cases where equipment was
prematurely changed out to meet increasing demand
(switching vendors mind you). Had the equipment and
the environment where it was operating been properly
optimized (goes beyond just running as advertized),
the owner could have kept up with demand for at
least a few more years with what he currently owned.
Had the first vendor implemented a "Smart" capacity
planning and optimization service - which is enable
by remote monitoring technology - the customer would
have been retained and the vendor would still be
enjoying the annuity revenue stream from the
service.
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What if our product is not
equipped with remote service capability?
It is a common misconception that the equipment
you are servicing must have remote service
capability built in. This is far from the truth.
There are remote service technology vendors that
provide the means to remotely enable just about any
intelligent product - and even dumb products.
Many companies we work with found this hard to
believe. Their own product engineering group would
say it is impossible and the service group would
have their hands tied. That is, until it was
demonstrated to them how remote technologies
dropped right in and their product was now remote
service enabled.
We can assess how "remote service ready" your
product is and exactly what, if any, changes need to
be made to meet your business goals. There are
technologies on the market that make it much easier
than you think. Keep an open mind until you properly
assess your situation.
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How is remote service going to benefit
my
customers?
When done properly, remote service will provide
your customers with:
- Increased uptime and productivity of the
products they purchased from you
- Lower total cost of ownership of the
products they purchased from you
- Reduced operating costs through outsourcing
a portion of their operations to you
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Who in our organization should
own the Smart Services effort?
Many times, the service organization is the
steward of remote services. However, in our
experience, the most successful initiatives cross
many departmental lines.
Marketing is vital to your remote service
initiative because it requires a change in the way
your customers view service. It also changes how
your own organization thinks about your products and
services. Product engineering plays a critical role
to further extend necessary product capabilities. It
is hard to have "Smart Services" without "Smart
Products."
Therefore, when you bring it all together,
many stakeholder groups are required to fully
leverage the program. They are all equally
important.
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What technologies are required for
remote service?
A continuous, [near] real-time connection that
your customers accept as secure and minimally
burdensome is the starting point for Smart Service.
Once the communication pipeline is in place, you
will need an event-driven management platform that
can handle monitoring your customer population.
Depending on your specific initiative, you may
need to integrate the event driven platform into
your CRM system and/or your financial system.
Therefore, the ability of that platform to conform
to open integration standards is vital to automating
your service initiative.
There may be an element of your service offering
that gives your customer visibility into information
that is derived from continuous monitoring. If this
is the case, you will need a customer facing web
portal that provides your customers a personalized
view into this information.
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What are some examples of remote
service and Smart Service offerings?
Here are some examples.
- Remote monitoring and support
- Proactive fault monitoring
- Remote repair
- Remote training
- Productivity optimization services
- Productivity monitoring and KPI
dashboards
- Quality control monitoring
- Configuration and calibration services
- Outsourcing services
- Compliance management services
- Vendor managed inventory of consumables
- Condition based maintenance services
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Where should my organization start?
Determine where remote service sits on your priority
list. To answer this question you should understand
the opportunity Smart Service can provide your
company as well as what others in your industry are
doing with Smart Services. This is something we help
companies quite often.
Once the opportunity is understood, you are then
empowered to give Smart Service the proper
attention it deserves.
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