Everyone has a story about their experience with poor field service. Whether it's waiting for hours for the cable guy who shows up at the last minute (or not at all), or the electric guy who assesses your issue but doesn't have the materials to solve it on the spot, field service hardly has a reputation for being the favorite among customers.

On the managerial side, field service is a tricky area, running high costs and often lacking efficiency. Here are four steps to optimize your field service process that will save you money. 

Field Service Optimization Defined

First, there are different types of field services that companies will perform and optimization is approached differently for each of them. For our purposes, we'll define optimization as improving field service operations in a way that there is a measurable ROI. Types of field service deliveries include:

• Multiple services daily, multiple locations. A field technician will travel to multiple locations on a daily basis to perform services. Examples include copier repair and cable service technicians.
• Multiple services daily, same location. Examples include on-site service technicians for large companies.
• Few (or one) service per day, same or multiple locations. Aircraft engine field service agents may go to a site to work for several days and then move to a new location. 

We will consider different ways that optimization can be achieved and what steps will be required to achieve it. In each of these cases, the focus will be on hard costs. Those costs represent an opportunity to directly reduce expenses or to grow without needing additional staff.

Reducing Windshield Time

Windshield time refers to the time that a technician spends moving from one service stop to another. Depending on the number of service house calls the technician is addressing, windshield time can be costly—both in time and in dollars.

The most effective optimization solutions go beyond scheduling and look at minimizing windshield time across all the services to be performed in a given day or week. Expected savings are 3-5% of the windshield time.  Projected across a 200 person field service workforce, that can lead to 3,000-5,000 hours of savings for a year. At a fully burdened rate of $60/hour, that is a $180-$300,000 in annual savings for this example. What could you do with that kind of money?

No Fault Found Dispatches

No-fault-found (NFF) dispatches are those times when a field service technician is dispatched but the service call is easily resolved. Depending on industry, the rate of NFF dispatches vary widely. In order to prevent the NFF dispatch from occurring, better diagnostic and detection regarding the customer's issues needs to be performed by the contact center person or the dispatcher before scheduling a truck roll. Typically, this is done with a knowledge management system, better and more frequent training, or both. Expected savings are difficult to predict overall since each operation is different, but at $100 - $175 per dispatch the benefits are clear. 

First visit completion rates

First visit completion rate is similar to first call resolution (FCR) in that it refers to empowering technicians with the tools to ensure that problems are resolved on the first visit. Repeat visits to the same customer could run as high as 24%. 

Addressing issues with repeat visits requires improvements in skills matching, required spare parts, and trunk stock management. Like FCR, it's not likely that you'll reach 100% first visit completion, but at $100-$175 per extra dispatch the benefits are very attractive. A 100 person field service operation with 6 dispatches per day per technician could see $3.6M or more in annual savings. 

Additionally, repeat visits are extremely frustrating for customers, who are often required to make sacrifices in order to be present for the technician. Upping first visit completion will greatly improve customer satisfaction.

Remote resolution

In a sense, remote resolution is the holy grail in that it completely eliminates the need for a field service technician. Cable companies have been having good success with this and have greatly reduced their dispatches as a result. As devices become smarter and are connected to the "Internet of Things", they are able to communicate their status and allows a technician to remotely diagnose and resolve issues.

Achieving remote resolution requires a commitment from product management and development and the ability integrate the remote diagnostic capability into the work flow of the agents resolving issues. Although the investment for this integration is large, expected savings are large as well.

Bending the cost curve

Most companies are already doing good work to manage the field service process, both from the perspective of customer experience as well as cost. Achieving the savings discussed in this article is going to require executive commitment and the involvement of managers, supervisors, contact center and field service agents. Focusing on the right cost drives will help you bend the cost curve down while improving customer service.