Is It Time to Redefine the Role of Field Service Engineers?

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on September 28, 2017, and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.  

Your field service engineers are often the only company representative a customer sees. Guiding engineers to be the face of your business will ensure that they leave a positive impression on customers. That impression will lead to greater customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Understand Your Customer’s Journey

What are the benefits of your engineers’ increased interest in providing customer value? Imagine an engineer visiting a customer for an annual maintenance job and sharing ideas on improving the customer’s daily business. Then, based on his knowledge of other customers in similar industries, he knows what works and shares tips for improving the customer’s processes.

But it doesn’t happen on its own. You have to train engineers to think proactively and “the entire experience” they deliver to customers. Consider the following five steps to developing a customer-focused organization.

“Products are made in factories. Brands are made in the minds of people.”

Jan Gunnarsson

Five Steps to Customer-Focused Field Service Engineers: 

1. Hire the right people.

When hiring new engineers, focus on people who are naturally good with others. Look for people who want to make a difference and go the extra mile to please your customers.

Remember, only some people are naturally comfortable with others, but customer-focused training is for everyone.

2. Set the right targets.

Good employees focus on the targets you set for them. You must communicate customer-focused objectives to your field crew to provide exceptional customer service. Also, formalize customer-feedback initiatives to measure customer satisfaction. Ask your customers to rate your employees, brand, and company and provide feedback. Finally, consider increasing your Net Promoter Score instead of lowering costs or increasing revenue.

3. Help engineers surprise customers in positive ways.

You may ask, “How can I positively surprise my customers?” You can surprise them by exceeding their expectations.

There are a lot of ways your engineers can exceed your customers’ expectations:

  • Clean up after the visit.
  • Leave a thank-you note.
  • Send a follow-up email thanking them for the opportunity to serve their needs.
  • Mail them a special coupon or a coffee shop gift card.

Doing something for them that they don’t expect will increase their satisfaction and help ensure their loyalty. In addition, it will help people see your engineers – and your company and your brand – as technically efficient and customer-focused.

4. Train engineers to adeptly answer customer questions.

When a customer asks a question, every engineer should be able to give a correct answer.

Training is a big part of helping engineers become customer-focused. Train them to look beyond what’s in their job description and more deeply than the task. For example, train your employees to answer the three most frequently asked questions about your company or business.

  • What are the top three questions customers ask your engineers?
  • Create the best responses.
  • Train engineers to answer the questions correctly.

5. Let technology help engineers become customer-focused.

The final way for engineers to become customer-focused is to provide the right tools to help them exceed customer expectations. For example, field service engineers should know the correct prices to fix a failure and have those prices on hand for the customer. Your engineers can do that on the spot if they don’t have to wait for sales to provide quotes.

With tools that provide specifications, prices, and availability, customers can be given a quote on the spot. Then, after customer approval, engineers can set the job up in their mobile app with zero delays to the customer. This is just one example of how technology can help you deliver 5-star service to your customers.

Gomocha offers the right toolset for customer-focused engineers, and we would love to give you a test drive so you can check it out for yourself. Sign up for a demo of FMP360, and you’ll see the many ways you can deliver 5-star service to your customers.