Your gut may have got bigger during the pandemic, but chances are it’s not working as well for you when it comes to service levels at work, Service Geeni’s Gary Jones explains why…
The vast majority of service managers don’t trust the data in their existing systems and they’re right not to as many out of the box systems don’t measure enough factors to give meaningful reports. Data shows 56% of CEO’s have concerns regarding the integrity of their data. So, when it comes to making key decisions, they often rely on their gut over their Management Information (MI).
But the pandemic has been a catalyst to switch to remote working, so managers don’t have good insight anymore to make decisions based on their gut. This is only going to increase and service providers need to consider the cost of getting this wrong.
Better tech does exist so it’s up to service managers to decide where they’re going to get good data for decision making. It’s one thing relying on your insight and experience when you’re close to operations and you generally make good decisions. What happens when you don’t have a good feel for what’s really going on with engineers and customers, will the board of directors simply accept that you’re effectively guessing because you don’t trust the data, or will you be left carrying the can?
Remote working has changed operations irrevocably and systems and management information need to keep up with these changes and provide accurate data that managers can rely on.
Service Management systems in particular need to be transparent. To really understand if your business is making an ROI, the software solution should show if a customer is sinking your profits, if you’re not meeting SLA’s and which customers are integral to making your profit. When you combine this meaningful data with the experience and knowledge of good service managers, you can make better decisions faster because you’re confident in the data and your gut, but if you don’t trust either, you’re slowly damaging your business.
It’s been proven that only 25% of an engineer’s time is ‘on the job’, so simply applying a flat rate and not accounting for things like wasted visits doesn’t make sense. The truth is if your system doesn’t capture the data, you need, or it isn’t accurate that’s where the efforts need to be focused; to implement a system that you can trust. Reliance on data is bigger than ever and service businesses need accurate, real-time information to achieve service excellence.
You’ve only got one option here to survive; you have to adapt your business to the new norm.
There really is no decision, because if you don’t act now, you’ll inevitably be blamed for poor decision making and/or not flagging that the system isn’t providing the data needed.
So, while you work on reducing the size of your gut for the benefit of your health, it’s important to recognise it’s good for your business too.
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