Knowing Your Twitter Reputation

Service companies beware! With social media becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society, tales of bad service experiences can rapidly spread to hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. In a competitive environment such as this, customer service has never been more important for business. And in a tight economy, personal recommendations from friends, family, and like business people are becoming more and more important to consumers.

In the world of service, one upset customer can now easily tweet to hundreds of followers about their personal experience; quickly putting the reputation of service companies of all kinds at risk.

But don’t take my word for it. Below is just a sampling of today’s tweets from “patiently” waiting customers….

Redbox: Never ever use UPS. Day’s wasted waiting indoors for the delivery, bad service and excuses...

Roz_B: Waiting for customer service… if I needed this call to save my life, I’d be out of luck :(

Koronis: Still waiting for service, in a crappy restaurant

Simplydotnl: Left the hospital after waiting an hour for my appointment. Nice service!

Holoprojector: In the service waiting room at CarMax. I’ll be here a while; a weight loss infomercial is on. Where’s my cyanide…

Neenia: I’ve been waiting for 45min here at Globe’s crappy service center!!!

Zillatron: Waiting for @qtron’s pickup service. Also, it’s fracking cold!

Dereham: Waiting for the service man to service the boiler. It is a horrible day.

_Kel_: Worst cust service ever, been waiting @ Optus shop for 25 mins now without any acknowledgement.

WesAtHome: I’m still at home, waiting for the HVAC service person to arrive….

Himesbaker: Waiting to hear from Time Warner for phone service

BonzoBonnie: Waiting for a service guy. It is hard to be patient

Author: Jennifer Shea

Managing Field Service Sustainability

As Charles Warner (collaborator of Mark Twain) said, "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

Well, by now everybody’s talking about environmental responsibility, emissions, carbon footprint and sustainability. Unlike the weather, some of us, some of the time, are actually doing something about it. It does not matter whether we do it for ourselves, for the next generations, for the planet, for meeting government regulations, just for that “feel-good” feeling, or for any combination of reasons. What does matter is that we examine our actions to see whether we’re really contributing to sustainability, measure the impact, and look for ways to do better.

Back in 2007, we asked some members of the service community to tell us what they see as the top contributions to greener field service, and we posted several answers together with our “top ten tips for green service” at http://www.clicksoftware.com/pages/ServiceBusinessReview/2007/9/. Of course, we at ClickSoftware weren’t the only, or even the first, to point out the potential for sustainability initiatives in field service. After all, by its very nature field service involves travel as well as use of consumables and spare parts. There must be something in there we could improve upon, right?

Indeed there is. And it gets better: Greener service is, in many cases, more profitable service. Drive too many miles and you find yourself paying twice: once for the miles (gas, vehicle maintenance etc.) and once for the hours spent driving instead of serving. Replace too many parts before you find which part was actually faulty and you find that all the parts you removed go back into the logistics chain, incurring costs as well as environmental impact (and that’s the best case – at worst, the removed parts are not even recycled). Discover that you lack the part you need, or that your customer is not at home when you arrive, and you‘re forced to drive there again the next day. Furthermore, good service has further beneficial repercussions: Equipment which is better-maintained not only causes fewer emergency service calls: often, it also requires less energy and generates less emissions.

Therefore, any steps that you take to reduce number of visits (eliminate the second visit – or even the first visit if you use remote diagnostics and maintenance), optimize routing of the visits you do make, reduce use of consumables and spare parts and keep equipment at to performance condition must be good for the finance people as well as for the planet they – and we – all inhabit.

Does this sound convincing? Probably, but in many cases it still leaves a lot of hard work to be done: proving and quantifying the impact, in order to make the business case and to make the sustainability case. If you haven’t taken such initiatives already, you may need hard, reliable numbers in order to get the go-ahead. If you have, you may need the numbers in order to showcase your achievements – whether you need to do so for showing your customers and employees that you care about the environment, or whether you need it in order to satisfy government regulations, qualify for tax cuts etc.

This is where I’d like to hand over to you, readers of the Clickipedia blog. Do you have a sustainability initiative in your organization? What organizational form does it take? What are its goals? How does it set actions and measure results? Is the initiative specific to the field service operations or do they extend across the overall corporation? To what extent has sustainability become important to how you manage your field service business and set your strategy? Will it become more important in the future?

ClickSoftware and Apples? You’d Never Believe It!

As an organization that is listed on the Nasdaq, the open trading of our stock is very common and there is therefore quite a large personal ownership of ClickSoftware’s stock. And, on the whole, we have no idea who you are. Yes, there are the institutional investors, and employees, but a large proportion of the stock is owned by, well, whom? You are anonymous...with some exceptions.

One of our known long-term personal investors is an insightful man, who posts often astute messages onto financial forums evangelizing and analyzing ClickSoftware. And how do I know this? Simple, I read them, all of them. It’s a great barometer about personal investors’ sentiments and, of course, gossip and rumor! (I’d hate to be the last to find out!) He is, unquestionably, a major supporter of ClickSoftware – our products, and the organization as a whole.

And what does he do for a living? He grows apples.

Now, this got me thinking. What does a software vendor that creates intelligent optimization technology for the efficient scheduling of mobile resources have in common with apple growing? Other than desiring potential increases in the stock price, obviously your answer is ‘absolutely nothing whatsoever’. And, of course, you’d be wrong...so don’t be so hasty! Here’s my view.

Every day, many thousands of field resources are assigned to service events using our products across multiple industries – telecommunications, utilities, retail, healthcare, home services, and hi-tech are just some examples. And at the end of every service event is a customer or a consumer. If there’s a power outage then we want our supply restored ‘now’. If we have ordered a new kitchen appliance, then we want it delivered tomorrow, and not next week. If our broadband service is down then we can’t live and communicate anymore so, again, we want our service restored immediately! You get the picture – the customer is becoming increasingly demanding and the more service organizations meet those demands, the more customers’ expectations will increase that service quality will become “even better” next time.

And this is where ClickSoftware’s products enter the story. By driving the maximum efficiency from service organizations we can, and do, make customers’ lives better. Service is restored faster. Products are delivered more quickly. Appointment windows are more precise. Customers are happier. This is the essence of ClickSoftware and why personal investors promote our products. The more service organizations that are utilizing optimization software for the management of their mobile workforce, the better it is for everyone.

So whether you grow apples for a living, milk cows, or anything else, ClickSoftware’s products touch the lives of people who don’t even know that we’re a major part of creating satisfaction in their lives. ClickSoftware wants our customers to be excellent and make their customers happy – that’s the common connection between optimization software and any trade.

To our apple-growing personal investor (you know who you are, and I know you read this blog), thank you for your ongoing support of ClickSoftware!

Author: Stewart Hill

Service that could really use a lift

I never considered myself a lazy individual, but I do admit to having a particular liking for the natural convenience of things. As Winston Churchill once said, “Why stand when you can sit?” Well I hold this mentality when it comes to walking up several flights of stairs as opposed to leaning comfortably against the back wall of an elevator.

A few months back I moved from the Back Bay in Boston down to the waterfront on Boston Harbor. Moving from an old brownstone/walk-up unit to a full service building was of great appeal to me. The thought of not having to haul up ten bags of groceries up four flights of stairs was very nice…and to be able to park my car in a garage right beneath my apartment building – priceless.

After having lived in my new building for a few months, I quickly became used to the new conveniences that were afforded me – garbage/recycling rooms on every floor, washer/dryer in the units, elevators covering the 20 floors of the building. But one morning I pressed the elevator button and it took what seemed like an eternity for the elevator door to open. Finally, one of the three elevator doors opened, and it was at full capacity. “Are you kidding me?” I thought as I stood motionless and began pressing the elevator button incessantly again. In waiting, a small crowd of my neighbors had joined me in the hallway.

About three days later, okay, two minutes, the elevator doors opened again. Full. OMG, I’m going to lose it. (Notice how the thought of walking the 13 flights of stairs had not crossed my mind at this point – but forget that! I wear 4-inch heels every day of my life…you try hoofing it up or down a stairwell in those things!)

All in all it took me almost 15 minutes to finally find space in one of the elevators to get to my parking garage. You could quite literally sense the aggravation on each and every person in the elevator. As is customary in the States, everyone normally just watches the numbers of the floors in an elevator go up or down and doesn’t communicate with one another – I would imagine it’s something to do with personal space. But on that morning, it was a nice bonding moment amongst my neighbors – we were all airing our grievances about how one of the elevators was out of service. That was day one.

Here we are almost two months later and that elevator still has not been fixed! Oh, we’ve all seen the service people from Thyssenkrupp working on it….at first we were told by building management that they didn’t have the right part, then the part they thought they needed was the wrong one….then they needed to order a part that wouldn’t be in for a month. It’s now become the joke of the building…seriously it’s comical. We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t fix an elevator??!! Give me a break! Great, I guess everyone will soon come to realize that I’m not actually 5’ 8” – stupid elevator…the only thing lifted in this situation is my agitation level. Never underestimate the beautiful convenience proper service can bring to the world….I know I won’t.

Author: Joanna Larivee

Smart Metering and how it affects future field engineers

Life is busy at ClickSoftware, so I have not blogged for quite some time now but I have given in under the pressure to write something new! Well, when I say ‘write’ something, what I really mean is ‘borrow’ someone else’s thoughts. And for a good reason too. Let me explain.

For quite some time now, the subjects of the ‘smart grid’ and ‘smart metering’ have been muttered and how they will transform our lives by giving consumers more guidance on our energy consumption and patterns, and help to change our behaviour. There will also be no need to send meter readers to our homes anymore again helping the environment by reducing carbon emissions. And in May 2009, the British Government announced plans for every home in Britain to be equipped with smart meters by the end of 2020. A massive project – 26 million electricity, and 22 million gas meters need installing costing over £7bn...and we’re all very excited about it. Well, maybe.

But no-one seems to be thinking ahead much about how the face of field engineering could change in this new high tech environment. That is, until now. In his article “Future Workforce: Meeting the Demands of Tomorrow's Utility” on the Energy Pulse website, Ryan Cook discusses this very point. Imagine this, today if we have issues with, let’s say, our gas meter then the field engineering challenge is somewhat straightforward as a gas qualified engineer with current accreditations will attend to the problem. But what about the future? It could be a network problem that requires a different type of engineer to attend. Who would have imagined that this could actually be an IT challenge and not a gas one? Interesting and thought provoking stuff so it’s worth a read...which is why I didn’t ‘write’ something new here!

So, while utility organizations are now mobilizing themselves for the national roll-out of smart metering and the associated technologies in Britain and other countries, now is the time to start planning ahead for the field engineering workforce of the future. Installing smart meters is just the beginning.

Author: Stewart Hill