The Crowd Service model is accelerating. Companies are adjusting to today’s environment by harnessing the power of technology. A recent study determined that 60% of consumers defined a poor customer experience as one where they had to wait a long time for service after booking an appointment. Customers want a quick response to their needs. They desire fast and reliable service. As a result, Customers have high expectations from the service they receive. They don’t want to spend valuable time waiting for a technician to arrive when they can be performing more important tasks.
Even though isolating the best way to improve customer satisfaction is easy, many field service suppliers still face a serious obstacle when it comes to addressing this need. As you might expect; you need an extensive, widespread and qualified workforce to provide real-time service. Due to the cost factor, hiring a full-time service team is expensive, especially for short-term or seasonal projects. In addition, hiring full-time service employees does not guarantee that they will be where they are most in demand. Having a full-time team member located in a remote corner of the globe is not a viable business model. It makes better business sense to have access to a skilled worker who could provide these same services in remote areas.
Crowd Service is the answer. Likewise, SAP Field Service Management addresses this business model to utilize untapped resources to meet unfilled demand in the marketplace. Crowd Service allows you to expand your service team to accelerate service execution. You can expand your service team with partners that act as an extension of your business. For instance, you can meet customer expectations for real-time service with an on-demand workforce. AI based scheduling utilizing technician qualifications, availability, and location provides resource allocation optimization. Crowd Service provides the right person at the right place at the right time. This model can save companies enormous overhead costs and provide end customers their most valuable commodity: time.
Marketplaces
There are two types of Crowd Service markets. Firstly, Market Expansion is one such market. The Crowd Service model enables your team to expand into new markets with partners, freelancers, and other skilled resources. You can leverage these resources on demand, and extend them into areas without maintained offices. The cost-saving from being able to expand your workforce while they aren’t on your books is huge.
Secondly, you can use Crowd Service for New Marketplaces. For example, you can attract new partners and onboard them to the platform. New Marketplaces focus on external resources with a clear Crowd Service based business model for a specific industry.
Crowd Service defines different types of service partners:
- Body leasing: Subcontractors have contracts with the main company. They are known by name as an employee when they are not really an employee. The calendar and availability of each resource are transparent. So they’re easy to schedule. Jobs are assigned to the resource and accepted with high probability.
- Capacity-based: Subcontractors have contracts based on contractual terms such as the number of hours a company will be contracted out. If digging up a road or laying fiber optic cable, you have access to 1000 hours of a resource. You can use those hours contractually on a capacity basis, not necessarily a resource basis. It doesn’t matter who completes the job. Because it’s all about the company fulfilling the contractual obligation. The focus is on the company and not the person.
- On request: This is similar to the Uber model, where you make a request and don’t know who it will be. The system assign and sends a qualified individual, basing this assignment upon the type of service partner requested.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, SAP Field Service Management for Crowd Service can manage each of these scenarios. There are use cases for companies in every industry. For example, companies need to send technicians onsite to install, maintain, and repair products or equipment sold to their customers as well as their own assets. These industries include discrete manufacturing, industrial machinery and components, high tech and medical equipment, telco, utilities, and home and office appliances.
Please reach out to ASAR to learn more about how you can utilize the Crowd Service model to extend your service team today.