Field Service Management Needs To Be Modernized For Utilities

During the digital modification of utilities, they must enhance field service to improve employee and customer experiences.

FREMONT, CA: "digital transformation" is thrown around over all industries. Often, the vendors who make it likely also make it sound easy. But where does a utility organization with complex systems begin? Of course, utilities realize data stores are valuable, and systems and processes may need to be revised, but the notion of undertaking such an important change seems astonishing and expensive. Still, to keep in step with customers and internal users' prospects, change is necessary.

At the center of their digital transformation, utilities must mainly concentrate on progress into digitally enabled, customer- and user-centric organizations. Progressive utilities are necessary to maintain, enhance, and rationalize operations while improving the user experience.

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Rethink digital transformation

While digital transformation normally can feel surprising, utilities find the shift manageable by taking things one step at a time and tackling evolving customer needs, employee expectations, and asset management demands.

Organizations equipped with the tools to influence freshly available details can address and manage long-, mid-, and short-cycle work more efficiently and effectively.

Usually, customer service was the horizon of the customer contact center. Contact center representatives were the company's voice, fielding customer calls, linking requests to send, switching on service, and handling billing concerns.

Better, looking forward, each employee — from contact center to field operations — will push the utility's brand in the perspective of its customers and regulators and, thus, must be armed with the data and capabilities to settle issues quickly.

This mentality can have a ripple influence on utility-wide operations. When field staff is digitally enabled and empowered, the impact is felt in the front and back offices, throughout operations, and, absolutely, by the customer. Organizations equipped with a uniform process and the tools to leverage newly available details can tackle and manage long-, mid-, and short-cycle work more effectively and efficiently.

Benefits of organizations by digitizing utility field service management:

More effective field service calls

A digital platform gives awareness of the people and resources available in the field and the customer or asset that needs to be addressed. Data like a technician's unique skills, tools or parts, and asset information guarantees the right technician, crew, or contractor is dispatched to quickly resolve the issue.

Agents, dispatchers, and coordinators can nowadays deliver applicable information to field personnel, whether tackling a possible gas leak, planning regulator-mandated examinations, or coordinating a huge capital project. Moreover, with dynamic scheduling and access to real-time data on the mobile, field, and grid management, workers can adjust in real time, coordinating easily as a situation develops.

As per the types of outages, the utility can have field personnel with the proper expertise and equipment waiting close to support as soon as conditions are safe.

For example, suppose severe weather is predicted in a certain area. If so, field teams can use analytics to compare the weather forecast with the risk of outages to decide the best location to stage personnel and equipment.

Better insights from shared data

Field service operations are usually derailed because of a lack of data. Despite the mountains of customer and asset data collected, several utilities cannot manage and analyze the information promptly, prevailing useless. While data is also a utility's greatly valuable asset, employees commonly don't have the means to access, parse, and influence it.

Analytics software can process assets, improve data and recommend the essential parts for replacing equipment when it makes more sense than mending it.

Field teams could access an asset's repair history at a job site by having all data available. With this info, they may notice a pattern of repairs to a unit, indicating the successful approaches in the past. Likewise, they can access extra efforts for that asset or at that job site, allowing them to finish all the work needed, improving operational efficiency.

Energetic Utility Field Service Management, Rationalized Operations

The right digital tools endorse managers to better plan workflow by employing predictive analytics to compare service demand with available resources. By equipping managers with asset & customer data such as repair history and inscribed services, they alert the field workforce beforehand of the site, asset, and customer history.

Therefore, the field personnel brings the proper equipment in anticipation of a similar issue, which would mean one truck roll instead of several — resulting in improved asset uptime and a satisfied customer. Besides, a note can be added to the asset and customer's history, which a service agent can mention during their next interaction. This reduces truck rolls and maximizes available assets every time service is requested.

A Utility Organization Guideline For The Future

Converting a whole utility doesn't happen overnight or with one initiative. Instead, digital transformation begins with a single project, and its success offers the momentum to tackle various pain points. In addition, offering an agile and contextual operational layer that seamlessly collaborates across the present utility landscape and internal and external parties provides the user experience, innovation, and operational agility demanded by the fieldwork at utilities.

It empowers the complexity of digital transformation to be addressed where it delivers on a utility's mandate of keeping the services flowing. With a digital platform, you can begin new business processes that set off a transition to more forward-thinking energy and program offerings.