Sometimes, a service team can feel distant from the customer because they were not involved in the sales process... Let me explain.
A good sales manager feels responsible when a machine is not performing as promised but in many departments, ongoing customer care is the service manager's responsibility.
The Problem
The issue here is that the salesperson who sold the system has developed an attachment to the customer/project but doesn't always have the technical skill to help when there is a problem. Therefore the salesperson has to rely on the service team to deliver the required ongoing care for the project that the customer expects. This happens in many service departments, but is it possible that, to the service manager, this new customer is just another in the spreadsheet?
Unfortunately, it is the 'new customer' who will soon find out what the service manager's approach is and usually when they need their machine the most.
The Solution
To avoid this problem, it seems prudent to involve your service team in the sales process (e.g. site visits with the sales rep, and providing info during the negotiation phases) so that the service team members can naturally develop the same Empathy towards the customer the good salesperson has.
Secondly, it is important that customers feel that the service team is pulling all the stops to get them back up and running.
Our Approach
All machines need maintenance at some point and in the event of a callout occurring, we want all our customers to feel that our service team is pulling out all the stops to get them back up and running.
We have therefore introduced Nitrogen-As-A-Service™(NaaS).
NaaS help gas consumers secure their nitrogen supply through an onsite nitrogen generator without having to purchase a nitrogen generator. That's right, customers who meet our eligibility criteria will receive a nitrogen system without the upfront costs and capital expenses whilst only paying for the amount of gas that they use.
How does this benefit the customer?
As a company, we will not get paid if a customer's machine is not running, and as a result our service manager and engineers have no choice but to pull out all the stops to get our customers back up and running.
Furthermore, this also means that as our company we will have to increase the size of our service team to match our service customer base in order to maintain a good service engineer-to-customer ratio.
Additionally, the quality of our nitrogen generators and our engineers will naturally be of a higher standard in order to reduce machine failure modes and maintain high rates of callouts resolved quickly.
Conclusion
We believe that our customer-centric approach aligns our service business objectives with our customer's objectives thereby leading to better customer satisfaction, higher customer retention, and consequently improved service revenue in the long run.
Nitrogen-As-A-Service™ is a Win-Win for all parties involved, and if you would like a nitrogen system on a Pay-per-use subscription, then see how much you could be paying with out online calculator.