A technician rings the doorbell, installs a modem, and leaves. What if instead, they helped the customer to optimize their plan, fixed hidden issues, and left behind a wowed, loyal patron?
Evolving customer expectations, the proliferation of smart homes, increased customization, and advances in AI are changing the game for telco technicians and opening opportunities to design bespoke solutions—not just deliver fixes.
The business case: Enhanced customer experience reduces churn
When effectively implemented, a shift from field to experience servicing promises to reduce churn and increase the average revenue per user (ARPU), yielding overall opex savings. We see the financial benefits playing out as follows:
- 10-15% churn reduction: A better field service experience drives higher perceived product value by educating customers and answering their questions and concerns. Up-time and availability also increase, as installations are done correctly the first time.
- 5-10% ARPU uplift via cross-selling: Prioritizing customer interactions makes it easier to identify customer needs. Deeper conversations with customers also improves their awareness of adjacent products and services. Increased training for experience agents increases real-time upsells.
- 30% reduction in service calls: Proper installation and better-educated customers decrease the volume of small issues; customers will be better prepared to troubleshoot issues themselves. Better reliability and fewer service issues reduce the total volume of customer support calls.
- 30-40% reduction in service visits: Fewer issues and calls drive a reduction in total service visits. Additionally, the introduction of VR/AR technology enables remote assistance, which reduces in-person visits and increases the number of customers a single technician can assist in a day.
- 30% improvement in first-visit resolution: Using AR technology to prime technicians and AI to summarize proposed installation and repair plans, service teams can empower themselves with more data before they are deployed in the field. By collecting physical insights and democratizing and simplifying troubleshooting, service technicians can accelerate the shift to becoming solution experts.
The people case: New job profiles offer companies and customers more choice
A transition from field service to experience service is also a transition from blue glove to white glove service. This model provides more bespoke opportunities—installations can be customized to incorporate into the design of a customer's home, with further upsell options as agents explain features and benefits from a sales and marketing perspective rather than a technical perspective. Companies could also take a similar approach to rideshare services that allow drivers to set preferences for riders that they pick up—customers could, for instance, request different skillsets or service agent profiles to come to their homes—which expands both customer choice and the talent pool available to telcos.
Along with additional choices for customers, this shift opens jobs in the industry to a wider audience. Sales and marketing roles factor in social capabilities far more than technical roles, providing a new, higher-paying opportunity to those with customer service backgrounds.
The solution design: Enabling the field from HQ
The shift from field service to experience service requires an intentional shift in focus and a flexible deployment of supporting tools and solutions. To do so, companies must:
- Refocus the field: Telcos need to resize their mix of technical support and solution design employees and change onboarding plans and job profiles accordingly.
- Mitigate the knowledge gap: Less technical support does not need to mean diminished service. Supplement the loss of technical support skills with AI applications, bolstering your knowledge base and making it readily accessible to more technicians.
- Remote access: Providing remote access into field equipment allows senior, tenured technicians to apply their unique skills across a widely distributed field team.
- Democratized AR/VR: AR solutions are achievable with most of the existing telco support toolkit. Leverage these current tools to build AR/VR directly into workflows.
A worthwhile transformation
There will be challenges to transforming existing industry roles—social and commercial skillsets will still require advanced knowledge of complex networks, including both legacy and new components. Increasing automation may also reduce the number of people needed in the field, making skill coverage more demanding.
But we believe the benefits to company costs and revenue, as well as major improvements to customer experience that will reduce churn, will make this transition a true paradigm shift that redefines telco customer service. In fact, a digital and AI-backed transformation of field service operations can spur the fundamental changes needed to transform the company at large.
The road to tomorrow starts now.
Also co-authored by Josh Owen.
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