Most organizations recognize the importance of a ‘speedy response’ to a quality issue or a customer complaint.
In fact, faster service response time has been named as a top priority for many service lifecycle management efforts. The significant demand for manufacturers and service organizations to resolve customer issues promptly, and to quickly mitigate any product quality issues has become a challenge.
How do you overcome this challenge and implement a solution? The equation involves equipping service technicians and customer facing roles with the right information at the right time, along with aligning parts/inventory and service personnel.
For example, let’s look at a very realistic situation.
Imagine your dryer machine breaks down. You call the manufacturer and learn you have to wait three days for a service visit. Depending on your patience (and laundry needing to be done) this could be the beginning of a very unpleasant customer experience.
But what if that same manufacturer was able to pull up your model, and already knew they had visited you a year ago with a similar issue. How might your experience be impacted if they were to tell you there was a 90 percent first-time fix rate for your specific dryer and a technician would be able to show up with the specific parts needed to fix your issue?
This is the type of service that customers want and are starting to expect.
It is easy to see how putting the right information in a service technicians’ hands at the right time is so important.
Service technicians want to be able to see service information and technical service bulletins. They want to see information on the job and have access to just in time training. They have a desire for formal training, tech assist helpdesks and hotlines, and safety instructions.
So how do we enable and empower technicians to optimize service experiences and exceed customer expectations?
Here are some of the best practices that we have gathered:
- 1. Provide access to technical/service parts information when technicians need it
- 2. Make that information easy to search
- 3. Supply accurate product and configuration information including all parts and service history
- 4. Enable easy ways of ordering parts
- 5. Offer just in time training/help
‘Smart’ service management is your key to success.
Your service information needs to be managed at a network level. This ensures that all your players in the service web have access to the right information, at the moment they need it.
Adding a modern layer of accessibility to your information is a critical part of ensuring your service network can operate efficiently and effectively. This is what will help you drive positive customer experiences throughout your product lifecycle.
We offer the technology solutions and technical expertise to make real-time service information delivery a reality. Contact us to learn more about our Product Development Information Services group, PTC’s Arbortext and Service Lifecycle Management technologies, and the PLM solutions that can effectively link together your product data and service part information.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way companies design, manufacture, and service their products and manufacturing floors. ‘Service’ is one of the most notable areas to be impacted by this wave of technology and connected devices. Monitoring assets in the field and on the shop floor gives service technicians access to usage, error, and predictive analytics prior to a repair. As companies continue to adopt the IoT, more organizations are satisfying the prerequisites to easily deploy augmented reality for service.
With the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, manufacturers are using augmented reality as a tool to help improve their service capabilities. Augmented Reality (AR) can deliver the right information at the very moment that it’s needed on the manufacturing floor so that field service technicians and other factory workers can reduce errors, enhance efficiencies, and improve productivity. AR also allows for content to be presented in arguably the most contextual way possible. When accurate information is presented over real-world devices there is little room for error and misunderstanding.
If field service technicians aren’t available to be on-site for a critical situation, then technicians can remotely assist customers with the help of AR. Customers will be able to observe service manuals with interactive 3D animations to disassemble components or work on equipment with which they’re unfamiliar with. If the users need further help, then the experienced field service technician can walk users through instructions while steaming the user’s device view in real time.
Augmented Reality Barriers to Entry
Your service and parts information have to be accurate and up-to-date in order to fully benefit from an augmented reality investment. Making sure your organization has a reliable Service Lifecycle Management system in place is the first step to digital transformation. Without accurate information on parts and equipment, field service technicians could replace the wrong part or be confronted with an outdated, undocumented design.
In order to be labeled a “smart connected enterprise,” a company should have a strategy to connect all of their assets and data; this includes technical publications. Connected technical illustrations have the power to show the current status for every part and piece of equipment. For example, if a mechanic could see a 3D representation of a vehicle’s carburetor and view critical metrics it would help them understand the potential for repairs or future failure.
Your organization needs to be IoT ready – meaning that there needs to be a strategy in place to input sensors on products and equipment. The Internet of Things allows products and assets to send alerts to a maintenance system that assigns a field service technician to perform a repair. Without the sensors that relay information about the status of those parts, and accurate 3D representations, augmented reality devices would be useless because there would be no relevant or up-to-date information to leverage in the field.
The IoT and Augmented Reality are transforming service and enhancing the field service process. Check out EAC’s solutions to see how you can start using AR today.
In this article you will learn what Creo Illustrate can do for you, and exactly what value it brings to the table.
You will also discover how Creo Illustrate addresses many issues faced by OEMs and engineering organizations.
In order to fully grasp what Creo Illustrate can do for you, you must understand the current market situation.
Regardless of your industry, the current market is complex.
Here are some of the reasons why.
Customer demands are continually increasing, and manufacturers have responded by delivering more complex products.
For example, customers demand configurable products. These same customers are also demanding higher product performance, increased uptime, and low total cost of ownership.
In addition to customer demands, we are also dealing with younger generations.
These young generations commonly resort to graphical illustrations or channels such as YouTube for guidance on how to do things. Because of these new tendencies, companies must adapt the ways they produce information according to the needs of the young generation.
Aside from the complexities of increased demands and young generations, organizations strive to capture global markets.
To capture global markets, organizations need to translate much of the documentation and product information that gets shipped.
Lastly, to remain competitive organizations must reduce time to market.
Altogether, this market situation creates significant pressure.
Organizations must make products that are more deliverable, improve customer experience, reduce cost, all while improving overall time to market.
How Creo Illustrate addresses the complex market situation.
1. Creo Illustrate helps deliver more configurable products
Leveraging Creo Illustrate and some other tools you can you can produce accurate configuration specific illustrations.
This provides product-specific product information to end user and consumers as well as highly skilled field technicians.
2. Creo Illustrate helps improve customer satisfaction
In order to improve customer satisfaction, you must enhance the overall customer experience.
By using Creo Illustrate you can create interactive graphical information that is easy to understand and interpret regardless of the native language.
3. Creo Illustrate helps lower costs
Lowering costs is an essential part of a competitive business.
Using Creo Illustrate you can leverage the CAD data you’ve already produced for downstream deliverables; work instructions, manuals, etc. This helps reduce redundant illustration and tracing effort, and keeps your technical communications up to date – event if documentation is created in parallel with the engineering and design process.
4. Creo Illustrate helps reduce time to market
Creo Illustrate helps streamline the process of creating illustrations and animations of your products. It eliminates the need to interrupt Engineering to gather screenshots of products and then laboriously trace images to create thin/thick illustrations. This allows you to accelerate the end-to-end creation, management, and publishing of dynamic technical information.
A field service technician is a product expert who goes on site to assess, install, repair, or troubleshoot problems. Often when a company does not use field service software, or SLM software, these technicians have a hard time troubleshooting the problem in a quick and efficient manner.
Having a Service Life Cycle Management (SLM) tool in place can help your field service department have access to the right information at the right time. Technicians have higher first-time fix-rates (FTFR) when they are dispatched with the right information and parts on the first trip, instead of discovering they did not have the information, tools, and parts required to service a product.
Most technicians use some kind of portable device whether it be a tablet, smartphone, or laptop – all of which gives them access to relevant information needed for the job. This information could include inventory, service tasks, customer history, and new product details, and it may also reference an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell with another product or service. SLM software provides access to relevant service information and opportunities, and this minimizes downtime, increases customer satisfaction, and improves financial performance within your organization.
Tech Clarity found that top performing companies had rated their top initiatives in support of their 2017/2018 service goals in their Buyer’s Guide for Managing Service Information:
- Get product information to the field sooner – 79%
- Connect technical information to product support and field – 74%
- Reduce duplication of efforts, use existing engineering – 63%
- Streamline technician access to technical information – 63%
- Increase the use of graphics in documentation – 58%
Having an SLM software solution can get accurate product and service information to the field efficiently and quickly, where it will provide to most value to field service technicians. Learn more about how your organization can implement a service life cycle management tool to provide value for your field service technicians here.
Having more technical illustrations than information is beneficial in many ways—and the solution to do so is easier than you think.
Here’s why you should be using more technical illustrations and the best way to create them.
Technical Illustrations are Easy to Understand
We all know the saying “ a picture paints a thousand words”—and in this case, it’s more than true.
It’s much easier to interpret a picture than to understand and read through lots of text. Using illustrations in tech pubs, user manuals, and service manuals reduce user errors.
Illustrations Take Away the Need for Text
Have you ever bought anything from Ikea? Sure you have! They sell their flat pack furniture all over the globe using the same manuals. That is the power of illustrations. You can drastically reduce the amount of text that is needed by producing illustrations.
Using Technical Illustrations Reduces the Need for Translation
With less text that is needed or used, you can reduce your translation costs.
So Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Illustrations?
The traditional process to create illustrations is time-consuming and can be froth with problems.
Let me illustrate it for you.
Odds are if you are using the traditional illustration process, your technical illustrators most likely work with engineers to get snapshots of CAD information to use in illustrations.
These snapshots are usually static because they are captured at only a moment in time, usually near the end of the product development process.
Because the illustrations are static, they are not always easy to interpret. This means the text is still required to properly convey the information.
If your snapshots were taken at the end of the product development process because there was ‘ less likelihood of the product changing’ – you could be delaying your shipment process.
Often a product cannot ship until the technical information that is associated with it is ready to ship with the product.
Now consider all the back and forth communication between both the engineering department and the illustration group.
Traditional illustrations are difficult to keep up to date. Commonly the illustrator needs to go back to the engineer for updates every time there is a change to the product.
If at any time there is a miscommunication, your illustrations could easily become inaccurate; exposing your organization to the risk of unsatisfied customers, frustrated field technicians, and the possibility of lawsuits.
It’s easy to see why the traditional methods to create illustrations are downright time consuming and prone to error.
So How Can You Make Technical Illustrations Easily?
The answer is Creo Illustrate.
Creo Illustrate leverages CAD data to create illustrations that, depending on your PDM/PLM setup, maintain an associative link to the original CAD data.
This means any changes you make with your CAD data can automatically update all your illustrations and possibly your publications.
With Creo Illustrate you have the ability to start creating illustrations early on in the product development process, with a guarantee that your illustrations are always kept up-to-date. Start developing product documentation during the product development process instead of after the product development process.
See Creo Illustrate in action! Watch this short video.
Service organizations typically receive recurring revenue, less fixed capital, and higher margins than strictly product-centric businesses. Aftermarket services now account for almost 24% of manufacturers’ total revenue and 40% to 80% of their total profits (Pollack, B., PTC Video: Transforming Your Service Organization with SLM (part 3 of 3)). When executed properly, after-sales service and support can provide increased revenue and invaluable customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer relationships are both a huge benefit and a huge risk. Companies without a comprehensive plan to ensure high customer satisfaction often jeopardize customer relationships and risk affecting their company brand. Businesses often suffer when they overlook their role in service performance. Why focus solely on putting your product into the hands of customers? Why not also focus on service, and manage the performance of your products to ensure high customer satisfaction?
Customer Satisfaction Matters
Consumers who are willing to pay a premium for a product are looking for a company that provides the best value. If your company cannot deliver the value that your customer is willing to pay for, then you are going to disappoint that customer.
To build and maintain high customer satisfaction, companies need to look beyond traditional approaches. It is no longer sufficient to provide good customer service by staffing a call center for customer support. Customers need more than a call center or email. They need their product to provide that expected value and perform well. Businesses need to figure out how to deliver that value, maintain high product performance, and keep a happy customer.
Service as the Main Course
Viewing service as an extension of the product can help companies deliver added value and improve customer satisfaction. So what, then, is the hesitation that executives face when delivering service as a strategy in their organization?
Making strategic decisions can be challenging when confronted with numerous variables. Employing an effective service strategy can be especially challenging when organizations are divided into separate silos, with each department concerned only with its own objectives but missing the main objective: the customer.
To execute a service strategy well, companies must look to transform their current approach to service. They must optimize service performance and service functions across all departments and ensure everyone is working collaboratively to deliver a unified service experience that joins parts, product and service information, remote service, and predictive analytics that maximizes the product value to each customer.
Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) is the solution to a service transformation within an organization. SLM provides a platform to deliver on-demand parts, accurate and relevant product and service information, global remote service, and predictive analytics for maximum product performance.
The Right-Sized Service Lifecycle Management Solutions
Service excellence prepares your organization for years of satisfied customers and service related revenue streams. Don’t miss out on revenue opportunities and the chance to provide your company with a competitive advantage. Apply service as a strategy within your organization.
We have an entire team that is dedicated to helping you manage service life cycle. Check out our services here.
