Field Force Automation Helps HCL Improve CSAT by 92%

A combination of a mobile app, GPS, and back-end CRM helps the company ensure that the right Field Engineer reaches the right customer quickly and resolve the query on time.

Ensuring that field service operations run efficiently is critical to the success of organizations with field crew and assets on the move. But with the proliferation and usage of IT & mobile devices coupled with fierce competition among suppliers and distributers to acquire and retain customers, expectations on customer experience management have increased many folds. This in turn has put pressure on service organizations (in particular Field Operations) to deliver on time, with speed, and at a lower cost, all while ensuring customer delight.

In order to deal with fierce competition and rising customer expectations, HCL Infosystems decided to automate its field force with a slightly different approach. It was done to enable the right field crew, with the right tools, skills, knowledge and parts, to get to the right place at the right time.

The objectives for this field force automation were to enhance customer satisfaction with faster resolutions and response time. HCL wanted to optimize its field resource allocation so as to reduce and avoid Non value Added time. The company also wanted to ensure its field force’s conveyance costs were optimized through proper route tracking. Further, the project aimed to enhance the work window and gain faster feedback and take faster corrective actions on the same.

Technology Used

To overcome all the challenges of the field ops team and achieve objectives of the field force automation exercise, the company developed an application called HCL SMART.

HCL SMART is an application conceptualized and designed for bring about IT enablement & automation of HCL’s field engineers. It was implemented to address a couple of business imperatives.

Firstly, HCL Services was undergoing a strategic shift in its line of business, towards a services-based business for growth and profitability. Secondly, the company wanted to focus on SLA & KPI driven service business to address market competition.

The HCL SMART app is capable of running on Android based GPS & GPRS enabled mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, etc). The app can help record the following details:

•    GPS/GPRS feature enables tracking each Field Engineer’s’ current location (in terms of longitude and latitude), date and time.

•    It can track each FEs conveyance and route

•    It can track each FEs “time spent on call” and activity recording

•    The FEs can raise spare parts requests and track their dispatch and utilization status. The app also has dashboards to enable out of the box reporting and ad-hoc reporting to further assist the FEs to resolve the customer’s complaints.

The app is integrated with HCLs backend SAP CRM system and hence, all the above details are stored in the system and available for future reference.

How does HCL SMART Work?

When a customer calls, his/her call details (like location, problem, etc.) are entered in the SAP CRM system. Since the location of all FEs is known from the app, the Central Call Coordinator, located at the centralized contact centers, can easily locate the nearest FE to the customer and assign the call to him.

The FE can view all calls assigned to him for the day along with the assigned time and has the flexibility to change his schedule, in case he feels that he won’t be able to attend any call at the assigned time. In such a case, the central call coordinator assigns the call to the next nearest FE, hence ensuring optimization of service team’s field operations.

The FE is also able to track the customer’s location through the GPS on his mobile device, and this ensures quick resolution to the call at the shortest possible time and within the prescribed agreed SLAs.

HCLSMART also helps instantly capture the customer’s feedback & electronic signature on the service rendered and this instant customer feedback helps HCL further improve the quality of its services.

Benefits of Transformation

The application has increased call visibility, as the FEs are able to view all call details on the app, like the incident/customer issue along with the customer’s past history of complaints and call resolutions, and with information on the set SLAs needed to be met.

The automation has assured optimization of daily schedules to address the most critical customer’s ‘service business priorities’.

The following are some of the benefits that have been achieved due to this initiative:

•    Customer satisfaction levels have gone up by

about 92%, by balancing between shorter drive time and better suitability of a given resource

based on previous acquaintance with the case

or customer.

•    The company is proactively able to respond to exceptions using a combination of real-time information monitoring and a variety of automatic, semi-automatic or manual re-planning tools.

It has enhanced the actual work window by 20%.

The implementation ensures that each job can be completed the first time, without the need for any follow-up visits, resulting a reduced time travel by 30 to 40%. It balances between the cost of a resource and the objective to minimize the risk of missing an appointment, scheduling the task as early as possible.