What Is Remote Field Services?
Remote field services are becoming increasingly popular around the world. This new work style comes with various advantages and some disadvantages. Businesses can use this new area of service to drive up sales and expand their operation area. In this article, we will explain what remote services are, what businesses need to expect from these services, and what these services can offer to the businesses.
When businesses want to try new methods to change their operation and work style, the expectations and the reality can be different. This is the case for remote field services as well. Most businesses expect high returns and high-cost savings when they switch to remote services. However, there might be some downsides to these services. Let’s check what remote field services are and how the business can benefit from these services.
In recent years, an increasing number of businesses are changing their traditional business operations. Instead of working from an office, the business starts to deploy its workforce to different parts of the world. And this is done by remote field services.
Customer services, technical support and many other service fields are now operated outside the company. The employees in the customer services field can engage with customers from their homes using a headset. Also, the business can assign the technical team for maintenance and repair without having these employees at the office. This new work style comes with various advantages.
Remote Field Services Advantages
The remote field services advantages can be divided into two: the business side and the employee side. In fact, employees can benefit from these services as much as the business itself.
Business Advantages
Increase Your Service Field
When a business starts to benefit from these services, their service field can expand. Normally, it is challenging to assign technical staff to work in a wide range. This requires transportation, accommodation and other costs incurred to complete a maintenance task in another city.
But these costs can all disappear with remote services. Business can hire employees from nearby cities to their facilities. Also, businesses can expand their service field as they are no longer bound by one city or region.
Empower Your Technical Staff
Another advantage of the business can be technical staff empowerment. With remote field services, technical staff can carry all the necessary data they need to the service field. Actually, this requires good digital integration. In this sense, a business can complete the remote field service and digital transformation at the same time.
Higher Problem-Solving Capabilities
When business use remote field services, the problem-solving capabilities increase as well. They can immediately intervene with problems or provide customer support without any delay. This way, customer satisfaction and brand reputation can increase with one single implementation. The guidelines provide to the employees ensure high customer satisfaction rates. Also, it is possible to reach leads in a shorter period.
Employee Advantages
Work Load Optimisation
In terms of employee advantages, workload optimization can be the first thing to consider. With these services, each employee will be assigned a specific task. When combined with scheduling applications, remote services can provide an optimized work distribution. This will increase the overall efficiency of the employees which will result in higher customer satisfaction rates.
Higher Work Productivity
The second advantage in terms of an employee is higher work productivity. With these services, employees no longer need to spend time to go to an office. At least, their time on the road will be significantly decreased. Thus, employees can use all their energy for the work rather than trying to reach to work. Additionally, employees can offer services in their region without moving to another city. This increases the overall motivation of the employee which results in higher productivity.
Remote Field Services Disadvantages
There are also some remote field service disadvantages. Mainly, these issues are related to human resources and organisational culture. Also, there is one key disadvantage from the business perspective.
Real-Time Working Issues
One of the business challenges of remote field services is related to real-time working. In this business model, employees can be in different time zones. Different time zones make real-time working challenging. There is a small-time window for all employees to be online at the same time. While this is not an issue for customer services or technical support, lack of real-time working can be a problem for the sales teams.
Low Organisational Commitment
This disadvantage is related to employees rather than the organisation. When employees work in an environment outside the office, their organisation commitment might be at a low level. This might increase employee turnover rates as the employees will feel less forced to be in a specific company. This issue can be solved with organisational events, motivation meetings or online video calls to the employees.
