Is anyone blending their Remote Support and Field Support resouces?
For example, we are working towards using Field Service Engineers supporting our Remote Support customers while not utilized with field engagements.
If so:
How are you scheduling Field Service Engineers?
How successful is it?
What were some of your challenges?
Answers
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Hi @Sal Conti! Thanks for bringing up this important topic. TSIA has produced two reports that relate to the concept of blending Remote Support and Field Support resources. Industry Scenario: Extreme Remote Services and Remote Monitoring and Proactive Support, written by @Vele Galovski and @Thomas Lah. They may have input on this question as well as @Carlos Alves, @Sumit Bhat, and @Lynn Fraser.
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Have you checked the skill profiles of Field Service Engineers and Remote Support Staff? Are there skill gaps between the two groups? Are there complementary skills?
How will this interact with your values and compensation models?
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Hi @Sal Conti,
Great question!
- We have found it successful to look at utilization rates and typical inbound times to help us identify the best opportunities.
- So far, we’ve been successful in pockets, but are still early and in preliminary tracking and measurement.
- Biggest challenge is the mindset shift for a field engineer – converting an activity they are experts at fixing in the field to a phone based walk through model. It’s a big shift from “running an onsite fix” to “handling a call”!
Caitlyn Bannister
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@ Steven Forth,
At the beginning we compared our erlang results to identify queues that required additional staffing. We then ran a field utilization report to identify Field Service Engineers who were under utilized and finally performed a skill profile comparison to identify our target engineers. In collaboration with the field management we onboarded the target pool of field engineers and once fully trained we began scheduling them on Remote Support queues.
We experienced the same challenges you have and find that this is a culture change for our Remote Support and Field organizations. We are taking this to the next level by changing the job descriptions for new hires so they are starting out understanding that their role is both Remote and Field.
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