customer via SMS, email or phone as to how far away the technician is. Imagine the satisfaction of telling your customer the service technician is exactly 10 minutes away instead of: “He should be there between 3.00pm and 6.00pm.” Chris Hope, Precor’s UK service
manager, has seen fi rsthand the advantages that geolocation can offer businesses. “We have instances where a club phones the Precor service desk to log a call, and because we send the job out in real-time to the closest technician, we can turn up within an hour or two of the club making the call,” he says. “I’ve had technicians contact me to say they have been to a site for a job that’s just come through on their PDA and the customer has said: ‘Wow! I only logged a call an hour ago and you have turned up already
– that’s what I call service.’ It shows how this type of technology can improve both the effi ciency of the technician and the service that the customer receives.”
on-site support Geolocation also assists service
technicians when they are on-site. Life Fitness uses a geolocation system that has proved extremely helpful. While on a call, a technician will not always have every part needed for the job. Life Fitness technicians using geolocation can process parts orders at time of visit so that parts are requested same-day, resulting in a faster fix time and reducing potential equipment downtime. The ordered parts are electronically labelled with the order time and the customer’s location, ensuring they’re delivered to the right place as quickly as possible.
november/december 2011 © cybertrek 2011
Like Precor, the Life Fitness system
also allows for real-time tracking and display of technician location and status, as well as more effi cient driving routes – all of which makes life easier for both the service technicians and, most importantly, Life Fitness customers. “The speed of getting work quickly and
accurately out to our fi eld teams has already proved benefi cial and has been particularly valuable when clients wish to request additional work while our technicians are already on-site,” says Margaret Vane, services manager for Life Fitness. “Geolocation enables us to spend more time adding real value to our service deliverables and focusing on what customers need from us. Having a fast, accurate way of sending and receiving data between service centre and fi eld was a critical factor in achieving a scalable, effi cient and customer- orientated service delivery model.”
securing buy-in Some see geolocation-based vehicle
tracking systems as an invasion of privacy. Hope says Precor technicians had concerns at first, which the company did its best to assuage. “Initially there was a feeling among technicians that this was like a spy in the cab,” he says. “To minimise their concerns, the benefits of the system to both the company and the driver were explained, and the weekly summary reports obtained from the system are also sent by email to each of the technicians so that they can see exactly what the system is providing. A six-month period of settling in occurred before the system was accepted as part
Using geolocation, the Life Fitness system can process parts orders at the time of visit, speeding up parts delivery and minimising downtime
of the normal way of working, with the benefits appreciated by the technicians.” Vane also recognised this need for buy-in from her teams at Life Fitness.
“To reduce the learning curve for our fi eld teams, we introduced them to laptop-based technology around 12 months ahead of the system going live,” she says. “This provided them with valuable time to become accustomed to remotely locating data, service-specifi c and company information, as well as developing general data skills, before we transitioned to the new service model. It has already started to save technicians time every day.” Still in its infancy, the benefi ts of
geolocation to businesses are only just being realised. Geolocation is one of countless innovations reshaping how businesses function, reforming customer interactions and padding the bottom line for businesses. Its future capabilities remain to be seen, but they will no doubt serve to improve customer service and drive up profi ts.
About the author
Darren Weiss is a reporter for field service news site The SmartVan –
www.thesmartvan.com
healthclub@leisuremedia.com darren weiss
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 55
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