Field service

6 KPIs to track in Industrial Field Services

30/11/2021Web Master

Table of contents

The resolution of industrial equipment or infrastructure problems very commonly involves on-site interventions at the customer’s site. The Field Service Management (FSM) is an important part of the activities of many players in the industrial services sector. In order to measure the effectiveness of these services and the achievement of your objectives, it is important to define, implement and monitor KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). In this article, we propose you to discover 6 important KPIs to track and how visual assistance can help you reach the objectives you have set.

Field Service Management in the maintenance industry

Generally speaking, the primary goal of industrial maintenance is to ensure the availability of equipment and machines in a production environment. It can include several missions such as functional controls, maintenance, repair or replacement of equipment, machines or industrial infrastructures. These missions can be part of preventive or corrective maintenance.

Corrective maintenance very often involves interventions in the field, most often at customers’ sites. In order to optimize Field Service, most of the manufacturing companies have set up an organization and tools that allow them to coordinate the work of the technicians, to schedule the interventions and to monitor the operations and the possible interactions with the customers. But to evaluate the performance of the processes and tools implemented, it is important to track and measure Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.

These indicators can be specific to each company, but we have identified generic indicators relevant to industrial field service. The most important thing for you will be to choose the ones that are most relevant to your business and that can be acted upon to improve your productivity.

To determine the four or five most important KPIs, ask yourself the following questions:

What are the most important goals for my service this year?
How do we get the information we need?
How do we get this information to the right people?

KPIs to track to optimize Field Service Management

1. Customer satisfaction

Traditionally, operational efficiency was the main focus of industrial maintenance. However, this mindset has begun to shift more and more toward more customer-centric models. According to an Aberdeen Group study, customer satisfaction (68%) is the leading measure of success in field service management, far exceeding operational efficiency metrics. Higher customer satisfaction translates into higher retention rates.

The best way to get measurement on this indicator is to conduct customer satisfaction surveys at the end of the response.

This indicator can be used to measure operational efficiency, resource availability, and to demonstrate the value of a maintenance service.

2. The First-Time Fix Rate

The First-Time Fix Rate refers to the number of times the problem on a machine or equipment can be solved in a single intervention. A low first-response resolution rate costs you money because it forces you to schedule one or more additional interventions. It also costs your customers money because it means more downtime. According to a study, also conducted by the Aberdeen Group, 25% of field interventions are not resolved during the first visit. These interventions require an average of 1.6 additional visits.

3. The Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is the average time it takes to repair failed equipment. It is measured from the time a failure occurs to the time the equipment is repaired, tested and available for use.

Resolution time can be impacted at several stages of failure resolution:

When the failure is detected
During the call to the maintenance department concerned by the resolution of the failure
During the diagnosis
During the resolution
During the return to service

This indicator can be used to measure the efficiency of operations, the availability of resources and to demonstrate the value of a maintenance service.

4. Average travel time for technicians

The time it takes for the technicians to get to the site of an intervention is another parameter to take into account. The time the technician spends on the road is very costly for you since it is most often non-billable time. Set up tracking tools that allow you to evaluate the travel time, but also the costs of each trip and the average travel distances. If you notice high averages, you will have to implement actions allowing you to reduce these trips that impact your profitability.

5. The remote resolution rate

The remote resolution rate is a recently introduced KPI. It measures the total number of interventions that did not require travel. Companies that currently measure this metric say that on average, 1/3 of technical support calls can be resolved remotely. Improving this indicator requires understanding how service requests are handled and analyzing the tools that can be used by your teams and the knowledge required by your first level of support to resolve incidents remotely.

6. The rate of interventions performed in the SLA limits

A service level agreement (SLA) between a company and a customer specifies the billable hours, availability and responsibilities of the service provider.

Interventions performed under the SLA show that you have been successful in meeting the agreement. There will always be unforeseen circumstances, so it is impossible to achieve 100%, but 90% is within reach.

How visual assistance can help to improve your KPIs

Visual assistance allows the customer’s equipment to be viewed remotely during a technical support call. This process can allow, from the first call, to make a diagnosis of the problem encountered. With this information, it is possible to visually guide the customer using collaborative tools such as annotations on the video for example, and to solve the problem.

If the problem cannot be solved remotely, the pre-diagnosis allows the technician to leave for an intervention with a good knowledge of the problem and being better equipped to solve it. Once on site, if necessary, the technician can also call upon a remote expert. This way, a faster resolution can be found and additional travel can be avoided.

The use of visual assistance in these two contexts will undoubtedly have a significant positive impact on all of the above-mentioned KPIs, improving your efficiency and the profitability of your services.

If you want to know more about how visual assistance can help you achieve your goals, please contact us. We would be delighted to show you examples of how our customers have implemented video support and how they have improved their performance.

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