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As maintenance and servicing of home or commercial equipment are to be performed annually or at regular intervals, so maintenance services are mainly powered by repeat customers. And it is a simple logic that a customer would repeat a service provider, only if his last experience was good and satisfactory. Thus, if you are a maintenance service provider, you understand the importance of a positive customer experience that leads to customer satisfaction.

What builds customer experience?

What are the key areas to be focused on from the customer satisfaction point of view? Here is a list:

• Modern-day customers prefer digital convenience, so they must be provided with a digital platform for their interaction with the service provider.

• While booking a maintenance service, the customer always asks for an estimated timeframe for the service delivery. Nothing offends him more than an over-stretched delay in service.

• Customer can still adjust with delay in service if he is timely informed about the service status with upfront messages like 'The technician is running late.' Other-wise also, timely communication matters a lot for the customers as it helps them in keeping informed.      

• Exiting customers want their service provider to know them, as they don’t entertain repeating their details. So, he aspects that the service provider maintains a service record for him, such as his dues date for the next service, his warranty records, his contact and location details, invoices for his previous transaction details, etc.

• When the client meets an on-service technician personally, he prefers making general queries with the technician regarding his other service needs. And the client doesn't want the technician to give the lame answer that 'please connect with someone in the back office for your query.' Rather the client will be impressed if the technician can answer his query, provide him the service quote, if time permits, then may deliver the service on spot, generate an invoice, and receive the payment. To execute such on-spot upsell and cross-sell, the visiting technician needs to be knowledge-rich and provided with the right kind of technical support.

Is the customer demanding too much? Are his demands deliverable?

As a service provider, if you want to provide your customers with the aforementioned convenience, then it may look intimidating. But that is only if you are thinking it within the limits of manual efforts. If field automation is applied, then along with the aforementioned facilities much better customer-experience can be delivered. Maintenance service providers can adapt field automation with the aid of maintenance scheduling software. The automation capacities of the software are helpful in the following ways :

• It enhances on-time delivery of service by automatically assigning work to the nearest available technician and by providing him the optimal route plan to reach the job site at the earliest.
• It improves first visit effectiveness by scheduling the rightly skilled technician for the right job.
• It improves the know-how of the technicians by providing them on-the-move access to an enterprise knowledge base.
• The maintenance management software is a cloud database that stores all the enterprise data at one commonplace, so it facilitates on-the-go data collaboration with offline and online support.
• the software can automate the standard communication like sending service status updates to the customers, or notifying them about the service schedules and technician details, etc.

Conclusion  

Customer experience and satisfaction go a long way in strengthening the market position of a service provider. While marketing and price quotes are the key differentiator, but studies reveal that people are even ready to pay more for a better customer experience. Marketing gimmicks can pull a customer, but it is the experience that wins a customer.