Flying Blind in Service: Why Knowledge Gaps are Expensive
Every day, service technicians lose valuable time due to a breakdown in the information flow. Repairs drag on, while personnel costs and downtimes soar. In this blog article, you’ll discover how technician efficiency can be improved through various tools, including step-by-step instructions.
Why a well-functioning information flow is so important for service technicians
Even for experienced service professionals, many problems can no longer be resolved through personal know-how or assistance from colleagues alone. That’s because machines and equipment are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. Service technicians need clearly presented, correct, and up-to-date information in order to focus properly on their work and complete their tasks on time.
Otherwise, they will find it difficult in their everyday work to:
- identify spare parts,
- find the relevant information in technical documentation,
- prepare for and carry out service callouts to the best of their ability,
- improve customer satisfaction, and
- achieve a high first-time fix rate.
The result? Significant time lost, which costs companies a lot of money. By making carefully prepared specialist knowledge available to all employees at all times, technician efficiency can be improved. Another knock-on effect is that the information flow doesn't stop when experienced technicians leave the company.
Study shows just how problematic information gaps in service are
In the ‘Insight-Report Service 2023’ study, Kothes, together with customer service associations in Germany (KDV), Austria (KVA), and Switzerland (SKDV), analyzes what information service technicians need on a daily basis in order to be productive—as well as what happens when this information is missing.
Service technicians face multiple hurdles in information searches
The most important source of information for service technicians is their own wealth of experience. But more and more frequently, they encounter new challenges in their work that require additional information to overcome. Searching for this information often proves difficult, however, as the results of the study show:
- Significant time lost: According to the study, 86% of technicians spend at least half an hour every day searching for service information. A third spend at least an hour doing so. Many service personnel don't even know exactly where to look.
- Negative impact on first-time fix rate: 93% of respondents report that lack of access to information has already resulted in the need for additional service callouts.
- Paper is prevalent: Almost 40% of technicians have to make do with information on paper, even though 70% would like to see a better solution.
- Step-by-step instructions are not very common: Half of the service technicians surveyed find step-by-step instructions for maintenance and troubleshooting helpful. But these instructions are only available to a third of them for maintenance work, and to just a quarter for breakdowns.
The study concludes that service technicians need user-centric information in digital format
The study shows that machine and plant manufacturers should place greater emphasis on providing user-centric and context-related content that goes beyond circuit diagrams and data sheets. On digital platforms, it only takes a few clicks to access information about spare parts, tools, repair and maintenance instructions, or maintenance work that has already been carried out. Service colleagues can locate all the information they need in one place, ensuring a proper flow of information. Platforms such as these also provide intuitive step-by-step instructions. Discover the many benefits of these instructions below.
How step-by-step instructions improve the information flow
Step-by-step instructions are a key tool across various sectors, making it easier for employees to operate software or equipment. With clear instructions, even inexperienced users quickly learn which clicks or steps are required to achieve the desired result. They transform unstructured knowledge into an organized information flow.
For complex industrial machines and plants, step-by-step instructions are an effective tool for independent problem-solving. These guides offer numerous advantages for service technicians:
- Interactive instructions ensure a consistently high level of service and allow workflows to be standardized.
- They reduce the amount of time technicians spend on searches.
- They allow even inexperienced technicians to complete many tasks independently and carry out initial customer visits more quickly.
- Accurate, step-by-step assembly and installation instructions provide clarity and structure.
- When each step is clearly defined and easy to understand, it reduces the risk of errors.
- If the basic steps of a process are clear, service technicians can then invest more time in solving problems for which there are no step-by-step instructions (yet).
- With step-by-step instructions, technicians can deal with problems more quickly and therefore reduce your customer downtimes.
Detailed instructions are also helpful for your customers. Many problems can be solved remotely if your service representative can guide the customer’s technician through simple repair processes step by step. This reduces travel time and costs on the customer side.
In the future, it will be possible to combine step-by-step instructions with augmented reality technology and display these through VR headsets in real-life situations. This will allow technicians to have both hands free to work, while keeping a constant eye on the next step of the process.
Requirements for step-by-step instructions
For detailed instructions, a comprehensive database is required which includes information from different fields and sources. Furthermore, this data must be centrally synchronized and up-to-date. An intelligent information architecture is also required so that service technicians aren't overloaded with information—and can be created using metadata, filter, and search functions, for example.
This is exactly what Quanos InfoTwin offers. In the scalable cloud solution, information is collected from your aftersales & service department and from technical documentation. From product documentation to spare parts and service information, all data relevant to the step-by-step instructions can be centrally synchronized and easily searched.
One key aspect here is that in InfoTwin, there is a particular focus on specific machines and their individual characteristics. Service technicians can then obtain detailed information about specific assets, which avoids errors and doubts.
How standardized step-by-step instructions are created with Quanos InfoTwin
Various feature sets are available on the platform, including the ‘Service Activities’ set. This allows key information from individual service activities to be displayed and filters by characteristics such as service level, for example.
Service technicians will find the option to set up standardized step-by-step wizards particularly useful for completing service activities. It means that both internal and external software users can access valuable support for maintenance and repairs, refurbishment, and modifications of assets.
InfoTwin extracts the information for this from technical documents, which already contain many useful sets of instructions. The contents are displayed in a guided form as activities via the service activities.
This offers the following benefits:
- The activities are interactive.
- There is the option to highlight particularly important or difficult steps with a warning sign.
- Each completed step can be conveniently checked off, allowing users to visualize the progress of the service callout.
- There is a service history which displays previously completed activities.
The platform also automatically links the data to relevant information about spare parts. The instructions support your service technicians before they respond to the service callout with an overview of:
- The activities to be carried out
- The tools and accessories required
- The spare parts to be ordered
This allows the instructions to optimize how service activities are prepared for and carried out.
Conclusion: Interactive instructions improve technician efficiency
With Service Activities in Quanos InfoTwin, it’s easy to automatically generate an interactive guide for service technicians from existing data and guidelines, which in turn optimizes the information flow.
Repairs, service measures, and maintenance work can all be carried out more efficiently as a result. Instead of losing considerable time searching for relevant information, service technicians complete their tasks more quickly as well as significantly increasing the first-time fix rate.
InfoTwin's step-by-step instructions, for example, include further information about spare parts—saving both additional time and workload. The guided instructions are comprehensive and easy to understand, making them helpful not only for service callouts, but also as an integral part of the onboarding process for new service technicians.
Your customers or their technicians and maintenance staff will also enjoy working with detailed yet easy-to-use instructions, as they will allow many activities to be carried out independently, thus saving both time and money—and guaranteeing high levels of customer satisfaction.
