Increase field service safety and reduce costs with augmented reality6 benefits of adding remote support

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How do you keep your technicians and customers safe?Safety is always a consideration for field service, but today there is renewed focus on keeping both customers and mobile workers safe through distanced or contactless service. Processes are changing to limit contact between people whenever possible, such as dropping off equipment at the customer's door and guiding them through the install via a phone call.

However, as people in tech support have long experienced, talking a customer through a solution when you can’t see what they see or what they’re doing is difficult. In some cases, people resort to consumer video calling applications to see what's going on, but it isn’t integrated with the field service application.

In addition, not all service visits can be completed remotely. Sometimes the technician finds themselves with a complex problem they don’t know how to solve. Traditionally, it results in multiple visits, either for them to learn about the issue and return or to hand off to a more experienced peer. Not only is this time-consuming, but it is especially challenging in industries where the experienced workforce is nearing retirement or no longer wishes to be in the field all day. How do you ensure your technicians in the field can get the support they need to complete the task in a single visit?

Vendors must identify opportunities to deliver services in changing settings and to optimize costs.

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Resolve issues quickly and safely with augmented realityCombining augmented reality or AR with your field service management solution allows you to reduce the number of truck rolls and increase your first-time fix rate to provide better service to your customers. That can mean helping your customers solve issues remotely with help from an expert to provide safe, contactless service or helping your team solve problems in a single visit with informative knowledge articles, AR annotations, and remote assistance when needed.

Let’s take a closer look at three ways you can use augmented reality to improve field service efficiency and safety:

Contactless remote service

Expert assistance

Remote troubleshooting

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Contactless remote serviceCustomers may not always want a technician in their home, whether due to risks from COVID-19 or personal safety. Reducing interpersonal contact whenever possible is safer for the technician as well. Augmented reality can empower a technician or customer service agent to provide real-time remote expertise and instruction so that the customer can resolve the issue themselves — a form of assisted self-service. This contactless service is both safe and efficient, and it eliminates some of the costs associated with a truck roll.

Customer Julie is having trouble with her water heater, and she hasn’t been able to figure out the issue. She schedules a service appointment with a company via their website and requests a remote service appointment, as she would prefer not to have someone in her home. She receives an appointment confirmation with instructions to install an app on her phone that will be used for her remote service.

The appointment also creates a work order, which has been assigned to a technician based on the skills required and availability. When it’s time for the appointment, the technician opens the field service application and selects the work order. He then starts the AR session with the customer.

Julie is able to use her phone to show the technician the water heater controls. He walks her through troubleshooting, and he can add annotations to the screen that Julie can see to help guide her. By following the verbal and visual instructions, Julie is able to fix her water heater. The appointment is complete, and the problem was resolved without the need for travel or in-person service.

Contactless remote service

Expert assistance

Remote troubleshooting

Benefits

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Expert assistanceWith the changing workforce and technical skills gap between technicians, it is nearly impossible to train all employees to deal with every problem that they could potentially encounter. If the technician sent into the field is not fully equipped to deal with the problem, having an expert available for remote support helps to increase your first-time fix rate while also allowing the experts to address more requests due to them not needing to travel. The field technician learns on the job, which reduces onboarding time of new employees.

An HVAC unit is due for preventive maintenance, and a work order has been created and assigned to field technician Teddy. Once he arrives on site, Teddy learns that the unit isn’t working properly, and it’s a new model that he hasn’t worked on before.

Teddy then schedules a session with an expert from the office and initiates a remote session using his phone. By following the verbal and visual instructions of the expert, who can see everything Teddy sees, the problem is diagnosed and repaired. Video content from the remote session is captured in the work order record, and it can be viewed by other technicians as a reference if they run into the same problem. Both the repair and maintenance are completed without the need for another visit.

Contactless remote service

Expert assistance

Remote troubleshooting

Benefits

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Remote troubleshootingSometimes it’s not clear what’s wrong with a piece of equipment — it just isn’t working. Resolution can take multiple visits if it requires separate trips for diagnosis and repair. In order to lower the number of repeat visits before the problem is resolved, remote troubleshooting is key. It allows the technician to know exactly what parts and skills are needed to solve the issue. Having a better estimate of the time required on site and knowing what equipment is required improves scheduling, increases first-time fix rates, and reduces costs.

A manufacturing plant has an equipment failure and customer Mark calls the equipment vendor to request a service appointment. The technician assigned to the work order contacts Mark to initiate the troubleshooting process and starts a remote session to assess the issue. She walks Mark through the process and is able to see and hear what happens in real time.

After diagnosing the problem, the technician knows that the equipment cannot be fixed remotely; however, she now knows which parts are needed and exactly what needs to be done on site. She’s able to repair the equipment in a single visit.

Contactless remote service

Expert assistance

Remote troubleshooting

Benefits

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BenefitsBy combining augmented reality with your field service management solution, you can improve efficiency and safety. Let’s look at six benefits in detail:

#1 Resolve issues fasterImprove first-time fix rate and mean time to resolution with remote assistance. By providing your technicians with assistance from a remote expert, they can resolve the issue quickly instead of having to try to figure it out themselves or leave and return another day.

#2 Keep technicians and customers safeContactless service, reduced travel, and fewer visits to remote sites whenever possible improves safety. Through remote assistance and troubleshooting, you can reduce exposure to dangerous situations for technicians and customers.

#3 Reduce costsLeveraging augmented reality with field service decreases truck rolls, reducing travel time, equipment wear and tear, and cost. This also allows you to complete more appointments each day without increasing the size of your workforce.

#4 Increase productivity for new employeesGetting a new employee up to speed takes time and resources, but remote assistance and on-screen AR annotations enable new hires to learn on the job. With a remote expert ready to help, new employees can start being productive in the field with less training.

#5 Create knowledge articles easilyManual knowledge article creation is laborious, meaning new articles may not be developed when they are needed. Saving information from remote sessions to a knowledge base article is an easy way to help technicians who face the same issue in the future.

#6 Support outcome-based service contractsUptime becomes more important than ever with outcome-based service, and augmented reality can make your team more efficient to support offering those contracts.

Contactless remote service

Expert assistance

Remote troubleshooting

Benefits

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Experience these benefits with ServiceNow Field Service Management and CareAR AssistServiceNow® Field Service Management helps companies efficiently and safely manage location-based work. It works seamlessly with ServiceNow® Customer Service Management and IT Service Management to connect customer service and the helpdesk with field service processes. You can automatically schedule work to the best available technician and keep assets up and running with proactive maintenance.

CareAR Assist™ is an augmented reality visual support platform built on ServiceNow that helps you digitally transform your support experience. CareAR Assist integrates with ServiceNow Field Service Management to add augmented reality as part of a seamless user experience.

Remote experts can virtually see the situation and visually guide customers or field technicians using a suite of AR tools via desktop, mobile, or smart glass devices, as if they were there in person. Additionally, CareAR’s end-to-end integration with ServiceNow allows you to instantly capture images and recordings during the service session. Remote session content can be saved to the ServiceNow knowledge base in order to enhance knowledge transfer. Content is also copied to the originating work order to ensure proof of work completion or compliance.

CareAR integrates with the ServiceNow® Mobile Agent app to create a seamless experience for mobile workers. In addition, technicians can use the Mobile Agent application to quickly view task information, optimize routes for their day's tasks, and easily source and track parts. They can work safely with checklists and knowledge articles, even when offline.

CareAR is available from the ServiceNow Store.

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About ServiceNowServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is the fastest-growing enterprise cloud software company in the world above $1 billion. Founded in 2004 with the goal of making work easier for people, ServiceNow is making the world of work, work better for people. Our cloud-based platform and solutions deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity for more than 6,200 enterprise customers worldwide, including approximately 80% of the Fortune 500. For more information, visit www.servicenow.com.

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