In a quest to maximize uptime for customers balancing patient care and revenue goals, industry leaders are re-evaluating the way their medical device and diagnostic organizations provide service.
The highest-performing organizations are defining a new formula for success: one that prioritizes the importance of data, emphasizes the employee experience, and embraces the value that predictive analytics offers.
Looking to reshape your service team? Here’s what the experts recommend.
1. Trust your data and set goals to improve KPIs.
Realizing that hunches and intuition are not enough to make smarter decisions, many leaders are turning to data-driven decision making. The best strategies are backed by insights, and this level of intel can solve looming finance, operations, sales, and customer issues. Once you know your metrics, you can take a deeper look at your org’s actual performance – and then strategize on ways to improve.
“Historically, manufacturers and service businesses thought about operational efficiencies as a primary metric of success. But now, manufacturers are thinking about using customer centric metrics to drive outcomes, such as improving the service experience for customers, solving problems more quickly, or looking at a closed loop of innovation. Service data can inform decisions within the business and [help] rethink what is good.”
– Aly Pinder, Program Director, Service Innovation & Connected Products, IDC. Learn more about Aly’s service journey.
To see how other service teams in the medical device industry are performing, download the Med Device Benchmark Report.
2. Prioritize diversity.
Leading organizations are hiring talent across a wide range of backgrounds, understanding that a mix of soft and hard skills create a better customer experience. A diverse workforce increases innovation and strategic thinking because teams of people who come from different backgrounds can draw upon their shared experiences to understand customer needs and creatively fulfill them.
“Our hotline was first built on a bedrock of experience. But with the ready-to-use tools and expert knowledge stored in Aquant’s platform, we’ve been able to have a broader array of hiring possibilities — and maintain our Net Promoter Score.
Now we have [a range of hard and] soft skills on our hotline. When you have a mix of new agents and experienced agents, you’re getting a much more consistent [customer] experience.”
– Deniz Mullis, Director of Global Field Services, Haemonetics. Hear how Deniz’s organization accomplished service transformation.
3. Invest in tools and training.
Leaders have noticed that investing in tools and training for employees leads to greater retention, career growth, and increased levels of customer satisfaction.
Millennial and Gen-X employees are motivated to try new technologies, seeing it as a way to advance their career. Once they’ve mastered it themselves, they’re more likely to share tips and hacks with colleagues, creating an informal learning environment that increases confidence and workforce proficiency.
“The employee experience is paramount. To do more horizontal or parallel career pivots or transformation, you have to create opportunities within the service organization.
To create this high-achieving team with a long tenure, you need to understand business and customer needs. It’s a lot easier to retain people than hire new ones.”
– Paul McDermott, Director of Service & Support, T2 Biosystems. Learn how Paul’s organization prioritized tools and training.
4. Be proactive.
Preemptive actions have a domino effect. Using technology to propose solutions during initial customer calls means that technicians feel more confident, knowledgeable, and prepared to tackle the issues once they arrive at the job site. Platforms like Aquant can offer prescriptive analytics and workforce recommendations that help teams take proactive steps to improve service delivery.
From happier customers to more capable teams, leaders are taking note of the positive effects across the board.
“It’s great to have a benchmark on our own team to validate our assumptions about the business, and that’s what we get with Service Insights. There’s nothing like a scoreboard, where you’re able to reflect your team’s performance in real dollars as well as efficiency.
[This allows you to have] deeper conversations with finance partners and operations partners, to make sure you’re building a more efficient team.”
– Pierre Malboeuf, Senior National Director of Field Service, Hologic
5. Leverage the power of shared knowledge.
AI is an investment that empowers workforces to solve difficult challenges. Crowds carry wisdom – and AI has the power to boost team productivity through better knowledge sharing.
Leaders are observing how collaboration goes to the next level once collective industry insights are added to the mix. As the old adage goes, “Teams are greater than the sum of their parts.”
“[Industry insights] lead to a greater user experience because others may see things that we wouldn’t have seen in our traditional build model.
Combining the industry’s collective knowledge within our system helps service engineers and support teams drive faster resolutions for our customers.”
– Adan Deroche, Customer Care Systems & Technical Consulting Director, Sysmex America. Explore how AI changed Adan’s organization.
Ready to replicate success?
Give these best practices a try to start improving your service outcomes. Get a Demo of Service Insights to see how your data can be turned into actionable insights.
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