There are about 23.5 million field service workers worldwide, and 86% of decision makers at firms with a field service team say it’s critical to scaling their business. And yet, even among high performing organizations, only 57% of field service workers say the technology they use drives job satisfaction.
With this data from the field service trend report in mind, we wanted to understand what was missing — and how design choices could help close the gap. To find out, we interviewed 12 field service experts and 10 field service workers and managers. It turns out that job satisfaction is tied to four indicators: privacy, inclusion, safety, and autonomy.
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practice inclusive design in field service management
based on these findings, we drafted five principles to help guide how salesforce designs and deploys our software. These principles also provide a roadmap for how organizations can practice ethical and inclusive field service management by making strategic design choices:
1. Prioritize safety for every stakeholder
leaders are deeply concerned about the physical safety of america phone number list their field service workers – whether a job site is to code or the worker has sufficient personal protective equipment (ppe), for example. But are you considering the psychological safety of your workers and customers?
One technician told us that she’d walked into a home where drug paraphernalia was exposed, and the resident was inebriated. It turns out that a prior technician had noted a similar situation, but that information wasn’t relayed to the new technician until she checked in at the job site.
Design strategy considerations:
give technicians access to notes and warnings from prior appointments ahead of time.
Provide a mechanism field service workers can use to flag that they’re in a potentially unsafe situation.
Post-appointment, reward workers for documenting information. Safety implications — limited cell signal or the presence of a guard dog, for example – are important to note. Allow them to request to not be sent to that location in the future.
Consider asking customers if they’d be happy to be matched with that tech in the future.
2. Respect worker mastery and autonomy
field service workers, more than any other service worker, report a sense of accountability to customer satisfaction. They also deeply value the flexibility and autonomy of field work. Being over-prescriptive in how they do their work, or withholding important information about a job or their schedule has a negative effect. It increases the risk of attrition.