ABB Case Study

What You Need To Know

ABB bolstered its service management technology to enable it to improve internal processes and field resource alignment. While the technology has achieved its stated goals, it also has delivered a number of other benefits, including improving customer satisfaction scores, and increasing revenues generated from field engineers. The company’s focus on field service and customer service, and the underlying technology to manage it, has positioned it for future global success.

Case Study

ABB Process Automation, a division of ABB, Inc., develops automation systems and control software for the chemical, pharmaceutical, life sciences, oil & gas, pulp & paper, metals & mining, and utility industries. ABB Automation provides business-to-business industrial product and service support 24x7 for 17 global business units within the Power and Automation Technology Division. These units support more than 3,000 core products in 24 countries.

The company’s field service team maintains significant contact with the company’s customers, and has direct impact on its customer satisfaction levels. But its regional approach using a fragmented toolset made it difficult to measure field engineer utilization, and discover areas for improvement. ABB Process Automation in the U.S. reviewed its service management technology infrastructure and implemented new applications focused on field service – an area that, when well managed, can deliver significant results to an organization. ABB’s approach enabled it to improve its field service operations significantly, while boosting customer service satisfaction levels and generating increased revenue.

Problem

ABB Process Automation Service, USA, has approximately 300 field service engineers (FE’s) who are managed by regional coordinators. Under its previous system, each region used its own internally developed spreadsheet to assign and dispatch engineers to customer sites. Because each system was disparate, it was difficult to manage FE resources and talents across regions, and even more challenging to gather aggregated data that would enable ABB to streamline and improve processes. ABB estimated that the average amount of time FE’s were assigned to calls was between 70 and 80%.

ABB recognized that its most pressing issue was to improve field service levels. The company knew that it did not have enough resources to meet customer demand, but also knew that its existing field service resources were underutilized. It established a goal to improve FE’s assigned time to 100% to enable it to be more responsive to customer needs and, thereby, increase customer satisfaction.

Objective

ABB’s goal was to completely optimize its field service processes, focusing on the following business challenges:

Approach

ABB Process Automation, USA started its customer service transformation in 2002, an initiative that included an updated service management technology infrastructure. It deployed Vertical Solutions, Inc. ‘s (VSI) CRM solution as its base application to drive multiple, integrated point solutions. Early in 2007, it deployed the service dispatch module, Dispatch Board, from VSI to strengthen its field service operations and create a more unified view to customer data, including product profile, requests, and scheduled maintenance.

Dispatch Board provides the company with a consolidated view of all regional service requests by replacing ABB’s disparate regional systems. Dispatch Board enables the company to assign FE’s based on skill set, availability, and geographic proximity. It also enables ABB to inform customers about options; depending on the urgency of the customer’s need, they can opt to pay additional costs to transport an FE from a more distant region, or can choose to wait for an FE that was close by.

Deploying the dispatch module required buy-in from its regional coordinators, who initially were concerned that their own internally developed toolsets were being replaced. ABB worked diligently to show these coordinators that while their toolsets performed well within their own regions, having multiple databases was a barrier to a unified, national view. The company provided one-on-one training to the coordinators not only on how to use the new dispatch module, but also on how it would provide benefits to each individual region. Coordinators learned the ease with which they could locate and expedite resources from other regions, and how that would improve customer satisfaction within their own regions. In addition, coordinators learned that providing accurate information to the Dispatch Board module helped the company identify its field engineer shortage, which resulted in the addition of more field engineer resources.

The dispatch module enabled ABB to better leverage its field engineers, which are trusted entities to the customers. Field engineer availability is re-directed to business development activities, helping field engineers to augment ABB’s front-line sales team.

ABB Process Automation, USA also introduced a new sales incentive program for field engineers to provide some compensation to those FE’s who make or enable incremental sales. This effort has resulted in $1.4 million additional incremental sales initiated by field service engineers.

ABB used its integrated survey tool to discover customers’ most important criteria. Top on their lists were responsiveness, competence, innovation, and ease of doing business with the company. ABB has tailored all of its service optimization efforts toward meeting these customer goals.

Responsiveness and competence were both addressed with the deployment of the Dispatch Board module. Many ABB customers have regularly scheduled, planned outages, enabling them to coordinate service efforts well in advance. This tactic enables customers to access field engineers with the right skill sets as well as to maximize uptime. Deploying Dispatch Board significantly improved customers’ ability to gain benefits from advance planning. They now are able to submit schedules via an online portal in advance to ABB, which can quickly discover the right resource for the company at the least travel/expense cost. In addition, ABB can now train field engineers in advance for any special requirements, enabling customers to have more complete call closure. ABB enters requirements into the Dispatch Board system, and receives options that best serve the customers’ needs.

ABB also ties its remote diagnostics system directly into its VSI CRM platform, enabling it to offer customers increased uptime. Issues are discovered and resolved before they become problems, boosting customer satisfaction. The company regularly surveys its service customers for satisfaction levels, and found that from 2005 to 2007, its scores were stagnant. It was regularly achieving high marks with satisfaction scores between 78 and 79%, but set a goal of 83% customer satisfaction. In 2007, after implementing Dispatch Board, ABB exceeded its goal and achieved a customer satisfaction rating of 84%, a seven-percent increase in prior year’s scores.

ABB has enhanced its transaction surveys to customers so that it can leverage information to tie it to individual cases within the CRM software knowledgebase. Customers can directly request enhancements to service processes, which improves the company’s reputation for responsiveness and flexibility.

In addition, regional coordinators now use the new dispatch technology rather than individual toolsets. This required new process workflow, but enabled significant gains in terms of unified vision and very positive business culture changes.

The five areas most involved with customer service at ABB include service, dispatch, parts/logistics, telephone support, and training. Each of these groups has access to all customer data, and can review cases for at least the past year. Groups review the cases to determine reoccurring issues, and develop strategies for proactive support, authoring solutions to the KnowledgeBank, and enhanced training to rectify them. In addition, information is shared with sales and product development to ensure a full cycle of customer satisfaction.

Results

Bolstering its field service management technology delivered significant results for ABB Process Automation, USA. Prior to deploying VSI’s Dispatch Board, ABB’s field engineers’ time was applied between 70 and 80%; after the deployment, field engineers’ time was applied 120%. Increased visibility across all regions showed the extent of the customer service issue that ABB faced. While the company knew that it was not staffed to meet customer demand, once it deployed Dispatch Board, ABB could quantify the extent of the demand and staff up to meet it.

In addition, ABB was able to realize its vision of having the right field engineer available, at the right time, with the right skill set. Because Dispatch Board gave ABB a unified view of all of its field service engineer resources, it was able to quickly access information from all regions without porting data from disparate data sources. The company can now better plan for required training, and has been able to precisely identify the number of field resources it needs to meet customer demand.

ABB has reduced its scheduling costs by making more effective use of available resources. The company now has fewer calls in after-hours, resulting in lower call costs with answering service and field engineers; lower travel and living costs due to unnecessary field engineer movement. Field service engineers now can make front-line sales, and are incented for them with a variety of options, including vacations or additional paid time off. This has resulted in an increase of $1.4 million in incremental sales initiated by field engineers.

These have enabled ABB to achieve a return on investment for the new technology within six months of deployment. ABB has partially attributed an increase in Revenues (8%) and EBIT (12%), without raising rates, to this initiative.

For the customer, ABB’s service has become more responsive and has delivered improved uptime. The advance-planning capabilities enable customers to save time and money by pre-scheduling service events with field engineers that have the skill sets they need, and that are in the closest possible geographic range. These changes have resulted in an improvement of customer satisfaction ratings from 79% to 84%.

Next steps for the company focus on extending these areas of achievement. ABB has transformed its service center operations from a cost basis to a cost-recovery basis; its next step is to transform to a profit center. It also has integrated regional service divisions on one platform; its next step is to integrate its seven global regions, including North America. The company’s overarching goal is to build customer loyalty, and its first step was to transition service from being transaction based to being a method to boost customer satisfaction, loyalty, and strategic partnership. Its next efforts will focus on transitioning from customer satisfaction to customer loyalty and delight.

Critical Success Factors / Lessons Learned

Deploying new technology is always a challenge, as few people welcome wholesale change, and ABB was not surprised to encounter resistance from its regional managers. Working closely with them enabled the company to achieve the unified view of field engineer resources, which was crucial to its goal of improving FE utilization. Focusing on the benefits to the individual regions – including the improved customer service levels – smoothed the rollout.

In addition, ABB offered incentives to the field engineers, both to encourage their participation in the initiative, and to recognize their efforts as trusted customer resources. By providing a variety of incentives for front-line sales, ABB has added $1.4 million in incremental sales initiated by field service engineers to its bottom line.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned, however, is that deploying advanced service management technology can reap benefits for any company. In addition to maximizing resources and reducing costs, the Dispatch Board technology enabled ABB to improve customer satisfaction and increase overall revenues.

About Vertical Solutions, Inc. (VSI)

Vertical Solutions, Inc. develops, implements, and supports best-in-class CRM Contact Center and Service Management solutions, including PowerHelp® and its new generation technology solutions, VContactCenter™, for internal, external, and hybrid contact centers, and VServiceManagement™, for customer support, field service, and mobile environments. It also develops, implements, and supports patient services technology solution VHealthTracker™. These application systems are built on a SOAcompliant, cloud-based technology platform and are delivered as a service or onpremise in a private or public cloud environment. VSI's applications are flexible, integrate easily with legacy systems, and offer rapid deployment times, driving down TCO and delivering high ROI. VSI is headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, with offices and partners worldwide. For more information, visit www.VertSol.com or call 1.800.466.0238.

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