Service Council Symposium is an annual field service conference that brings together top service executives from many industries. Every year, hundreds of these leaders come together to discuss field service trends and challenges, understand how leading organizations are addressing them, and evaluate established and emerging technology solutions. TrueContext attends this event year-over-year, and this was my fourth time attending. This is what I saw at the event, and how these leaders are viewing the next 12 to 36 months.
Also, I’m going to tell you the direction of TrueContext’s next-generation feature releases, so make sure to stick around.
Quick Intro to Service Council
Service Council is an organization that conducts and presents field service research. They carry out numerous studies and surveys, which are presented at the Service Council Symposium, providing the background to most of the sessions.
- The Voice of the Field Service Engineer (VoFSE) survey is an annual study that gathers feedback from field technicians/engineers, highlighting their experiences, challenges, and expectations. It offers service leaders insight into how to improve technician engagement and effectiveness.
- The Service Leader’s Agenda is also an annual study that captures the priorities, challenges, and investment plans of service executives, providing a benchmark for how leaders are shaping their strategies for the year ahead.
Key Findings are Continued Challenges
Year-over-year, we are seeing the same challenges from FSEs:
- They feel bogged down by paperwork and admin tasks
- They are spending too much time looking for information
There was a theme at the conference that I noticed supporting these pain-points. Many organizations I connected with were in the middle of deploying a new backbone system (mainly FSMs) and admitted that their current processes for documentation, resource management, and workflows were clunky and needed to be modernized.
These concerns were validated by the first keynote that Service Council CEO John Carroll presented. One of the key findings presented showed that the #1 technology that field service leaders are prioritizing for their technicians is guided workflows.
I’ll be honest – these findings both excited and frustrated me. I was frustrated by the notion that for (at least) the fourth year in a row, technicians are relaying the same challenges in the field. On the other hand, I was excited by the prospect of showing how and why TrueContext is the leader in mobile workflows, demonstrating how we can address these challenges today and continue doing so tomorrow. Throughout the conference, conversations continued to link back to this “true north”, and we unveiled some exciting developments and talk tracks surrounding it.
Addressing “Not Enough Data” Perceptions from the Frontline
One of the panels TrueContext hosted addressed the challenges of technicians head-on, specifically that they are spending too much time looking for data. Featuring Jon Barr, CIO at Altorfer CAT, and Nick Cribb, President of SAM Service, the panel on “not enough data” coincided with a juxtaposed panel, Addressing “too much data” perceptions from the frontline. The panel contested that the issues were one and the same – the frontline is missing context to the data they have, and they don’t have tacit knowledge.
Missing context: Data without the story surrounding it or the situation it is relevant to will only serve to take up space in your technicians’ minds, bogging them down. Just as you need field data from your technicians for customer communication, compliance, and product development purposes, they too would benefit from field data, presented only when they require it. The panel identified both current and aspirational methods to accomplish this. For current, they suggested using guided workflows (like TrueContext) to provide information, using conditional logic to only present information when they’re on a certain site, working on a specific asset, etc. Aspirational ideas included deploying a briefing solution, which would provide technicians with a service briefing on their way to the job, using AI to analyze and present this information in the form of a podcast, taking advantage of the previous “dead time” of traveling to the site. Many ideas were presented, but the overarching theme was this: you must seek out solutions that provide your technicians with the information they need, only when they need it, in a form that fits the situation they are in.
Missing tacit knowledge: The panel didn’t sugarcoat it – we are in the throes of the silver tsunami, and the scariest thing about it is the number of master technicians that are retiring, taking their tacit knowledge with them. It is unrealistic to expect to capture every bit of this knowledge, but by leveraging technology and a good contextual data strategy, you can make a difference in your operations. The opportunity posed by the panel was the idea that organizations today are asking their technicians for a lot of data, but don’t have a reliable way to capture “large data” like, say, technician insights – what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing. If an organization can deploy a solution to capture this data, analyze it, and link it to different outcomes, they will have a foundation of these insights. Analyzing this data and linking it to common issues or resolutions doesn’t just help you bridge this tacit knowledge gap, it also helps reinforce your technician resources, knowledge repositories, and SOPs.
Almost as-if we planned it (wink, wink), our other panel explored how to leverage this intelligence from the field across the entire service organization.
Translating Frontline Intelligence into Insights and Better Performance
Joined by Derrek Veselka, Sr. Program Manager, Installations at Varian, and Mark Hessinger of Mark Hessinger Consulting (and formerly SVP of Global Service for 3D Systems), this panel sought to discuss better uses and outcomes of the intelligence that the field is providing the back office every day. The panel started by identifying the key purposes of field data: proof of work (i.e. getting paid), compliance, asset innovation, and helping the technician. They also called out that the last two are very unlikely to be a priority for many service organizations, and that is a problem.
However, they recognized that data to help asset innovation and aiding the technician is something most service organizations would like to do, but they don’t want to bog down their technicians even more with admin work (remember the #1 challenge FSEs callout year over year?) So how do you balance this need for data and technician productivity? As Derrek Veselka put it, “You must take the attitude that if we’re collecting something, we must give something back to the technicians, essentially a contextual conversation.” So how do you achieve this? In the panel’s view: Purpose driven data collection.
The back office has an insatiable desire for more data, and as a service leader, it is your job to collect data from the frontline to provide the business with insights it needs to drive better decisions. But this data can be bi-directional; when done right, you can leverage it to provide your technicians with better insights and the ability to get work done more easily. Purpose driven data collection is the method to achieve this symbiosis, and the panel identified a few ways to achieve it:
Define your KPIs and ensure that your data is serving them.
We’ve all heard of the expression “boiling the ocean.” In fact, I think I heard it in nearly every panel and breakout I attended. In a landscape of increased service pressures driven by customer expectations, growth goals, and macroeconomic trends (see the Service Leader’s Agenda), it’s easy to have a never-ending laundry list of KPIs. But the most important part of purpose driven data collection is “purpose”. If you have too many KPIs, then your purpose has been watered down, and now you’re just collecting everything. Define a list of KPIs and keep it tight. How? One method is to think of them in categories, for example:
- Operational: First Time Fix Rate (FTFR), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
- Customer: Net Promoter Score, CSAT
- Financial: Service Revenue per Technician
- Employee: Technician Satisfaction, Digital Tool Adoption Rate
It’s also important to differentiate between KPIs and “diagnostic metrics” – things you want to look at if you aren’t hitting your KPIs. Let’s look at FTFR. If you’re missing that target, you would want to understand things like percentage of jobs with incorrect parts or jobs that need escalating.
When you’ve grouped your KPIs in your buckets, you can then begin to collect the data to both report and help achieve them.
Understanding what your problem is and trying to solve for it.
Too often, organizations fall into the trap of collecting information simply because they can, burdening technicians with forms and checklists that add little value. Instead, leaders should begin by asking, “What are we actually trying to do?” Whether that’s reducing repeat visits, ensuring compliance, or improving customer satisfaction, the next step is to design data collection around those goals.
For example, if the problem is stagnant CSAT scores, perhaps the focus should be on capturing context-rich service notes, photos, and customer feedback that enhances documentation. This data can then be repurposed into clearer, more personalized service records that customers actually understand and trust. In this way, the data collected isn’t just filling a database but is actively driving insights, improving transparency, and ultimately helping technicians deliver a more positive customer experience.
Connect your data collection to the reality of your technicians.
Mark Hessinger said it perfectly: “If your tools and methods are not keeping pace with the data needs of the organization, the onus is on leadership to provide tools to make workflow navigation and data collection easier.” The people using these tools are your technicians, and the only way you will make it easier for them to navigate workflows, all while capturing data, is to connect the methodology to what their day-to-day looks like. That means understanding how technicians move through a job, what information they need at each step, and where data capture can naturally fit into their process, rather than feeling like an added burden. For example, if a technician is inspecting on a particular asset, when they scan the serial number, why not provide them with the full service history? This may assist with troubleshooting or give them areas to focus on. And when it’s time to collect that data, rather than present them with fields and fields of data entry, provide them with a guided structure that minimizes the clicks, and eliminates typing where possible. When leaders design data collection methods around the lived reality of technicians, rather than corporate reporting needs alone, they will receive higher-quality data, while driving greater technician adoption, efficiency, and trust in the tools provided.
The Future of Mobile Workflows, Data Capture, and Knowledge Management
At Service Council Symposium, TrueContext Founder & CEO, Alvaro Pombo, unveiled the new direction of TrueContext’s mobile workflow platform. He explained that the current problems facing the industry surrounding mobility, tacit knowledge, and data capture has been our goal to solves since day one. We’ve led many organizations from paper to mobile, and from mobile to true mobility – completely offline, seamless experiences, and a bi-directional flow of data to and from the field. “You’ve been with us through this journey but there is more to do, as we can see from these same challenges topping the list year after year” said Alvaro, to transition into the new direction of our platform: AI-augmented workflows.
- Smart Service History: An ideal service briefing has your technicians showing up to a jobsite with a complete and concise briefing of everything that is outstanding with that site, customer, and asset. Now imagine that this briefing is automated, with AI analyzing datapoints like previous work, open tickets and quotes, and asset performance, feeding these insights into the briefing. Your technicians now have all the context they need to get the job done right. With Smart Service History, you will have a living briefing, always concise, always up to date, always presented to the technician when (and only when) they need it.
- AI-Assisted Execution: Why are your master technicians so valuable? One reason is their ability to adapt on the fly. If they run into an issue, their experience kicks in and often points them in the right direction. That’s why they get called by less tenured technicians so often. What if we could provide dynamic next steps based on what the technician is seeing and inputting into their workflow, all powered by AI? With AI-assisted execution, technicians can expect these insights and prompts, rooted in the reality of service and asset history. Is the temperature on this asset outside of a certain threshold? Maybe a few other technicians reported this in the past year, and there is an issue with a cooling duct. The technician would be provided the prompt to check the component and replace if required.
- Intuitive Data Capture: Today, technicians are using their mobile devices to capture data that is being asked of them. TrueContext is pushing its platform to help capture the data that isn’t being asked from them – their insights. By using methods like computer vision, audio recognition, and voice capture, technicians can collect data that is too large or unstructured to capture today. Using these methods, technicians of any skill level can feed these critical insights back to your organization, improving your data, and triggering prompts or next steps based on what they’re seeing and hearing. With intuitive data capture, a novice technician can take advantage of a master’s eyes and ears and benefit from the experience that goes with it.
- AI-Driven Insights: The data that is captured by your service teams is a gold mine of intelligence. At TrueContext, we believe that the power of field data is bi-directional; your organization receives the data it needs in an accurate, reliable way, while your technicians receive insights and information that help them complete their jobs more effectively. AI-driven insights are the realization of this goal, with the data that technicians capture analyzed and presented to them in even more contextual ways, feeding your smart service history and AI-assisted service execution, completing the cycle of AI-augmented workflows.
In some cases, AI feels like a hammer, with every process looking like a nail. At TrueContext, we are narrowing the scope of our AI to focus on your biggest cost center and difference maker: your technician. We believe that the future of field service is AI-Augmented Service Workflows with the technician at its center, and that when you truly enable your technicians with what they need to get the job done, then you have the fundamental base of your service operation. This feeling was only reinforced by our time at Service Council Symposium, and if you are a service leader who wants to push the envelope for the art of the possible, I hope to meet you there next year.
