Digital has emerged as the biggest disruptive force challenging existing business models and shaping the new ones. The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is no exception. iQor, a 45,000-strong company provides managed services across a delivery platform spanning from contact centre to field service, and aims to build the world’s first integrated model for front office and repair services. The team at iQor believes that technology is enabling their success. The company has transformed the management of spare parts and the delivery of field services operations into a scalable, digital service delivery and customer management system.
From disparate technologies to a single integrated platform
iQor’s early automation journey was evolutionary in nature, and processes were digitized one at a time as the need arose. This resulted in a number of disparate solutions that could not be easily integrated.
Without a single view of all customer support operations, the iQor team lacked clarity on spare parts availability. Field service technicians did not have visibility into the customer visits needed within a certain region. Unable to optimize visit schedules, they were often late for appointments. Additionally, the lack of a centralized repository for service tickets and information on their resolution meant that the company was losing valuable knowledge on the customer.
All this resulted in a less-than-ideal experience for customers.
To solve this challenge, iQor envisioned developing one single platform to integrate all customer service and product support operations. The platform would consolidate data across processes, give iQor better control over the entire support journey and help them offer better customer experiences.
iQor evaluated a few solutions for their product features, functionality and ROI. The team loved Salesforce for its simplicity and robustness of functionality. The Salesforce platform also offered them the ability to integrate multiple technologies and data streams across a vast support ecosystem.
“Partnering with Salesforce is a critical part of our digital transformation,” believes Sandeep Vaid, Vice President, Information Technology, iQor.
Using Salesforce Field Service Lightning, iQor has transformed the management of spare parts and the delivery of field services operations into a scalable, digital service delivery and customer management system.
Cutting costs and delivering faster, smarter and more personalized service in the field
Salesforce offers iQor a common platform that integrates technical and product support processes. Though the implementation is still in its early days, iQor is already seeing considerable business impact.
“Our aim is to eventually reduce the cost of operations by 20 percent,” explains Vaid. “And we are already seeing a significant decrease in the manpower required to run operations.” The full automation of all processes has helped iQor redeploy almost 25 percent of its support staff.
The team is also seeing a boost in the productivity of field personnel.
“Efficiencies have started kicking in with the streamlining of processes,” says Vaid. “Case allocation is business-rule driven, allowing us to optimize mobile workforce allocation and resolve field service calls faster.”
“We have seen an improvement in our field staff’s productivity, and significant enhancement in reporting functionality and dispatch management,” he continues. “The per day closure rate per field engineer has gone up 17 percent from 3.5 to 4.2 cases, and we expect to eventually achieve five cases per field engineer per day.”
iQor combines Field Service Lightning with Service Cloud to gain real-time visibility into all operations. The single, consolidated view of customer interactions allows teams to anticipate potential escalations and proactively respond to them. A dispatch team can geo-locate field engineers’ movements and calculate the expected time of arrival at the customer’s location. If there are going to be delays, the system alerts both the customer and the dispatch team.
Finally, a knowledge management system captures information around processes and products that engineers repair. This has created a rich repository that all service teams can tap into for better service delivery.
Enabling better managerial decision-making through consolidated data and rich insights
Salesforce is helping iQor address bigger business objectives as well.
The integration of all the different product support services on a single platform allows iQor to offer its customers a consolidated platform that links together CRM solutions, spare part inventory management systems, and engineering field services, supported by an integrated reporting and analytical platform.
The solution’s real-time reporting and business intelligence capability helps the iQor management team access rich insights around product, customer and support service trends, and drive strategic decision-making.
“Management and executive teams will be able to refine their decision-making as information, data and analyses become more precise and more quickly available,” says Vaid.
The next step in iQor’s transformation story
The iQor team now plans to build preventive maintenance schedules using the predictive capabilities of the platform. This will further boost their service delivery excellence and firmly establish them as a company that offers a smart digital management system for aftermarket services.
“We are making great strides on our transformation journey from BPO to a digital services provider that delivers an unrivalled product support experience,” concludes Vaid.