Business Intelligence / Analytics Technology Drives 42% Improvement in Customer Retention in Best-in-Class Companies

A recently published study by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company, found that leading field service organizations are adopting business intelligence and data analytics technology and best practices to enable better and faster decisions and reporting within post-sale service organizations. They are also beginning to deploy simulation modeling within their organizations to perform sophisticated “what-if” planning and forecasting.

Among the service organizations recently surveyed, companies that have implemented technology for reporting and decision support have improved:

• Service profitability by 17%

• Customer retention rates by an average of 29%

• Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance by 33% Best-in-Class organizations are showing greater improvements, with service profitability up 18%, customer retention increase of 42%, and a 44% improvement in SLA compliance.

Other service organization Best-in-Class characteristics include:

• 80% have enterprise-wide balanced scorecard initiatives in place

• 71% have a vice president or higher executive overseeing service functions

• 40% have established enterprise-wide standards and process to ensure data accuracy

Aberdeen recommends that service organizations consider the following strategies to drive efficiency and decision support within their service organization:

• Implement technology and process to ensure data accuracy within the service operation.

• Provide service organization with total visibility into parts, workforce and knowledge across the enterprise.

• Implement technology to enable “what-if” simulations.

• Focus attention on longer-term customer-facing metrics like retention as well as profit.

Find more information on the service and support industry and www.SupportIndustry.com