Episode 298

While host Sarah Nicastro doesn’t believe anyone can truly predict the future, in this episode of the Unscripted Podcast, she shares what she expects 2025 will bring based on interactions with the Future of Field Service community and featuring insights from the Stand Out Service Trends report.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

Watch the episode here:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sarah:  The reason that there are not any excuses not to is that the options for offering flexibility are enabled by today's technologies and just a bit of creativity, a bit of getting willing to move beyond the way that it's always worked and to reimagine a bit what service delivery could look like in a world where you are offering your employees some of that flexibility. So if we consider how the incorporation of more self service change what's possible, we start to see how coming up with different scenarios that can offer more flexibility to our workforce is feasible. Hello. Welcome to the Unscripted podcast where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sara Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Unscripted podcast. I'm your host, Sara Nicastro. The day has come for my 2025 service predictions, or as I'm going to refer to them today, my non predictions. The reason I say that is every January, all different types of content creators, analysts, journalists, etcetera are asked to share or decide to share predictions for the coming year. I've always found this challenging because the reality is none of us can predict the future. No one knows what is around the corner, and so it's really hard to feel a sense of confidence or conviction in stating with certainty what is to come in the year ahead. That being said, it is something that I'm asked often. And while I don't necessarily feel any of us can predict the future, There are some different themes or trends that, in my opinion, we can expect to see in 2025 based on the conversations that I have on this podcast on a weekly basis, based on the interactions I have the opportunity to have with people within the future of field service community, the interactions that I have with different IFS customers who are on their journey to service transformation and service optimization. And, of course, last year, we had the 1st ever standout fifty leadership award and did a standout service trends report with those leaders in which we gathered some insights that I'll also reference today as I go through my non predictions. So I have a few to share, and the first that I want to start with here is organizations will begin to offer the frontline workforce greater flexibility. Here's why I think this will happen. It has to. We know that flexibility and better work-life balance is incredibly important to today's talent, And this is an area where for a long time and for a lot of different reasons, service organizations have sort of dismissed it as simply not possible, and that has changed. So in the standout service trends report, 29% of respondents report that they already are allowing flexible schedules, remote work options, or other work-life balance initiatives as part of an employee engagement focus. Now if you didn't read the standout service trends report or haven't heard me talk through some of the findings on the podcast before, I do want to mention that the standout fifty was fifty leaders. They were nominated by peers and colleagues and folks within the industry based on the impact that they're making, but there's no way that we can say that necessarily a sample size of 50 is representative of the whole. Right? So in my mind, if these folks were folks that were nominated for their impact, we could deduce from that that they, as leaders, and possibly the organizations that they're a part of, are on the better side or further alongside of thinking and best practices when it comes to service. That may or may not be true, but my point here is saying that that's 29% of those 50 leaders, not of all of service by any means. But 29% of the standout service leaders who participated in that report are already offering some sort of flexibility, and I think that is tremendous. There really though is  no excuse for others not to at this point. And that's why I think in 2025, we're going to see more and more of this. The reason that there are not any excuses not to is that the options for offering excuses not to is that the options for offering flexibility are enabled by today's technologies and just a bit of creativity, a bit of getting willing to move beyond the way that it's always worked and to reimagine a bit what service delivery could look like in a world where you are offering your employees some of that flexibility. So if we consider how the incorporation of more self-service and remote service change what's possible, we start to see how coming up with different scenarios that can offer more flexibility to our workforce is feasible. In the standout service trends report, 15% of respondents said that they have extensive self-service options in place and state that customers are responding well to those, and 52% currently have some self-service capabilities in place and are focused on expanding those. 33% of respondents have transitioned a significant portion of service delivery to be remote, and another 30% are in the midst of transitioning a portion of service delivery to be remote. So these and other changes give companies options for flexibility that would have been nearly impossible to achieve not too very long ago. I do believe companies that seize this opportunity are on the cutting edge of looking at things differently and leveraging today's tools to reimagine what's possible for the frontline workforce will have a significant advantage in the talent war. Now this should go without saying, but organizations should be offering their workforce a lot more than just flexibility. That's certainly not the only thing that is important to talent. It isn't the only foundational pillar of employee engagement. This is simply an element that is desired by today's workforce that has long been dismissed as impossible in the service industry that is now entirely feasible. So that's why I think in 2025, we're going to see a lot more offering of flexibility, and it will be really interesting to see some of the different shapes that takes. That could be days that they work from home, that could be rotating schedules, it could be allowing them the opportunity to pick their start and end times for the day, etcetera. There's a number of different shapes that this can take and that's where getting creative and understanding what's important to your workforce, understanding the constrictions of how you deliver service to your customers today and what could change in that regard to make new things possible, all of those things come into play, but they deduce down to the ability to offer more flexibility to the workforce. So that's number 1. Number 2, customer expectations will exploit service organization complacency. So it is incredibly challenging to keep pace with what customers want, but it is the name of the game. For a long time in this space, we've been talking about consumerization and the influence of how the experiences that we can receive in our personal lives bleed over to what we expect from companies that we do business with in all areas of our lives. And so I believe that many service organizations are soon going to face the consequence of sitting pretty or maintaining the status quo when they could have or should have been innovating. One of the data points from the standout service trends report that drove this home for me is that respondents shared that when asked what's most important to customers, wanting peace of mind or guaranteed uptime slash performance was 2nd on the list. So it's the 2nd most important thing to the respondents' customer base. Yet only 26% of respondents are offering outcomes based services, and, perhaps more importantly, 26% still offer only reactive or transactional break-fix service. So that shows this divide between what's important to customers and where these organizations are in terms of evolving their service offerings to provide that peace of mind that we know is important. So what was once effective at setting service apart has, in many instances, become table stakes. We've talked a lot in the past about soft skills, prompt response, high degree of first-time fix. There are a number of companies who are still struggling to shore up those strengths, and those companies are falling behind the organizations who have shifted to modernizing their service value proposition along with modernizing service delivery itself. So I think that this is the way the pace at which customer expectations are evolving is really going to magnify the gap that exists between service organizations who have taken the initiative to be innovative, to keep on top of trends, to keep pace with change, to understand what's important to their customers, and to continue to evolve their operations and their offerings accordingly and those who have sort of just stayed complacent and maintained the status quo. This evolution in progress or foreshadowing of a reckoning, if you will, is also suggested by the wide range of KPIs that are used to measure service success today. When we asked respondents in the standout service trends report how they measure performance of their service teams. Some mentioned things like CSAT and NPS, but there were quite a few who still solely rely on metrics like productivity, efficiency, and utilization, which, don't get me wrong, are quite important, but when used in a vacuum, can be at odds with evolving an operation beyond that transactional service mentality. So the lesson here is that customer-centered innovation is essential, whether that means the development of new service offerings, an evolution of service delivery, incorporation of more sophisticated technology to allow things like greater personalization or more extensive information to your customers, or more than likely a combination of all of these things. And measuring the performance of your workforce based on the success factors of today's business, not yesteryear's, is a must. So I think this reckoning is something that we'll see quite a bit of in 2025. Number 3, organizations will be forced to reconcile technology debt and invest in more modern service management. So when we think about what is possible in terms of customer-centric innovation or we think about what's possible in terms of really changing the employee value proposition, both things should contribute to companies' overall performance in a positive way. When we think about what's possible, so many of the areas of opportunity rely on technological innovation. And so the importance of a strong, scalable, sophisticated digital foundation in today's service landscape can't be overstated. However, in the standout service trends report, 20% of respondents said that their core service management platform is not ideal and are currently evaluating or implementing an alternative, and 59% more reported that their service management platform is capable, but not ideal for the future state of their operations. Only 15% reported that they have a fully functioning and future-ready service management system in place, and 50% stated that less than 10% of field service tasks are automated. This shows not only the opportunity, but the directive to modernize core systems in order to remain relevant, both to your customers and to your employees. The good news is, supporting why I think we'll see a lot of this investment in new core systems and replacement of legacy systems in 2025, is that respondents also indicated that for 2025, nearly half of respondents are set to bolster their technology investments. 35% expect a moderate increase in their technology budget, and 12% expect a significant increase. 47% remain expect their technology budget to remain flat, and 6% expect a nominal decrease. So the stage is set here based on the absolute imperative nature of having that capable, scalable solution in place that not only meets the really strong demand of today's business, but sets you up for success in the future. It's so crucial to businesses to be successful, and it's the time has come to get rid of what's not working, to get rid of what can't meet the needs of where you need to go, and put in place the solutions that can. So building off of that, certainly, over the last few years, everyone's predictions have included AI in some way, shape, or form. And my next non prediction, if you will, is that I believe we will witness some major service-centered AI successes, but also the 1st major missteps. So the AI buzz that has had the industry in a stronghold over the last couple of years is warranted. It is. I've said before, I actually shared in my predictions last year that the buzz started as buzz and companies started taking action, and the intelligence the AI can bring to an organization is the next significant milestone in digital transformation or in the digital journey. There are so many opportunities, sometimes so many that it can be quite overwhelming, but it's something that we have to be very pragmatic about. So all of the buzz is something that the service trends report showed that the standout leaders also believe in. 62% of respondents are currently using AI in their operations, and they shared some examples such as chatbots, triage and tech support, service order summaries, document and data search, guided troubleshooting, optimized scheduling, generating service tickets from emails, and much more. Further, 47% state that AI is their next area of focus in terms of technology investment, and 76% believe advanced AI will be critical for remaining competitive in field service. That being said, the current and future use of AI is not without concern. The top 3 concerns that respondents shared are accuracy and bias with 33%, the need to master the basics first, 23%, and not having the data at the ready to support the use of AI, 19%. So personally, I think it's positive that leaders were very open and upfront about the concerns that they have because we will see more missteps by those who are just racing and rushing into expanding their AI use than we will those who do have some concerns and are doing their due diligence and making sure that they're being pragmatic in their approach. So here's what I think will happen in 2025. I anticipate that we'll see the buzz that has moved to action morph into some really compelling success stories. There are so many ways that AI in different forms can be incredibly useful to service organizations, and again, in a way that can really bring value to not only the business, but the customer experience and the employee experience. If you want to take a deeper dive into some of the the different ways that AI will unfold in service in 2025, you should check out the predictions blog from my colleague, Mark Brewer, who is the vice president for service industry at ISS. You can find that at blog.ifs.com. But he explores in detail some of the cool ways that he believes AI will evolve in service this year. And, personally, I'm very excited to start to see at conferences and on the podcast, in discussions, some of these real-world success stories. And not just real-world success stories on a small scale, but starting to see real-world success stories from companies that are doing quite sophisticated things and driving real business value by doing so. But while I'm excited to see how companies put AI to work for their businesses, for their customers, for their employees, I also fully expect that we will inevitably really see some major missteps, ones that could be quite significant. If I were to get out my crystal ball, I would anticipate everything from failing to see AI as a tool that can augment the work of talented people and instead trying to replace them with technology to the detriment of the customer experience, or rushing into AI use that isn't rooted in real business case or supported by capable technology. There are some ways here that organizations can go really, really wrong if they aren't keeping in mind the ethical implications, the customer experience implications, and being really smart about how they take this incredibly valuable tool and put it to the best use for their organization. So I'm not concerned, to be clear, about the fail fast type of mistakes that are part of any innovative project, but more so the big kahuna, what were you thinking type missteps that come from believing that there's some sort of loophole away from the realities and limitations of the hard work that is involved in getting AI right. So be smart about tying your investment and evolution and the technology to real business cases, and be smart about the partners that you choose to work with and the way you communicate those changes to your workforce and to your customers. And my final non prediction is more so a call to action, which is service leaders must get better at storytelling. At the Service Council Symposium last fall and in their own 2025 predictions, John Carroll of the Service Council spoke about the rising existential threat to service leaders. Essentially, the risk that exists for service not to have a spot in strategic decision-making at the company to have a for organizations to miss the full view of what service and the wealth of insights a service function has mean to the business and instead be dismissed or deprioritized. So this existential threat would be massively unfortunate to see unfold, and my hope is we don't see that happen at all. As we know, service is far more than a means to meeting customer needs. It's really a treasure trove of so, so much more. But to avoid this potential reality, service leaders have to become better storytellers. Many service leaders grew up from being technicians themselves, and not all have become comfortable or adept at articulating and influencing, but that is exactly what is needed. Service leaders need to use storytelling to translate the needs of and opportunities within the customer base to terminology that screams business value and shifts the perception of them and their teams from that of a necessary evil to a powerhouse of competitive differentiation and potential innovation. Deep diving into being sure you understand all the ways in which service is interconnected with your company's financial objectives, strategic vision, sustainability initiatives, and technological road map is a great start. But using storytelling to explain this interconnectedness in a language that will resonate with your company's C-level executives is a must. So let's work on that in 2025. And those, my friends, are my 2025 nonpredictions. I would love to hear your thoughts on anything that I've shared here. I would also love to hear your thoughts on what you think 2025 will bring. So if you have any insight for me, please feel free to reach out through email or on LinkedIn. And next week, I look forward to our 3 hundredth episode. That's crazy and hard to believe. Until then, you can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. The unscripted podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can find more at IFS.com.