There may be no job quite as unpredictable as the day-to-day work of a field technician.
Every customer has a different combination of hardware installed. Any given machine may be running a different version of its operating software. And every location has its own processes, procedures, physical limitations, and practical requirements.
And of course, as one of your official representatives, your customers expect any field tech will know everything there is to remember — about everything you’ve ever sold or supported.
It’s no small hurdle for even your most experienced team members. And for an industry where average turnover is less than 18 months, it’s likely a downright impossible challenge for the vast majority of your workforce.
On-Demand Content for On-Demand Expertise
To attempt to meet the expectations of their customer bases, many organizations build giant repositories of content for their field team to call upon whenever a question arises. But as solutions become ever more sophisticated, technologies ever more complex, and installations ever more customized, those content libraries have become too lengthy, too dense, and too confusing for easy reference.
But that doesn’t mean content can’t still solve the challenge field teams face.
Most organizations are sharing the right information — it’s the way they’re sharing it that doesn’t work.
Video creates a simple means to share information in a way that that’s far more effective than text alone. With video:
- Details can be shown, instead of described — making even complicated instructions crystal clear
- Key points can be both shown and spoken to — making them more visible and memorable than is possible with text
- Your field techs can work alongside the recording — playing and pausing as they work through each step in a process.
Best of all, video content for customer support is easier to create than text — and can cover anything from the most complicated installation sequence to the simplest hardware addition. Just point a camera at one of your on-staff experts, click record, and have them walk through the steps. The whole process may take only minutes — rather than the hours or days required to have text documentation drafted and approved. See just how simple it can be with this sample recording of how to replace a cracked iPhone screen.
Once you’ve finished, you’ve got a convenient step-by-step guide your team can access through your organization’s central video library and watch on-demand anytime, anywhere, on any device to make sure they’re getting every detail right while they’re on location.
Let Your Field Technicians Show What They Know
Along with creating a versatile, accessible repository of formal training and other how-to information, video opens new opportunities to expand the way your field technicians share knowledge via social learning.
In the past, organizations have sought to capture the expertise of their teams with text-based solutions like forums and wikis. These, however, often suffered from the same problems text manuals did — as more and more details were required, written answers became longer and more complicated to follow. This in turn created a vicious cycle — as answers became harder to follow, fewer users relied on the sites, which in turn meant fewer users came to the site to offer answers, which made the sites even less useful.
Video, however, offers an easier opportunity to help your techs share knowledge.
With video, your field team can just click “record” with any device, anywhere in the world, and share quick tips and ideas for getting things done. Video can even offer new tools for better illustrating this kind of demonstration — check out this sample recording of a tech using Google Glass to show the steps to installing a Datapath video card.
Studies have shown that most employees in most organizations rely on this kind of informal knowledge sharing to learn the exact details about how internal products, programs, and processes really work. In the past, when employees came to internal subject matter experts with questions, the knowledge exchanged there was ephemeral — available only in the moment and to those involved, inaccessible to anyone else.
Recording those demonstrations and discussions with video, however, captures that knowledge and transforms it into a searchable, shareable resource the entire organization can rely on — even when your subject matter expert isn’t immediately available (or, in the age of rapid turnover, even after they’ve left the company).
Panopto Helps Enable Your Field Tech Team
Eliminate your organization’s text-heavy guidebooks, and make the information you share easier to see and understand.
Panopto is a flexible video platform designed to make it easy to record, share, and search video. With Panopto, your field technicians can rely on simple video training recordings to better see and understand how to install, service, and support your products and services, as well as capture their own tips, techniques, and best practices to share with the colleagues and others back at home office.
To see how Panopto can help you better support your field technicians with video, contact our team for a free trial today.
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