The significance of the extra quotes/orders by agent KPI

Extra quotes or orders by agent is sometimes called ‘up-selling,’ and it refers to the number of extra orders that technicians are taking when already on-site with a customer or client. This is important because, in reality, your technicians are some of your best marketing and sales people.

Here is one way you can think about the importance of this KPI. Say you put an ad in a trade publication about your field services. The ad might be glossy and beautiful, but it is also one ad within the trade publication. There are other options for potential buyers to consider, and they also might skip past the ads and look for the actual industry content. So, an ad might generate a few new leads, but the ROI is not necessarily very high.

Now compare that with this second idea. One of your technicians goes on-site to Mr. X’s company to fix a machine. While he is there, Mr. X comes by and notes that another machine is seemingly always breaking down. He has a service contract with a different company on that machine, but the technicians seem stressed-out and undependable. The service contract is up soon, and he is wondering if your company could service that machine. If your technician answers, “Why yes we can,” and then launches into an explanation of what it might look like, then that is very powerful. 

In the first example, with the ad, the interaction is between a person and a photo with text and not real time. In the second example, with the technician, the interaction is real time and between two people.

Which one do you think is more powerful in terms of driving and growing your business?

Some field service organizations we have worked with make this mistake: They treat technicians as just technicians. They are ‘fix and repair people,’ and that is it. This is a bad play, because your technicians see your customers all day and all week. They are in a unique position to talk to them about new challenges that have arisen and position how your FSO can help them with new needs.

Now, if you track extra quotes or orders by agent, you can sort your field technicians into two categories:

• High sellers
• Low sellers

Off that data, you can create incentive programs, pair high sellers up with low sellers for additional training and ideas on talking to customers, and even create training modules designed to boost those on the low end. The whole idea of tracking this metric is having an idea of who among your technicians is good at selling more service, and how those people could help the technicians who are not as good. The more you attempt to optimize all of your technicians to be good up-sellers, the more growth and strong customer relationships you’ll see.

We put together an eBook on eight different types of KPIs that your FSO should be tracking in real time, ranging from this one to first-time fix rate. You can download the eBook now. If your field service team has not yet embraced data as a competitive advantage, this eBook will be a good start in terms of the key areas to focus your energy.

Written by Jim Hare