Every tool rolled out to the field carries two price tags. Russ Wylie, Director of Field Service, joined host Justin Lake on Frontline Innovators to talk about both: the hard costs that show up in travel, overtime, warranty spend and parts, and the human costs that show up when good technicians decide they are done. His answer to both starts in the same place, which is out of the office and in the van.
Poor adoption costs you people before it shows up in the budget
Russ told the story of a newer service engineer who arrived expecting the kind of tools he used in his own life. His company ran a dispatch tool, a travel booking tool and a service report tool that did not talk to each other. So on his own laptop, in a hotel room, in his spare time, he connected them himself. His records lived in one place and his service reports came out clean and consistent.
For Russ it was an epiphany. One technician had built what a large company could not, or would not fund. The reaction from higher up was predictable: those tools are not authorized. Russ saw the real risk. "He's gonna be here for six months, realize what he can do, and then he's gone." When the organization moves slower than the world outside it, the people with the most initiative are the first to leave.
The story had a better ending because Russ caught it. The engineer wrote a white paper on capturing technician tribal knowledge, Russ connected him with the team working on new technology at headquarters, and the idea grew from there. Russ's point is that in a 200 or 500 person organization, plenty of those people never get caught. They just walk out the door.
Make switching easier than staying
Justin described a client with 17,000 frontline workers whose headquarters kept insisting that some technicians still carry flip phones. Maybe five do. Holding the whole rollout down to their level, he argued, is an excuse not to deliver for everyone else. Russ agreed: design for the most common scenario, get 80 percent right, and handle the rest afterward.
He also offered a more generous read of the holdouts. He has met technicians who refused to give up laptops wrapped in duct tape. Sometimes it was simple habit. More often the new machine was not easier to use, and switching meant losing years of stored notes, tricks and workarounds, the digital version of the custom ground wrenches his grandfather kept in a drawer after 50 years as a Pontiac mechanic. The fix is not pressure. It is making the new way easier than standing still. Justin added a line from one of his customers: the hard part is not learning the new thing, it is unwinding the muscle memory of the old one.
The hard costs: crossed routes and the parts cannon
Asked where poor adoption shows up in the numbers, Russ gave two answers. The first is two technicians passing each other on the highway, headed in opposite directions to planned jobs that sat closer to the other's home. That is travel and overtime, the two biggest costs in his world, and it is usually the technicians who notice first.
The second is what he calls unloading the parts cannon. When a technician does not have the latest troubleshooting information, or cannot reach it offline deep inside a factory, they replace everything until the machine works. First-time fix rates drop, warranty callbacks climb, and the parts bill lands on the company. Justin still keeps a $128 wiring harness a technician left behind at his house after doing exactly that. Customers notice too. They start asking for a specific technician, or they quietly call a competitor, and that lost business never shows up in your data at all. As Russ put it, you only see a first-time fix problem when the customer calls you back for the second fix.
Root cause work is pick and shovel
Dashboards will get you to the part number that keeps failing. Russ said the next level down is slow, unglamorous work: reading service reports, talking to technicians, and ruling out things like a lightning storm that took out a cluster of machines in one area. His approach is to launch small supervisor-led teams at specific problems, such as safety, a warranty spike on one machine, or a new tool, so the people closest to the work help design the fix.
He was just as direct about the data itself. When he worked in customer service, a team added 35 wrap-up codes to get better reporting, and 95 percent of calls still landed in the first three. People do what is easy and quick, especially with a customer watching. He would rather make the job easier, with service reports as simple as the checkbox sheet a car dealership hands you, and do the heavy processing afterward.
Build it with the field, then stand behind it
The most successful rollout Russ described was a chatbot tool built with technicians from the first version. A small group tested it, broke it and sent it back for six to eight months before it reached the field, and support teams ran calls and demos when it launched. He knew it had worked when a technician in a training room reminded him he had mentioned the tool a month earlier, and asked him to show him how to put it on his phone. Rather than a sandbox, that team used hidden links inside the live system, so early users always saw the real product.
Justin connected that to Skyllful's approach of giving frontline teams a guided first experience of a new system in simulation, instead of dropping them into an open sandbox to figure it out alone. Both agreed the first impression is hard to win back. Once a technician decides a tool does not work, they rarely touch it again.
Russ closed with the advice that gives the episode its title. Spend less time talking in offices and more time sitting in vans, stuck in traffic, 45 minutes late to a customer whose line is down. Drag a tool case a mile through a factory. Then you will know which problems are real, like the signature pad that looked great in a meeting and fails to initialize half the time in the field.
About Russ Wylie
Russ Wylie is a Director of Field Service who leads service teams across borders from the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. His career spans field service leadership, product support for aviation customers and customer service operations, including work in highly regulated industries such as aerospace and medical. He focuses on building process and technology that technicians will actually use, by spending time in the field and bringing technicians into the work early.
Thanks to Russ Wylie for a conversation grounded in the daily reality of field service. The line that stuck with us: you have to drag the tool case before you can judge the tools a technician carries.
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PODCAST
Listen to Episode #146: Drag the Tool Case Before You Design the Tool
Director of Field Service Russ Wylie joins host Justin Lake to talk about the hard and human costs of poor adoption in the field, from crossed routes and the parts cannon to the technicians who leave when the tools do not keep up.
Episode Transcript
Justin Lake: Welcome to the Frontline Innovators Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Lake, and super excited for another great episode. Today's guest is a director who leads an international services team based in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Leading a service organization across borders means living with the questions this show cares about every day. How distributed teams stay consistent, capable, and connected to the work. Please welcome to Frontline Innovators, Russ Wylie. Hello, Russ.
Russ Wylie: Hi Justin. Thanks for having me today.
Justin Lake: I'm glad you're here. Looking forward to kicking off this conversation. You and I like had to remember to press the record button because we already had a whole bunch of conversation going. So I I think this conversation is gonna go super quickly for you and me. let's make it good for the guests. Let me, or our audience, I should say, let me ask you the the kickoff question here. What's the biggest operational challenge, operational consequence that you see with poor adoption on the front lines?
Russ Wylie: You know, I I'd see two that I kind of run parallel. One is the hard the hard costs that you have when you are not dispatching people the right way, when you're not having the right technical information for them to be able to know the right pressures, gaps, torques on appropriate bolts and nuts where they need to do their service work, following the right procedures to make sure they're safe. But then the second piece as well is you also get this point where you start, you know, the human cost, you start turning people off as well too. So poorly poorly launched and integrated solutions drive people away. And it can it can may be an employee or a you know, a thing that makes them dissatisfied with their work because they just don't like dealing with the new tools that are they see as an impediment to their daily life.
Justin Lake: Yeah. Let's I want to actually cover both of those things. I want to come back to the hard costs, but let let's stay on the other side of kind of retention and being able to recruit new people into the business. Let's talk a little bit more more about that. Cause I'd actually challenge that. There are probably some hard costs on that side too, right? Retention has some cost associated with it or or difficulty, you know, retaining retaining staff. But talk to me more about You know, w we just got a little bit sidetracked as we were kind of starting the conversation about how new hires in the business might feel about some of that technology. Let's just explore that a little bit further. What are your thoughts on it?
Russ Wylie: Yeah. So I had this experience very recently where some of our new hires are coming in with a desire, goal, or expectation to use some of the most latest tools available in their own daily life at work. And they see things as great opportunities. Now, this is wonderful that you can you get into this space where we have, you know, multiple tools and most field service organizations are like this. Not everything's fully integrated. So you have a dispatching tool that's not fully integrated with your travel booking tool that's not fully integrated with your tool that you know you produce and put your service reports into that you ship out to your you know send to your customers and order parts from. And we hired this one gentleman, you know newer, newer worker. I don't want to date myself too much, but he was definitely of a of a different generation, let's just say beard had a little less gray in it than mine. So the he he was able to String all these things together by just vibe coding a bunch of tools himself on his own laptop with Claude. And it was kind of an epiphany for me to say this this guy has built a tool that is connecting all of the things that we cannot connect ourselves as this large company, or we don't have the, you know, capital to do so. He was able to do this in his spare time on his own laptop, you know, in a hotel room. made it much easier for his daily life. He kept all of his records in there. He was able to copy and paste things into the different tools available and then be able to provide a very consistent and and wonderful service report afterwards. And you think to yourself, you know, as we're not adopting these tools, these tools that are moving very, very quickly in the outside world internally, how am I going to keep this person around? Because the first reaction you get from when you have these people, the first reaction you get from those who are trying to run a global organization and and the you know much larger organization than the mind, the people that I I roll up to, they start saying, Well, hold on, that tool isn't those are those are not authorized. These are things we can't do. And when I first hear that, it one, it's a challenge. But then two, it's also like you start thinking about this one engineer that we hired, the one service engineer, service tech engineer. Is he gonna stick around? He's not gonna stick around. He's gonna be here for six months, realize what he can do, and then he's gone. He's gonna go pedal his his wear someplace else, and we are gonna be out a fantastic opportunity to engage this person.
Justin Lake: Yeah, you know, I think oftentimes when we talk about these types of things with our clients at headquarters, there's this tendency to distill things down to the lowest common denominator. And that's when questions I I just had a conversation with a client recently where they said, Well, Justin, you don't understand. Some of our guys in the field are still using smartphones. Okay. Or excuse me, flip phones is what they said. Flip phones. Of course they're using smartphones. There's they said they're still using flip phones. See, I couldn't even get the words out of my mouth because it seems so foreign to me to still talk about flip phones. But but let's assume for a minute, I don't even think that they're right, but let's assume for a minute that there are a handful of guys. This is an organization that has 17,000 frontline workers. And people at headquarters were arguing with me, borderline arguing with me, about the fact that, well, guys in the field still are using flip phones. I would bet that there's Five dudes in the field who are still holding on to their flip phones, if that. And what's happened is that organization is like lowering the expectation down to meet those guys and using that as an excuse to not deliver for the rest of the organization. Right. Because even if they're right, even if those five guys are using flip phones, like we're probably never going to bring them on board. So let them go. You know, I'm I'm not saying fire them, I'm saying let them be, let them use their flip phones. But let's go work on the other sixteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-five people that are in the organization that are probably ready to move ahead. What are your thoughts on that?
Russ Wylie: Yeah, no, I I think you have to dis design for the you know, the most usual scenario that you're gonna have, right? So get eighty percent right and worry about the twenty percent afterwards. The situation I would say though and challenge that those people is that why are they still using that? 'Cause I had I had the same, you know, discussion with people who wouldn't turn in their old laptops for new laptops and they had ones that were wrapped in duct tape and go, why? Why are you not turning in the laptop? Well, and it it eventually would either go down two paths. One of I just I can't change because this is the one I like and I don't want to learn a new one, which is which is one way, and that could be the flip-hone argument. The other one is what you give me in a new laptop does not is not easier to use and is not easily for me to switch from the old laptop. So the switching costs. For that individual, that technician who's been there a long time and has lots of things stored on his computer, right? Over the years. All these, I think we talked before, you know, my grandpa was a Pontiac mechanic, right? And he was he for for like 50 years and he had a drawer full of wrenches that he custom ground and custom made himself. These guys are the same way. They have tools and hints and tricks on there that they've kept for a long time. So those switch costs are so high for that person to change into the new way that. they don't want to do it. Now that's generally a perception issue, though. Right. You need to make it that it is easier to switch than it is to stand on the platform where they're in, right? And give them the new and the better. And you will, you know, slowly attrit those people out. But the the benefit that you need to achieve from this is you're gonna take these people who have these new ideas and be able to launch them on things so that they can, you know. Be able to help design the newest and the best software. So the example like I had with that, with that technician who was, you know, really interested in vibe coding stuff, he came up with a white paper and an idea for grabbing all of this technician tribal knowledge for lack of a better word, in, you know, by scraping chats inside the The different tra chat system they they had, and then putting them all together inside of a a system where technical experts could review it to make sure it was correct, obviously, right? You don't want to perpetuate bad information, but and then make that available back to everybody else. And he had this whole white paper built. I connected him eventually with some of the people that were working on some of the bleeding edge technology and the the headquarters location of this company, and it it started to you know go with like a Snowball downhill. It just started going bigger and bigger and bigger. So it was a great story, but you know, that's because I was able to grab it at the level I was at. But there are others in a, you know, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred person organization who are gonna have the same experience. And they're just they're gonna come in, look at this and go, Wow, this is this is crazy. And they just they wanna they wanna run out the door.
Justin Lake: Yeah. You know, one of my customers said something about change that it seems so simple when he said it, but I I think it was super important and true and a bit profound in that the issue isn't as much about the new thing, it's about unwinding the old muscle memory from the old thing. And I I think there's something to that, that it's it's what we know, even though it's clunky, even though we've got some duct tape on it, it's what we know. These guys are under a lot of pressure, a lot of time pressure, a lot of performance pressure. They're standing in front of a customer, they're doing work, they're being timed, right? There's just a lot of other pressures. And this is just like that's the one thing that's kind of a constant for them. It it may still be glitchy and they may still have to like hold the power button for a little bit longer or whatever to get like whatever the nuances, but it's like it's the thing that they know. And even if it's if it's old software, we we actually just heard from a client the other day who was saying that they're giving. Their employees the opportunity to use the old system and the new system. And people
Russ Wylie: Hmm.
Justin Lake: are still fail you know, not failing back, but falling back to to the old system, not because it's better, but it's because it's just what they know and what they're used to. And in a crunch, trying to get stuff done, it's easier to go back to the to the muscle memory and just use use it the way you had been using it before.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, it it's it's tough because the the risks when you get these things wrong and you do the integrations wrong, were are are very, very high. So I I I always will remember this. So the first time I had to present at a big aviation conference, I was a customer support manager for a large aviation manufacturer, product support type person. And I had to present about some technical issues that we had on some products to a bunch of our customers in China. And we we had we were one of many suppliers that were showing up. So I was one of them and there were a few others. And there was one group that they presented and it it sticks with me. They put this chart up to say this is our on time we we know we messed up. This is our on time performance and had a chart that's used, you know, 90, 95, 85, 90, 98. And then there was it just dropped to like zero and it just progressed like a flat line. And they said, well, that was the point that we decided to change our ERP. And we messed up. And we didn't ship anything for eight months. And they put it up there. And I have to hand it to them for being very open and honest with their customers about their problems. You know, there was nothing else to to do. but that has always stuck with me. And that's always talked me about these these kind of integrations, is that if you you're you're going along, you're shipping, you're shipping, you're shipping, you're shipping, great. And then all of a sudden you're not. And because you didn't do all the front work to gather all of the requirements that you need to be able to generate all the user stories, you're gonna have a really good solid integration. And I I'll never I'll never forget that. That guy stood up there, he's quaking in his boots the whole time and they just the whole room unloaded on him. It was it was brutal.
Justin Lake: Well, that that's a good segue into to go back to the initial question. You you said there were two things. One was about kind of the human side, attrition and and trying to support, you know, advanced employees like the one that you described before. The other side of that equation is the actual hard cost. So to go back to what we were saying, when we have poor adoption in the field, particularly with new technology and process, how is that hard cost measured? What are some examples that you've seen?
Russ Wylie: Okay.
Justin Lake: Where it's it's been obvious to be able to look at that and say, No, there's there's an actual cost to this not working right.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, so the the two that I've seen are that really come to mind are the you know, the two technicians passing each other on the highway going in the opposite directions to go to go address customer issues. And not in the middle of a week when they had to do an emergency reschedule. We're talking about, you know, planned on a Monday morning and they're crossing each other. And you look at you can look backwards at these and start thinking to yourself, assuming everybody's the same skill level and they they have the same skills and parts available, that you've you've missed a real big opportunity. And that's actually those points, that's when the the technicians notice. And then they start saying, they start talking. And that's when they start talking to the dispatch teams and the dispatch teams notice and they start talking and they go, why why are we crossing on the highway? Why why am I going here and this this person going there when the jobs were very c near to each one of our houses and we could have just gone there and been home. so that's one that I see a lot of costs and associated with travel, poor dispatch. And then the other pieces, and I I know we talked about this too, is that when you have poor process and poor ability to, you know, make sure that people are working from the latest and greatest troubleshooting and and technology information, you know, I see I I call it this way, you get to troubleshooting on brake fixes where you unload the parts cannon on a machine. And I know you love that phrase, but it's it it
Justin Lake: I do. I love it again.
Russ Wylie: is it it's a hundred percent true. You'll you know you start seeing these costs where your first time fix rates, you know, go down, your repeat warranty, warranty callbacks start coming because you've you've changed everything and you had don't this technician doesn't have the latest and greatest information. Or doesn't have access to information for legacy equipment in the way that they should and have easy access to it, particularly maybe offline, deep inside a big factory where they have the ability to that. And it creates an incredible amount of insurance. You're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on parts that you're throwing at this machine to try to make it fix that the customer's probably never gonna pay for because you didn't do your due diligence with your right software to make sure that they can actually, you know. Do the work appropriately. So though those are the two big ones that I see that really, really you know, affect the business itself with direct costs. Travel is going to be a big one. That one affects overtime. Travel and overtime are going to be two of your biggest biggest costs associated with this. And then, you know, obviously the parts and warranty issue, not only is that a big hard cost as well, too. It, you know, it has all the soft costs associated with. you know, poor customer experience, MPS scores, dissatisfying people, you know, because customers notice. They notice that you're there for two or three times, and then they start saying, Well, I need I need this technician over that technician because first technician couldn't solve it. I need second technician. They start demanding those. And then now your dispatching software is gonna have to plan around a bunch of varied rule sets that you have to program into it because of customer preference and the way that you've You've managed things poorly in the past.
Justin Lake: Yeah. For the longest time on my desk, I actually don't know what I did with this thing, but I had a part for a residential appliance on my desk at the office. And that part was there because a technician had come to my house to repair an appliance under warranty. They didn't know exactly what it was, so they fired, I'm gonna use your term, they fired the parts cannon at it. And the guy says, Tomorrow there's gonna be a bunch of parts that'll show up here and I'll show up after the parts come in and I'll I'll get it fixed. So he did exactly that. Next day I get a box, it's got a bunch of parts in it. I don't really pay it any mind. I let the technician come in and do his thing. And he comes in and leaves behind all of the excess parts that he did not need on the work order. And so I came back, I had this, it was a wiring harness, and I had no idea, but I looked up that part number and it was a hundred and twenty eight dollars. I could have sold that thing for on eBay. I didn't. It was actually better for me to hold it as an example, especially given the business that I'm in. But that was an example of there was probably a process that could have validated the exact right part, but it was easy. It didn't really bother him. But I knew somewhere in their supply chain organization, somebody was feeling the pain. $128 times how many incidents, right? And so I I guess how do you go about like Connecting the dots. I've never been on, you know, in your seat there. How do you take that incident? I mean, I can throw out anecdotes all day, but like, okay, so it was 128 bucks one time incident, not a big deal. That organization probably had several thousand technicians around the United States given their brand name and everything. So how do you know? Like, is that happening all the time? How do you validate that? And then how do you bring that back to a Power BI dashboard or spreadsheet that you go and say, okay, this is a problem that's worth solving?
Russ Wylie: Yeah, so the it's around identifying the the root causes for first time fixed rate issues, right? By figuring out the technicians that are there to solve them, the the part that was the main issue that ultimately was the last one that was replaced, and then doing the investigation around that to see whether it's a faulty part, a bad supplier. or are your is your training the the right, you know, for that as well? Are they they working off the latest and greatest training? they have the ability. It's sometimes pick and shovel. You can develop power BI dashboards to look at first-time fix rate and identify those and identify the, you know, the the part that that was replaced on the last service call. And that's where I've been pretty successful with with digging through that. The thing that you need though is you need good partners in your supply chain, or if you're vertically integrated your your manufacturing base, so that you can actually bring back to them, you know, the the data so they can start digging into it. The last one of these that I did, I went around and around with with with the the latest plant and they they came back to say, well here's a better troubleshooting guide for your technician so they don't replace the part so often. And and that just that obviously didn't fly real well. So we had to go back to the the drawing board to take a look at some of the problems that they were having and get higher level engineering involved. But it was it's also a great opportunity as well too because For all the ones that we're, you know, you're seeing and you're capturing, there are also ones where the customer gets fed up and they just call somebody else. And you're not seeing that, that business, right? So in your case, so say your dishwasher's broken, guy comes in to repair, repair it, doesn't get it right. You know what? It's it's a dishwasher. It's not you know, it's not rocket surgery. I can go call the next dishwasher repair guy. He comes in, he'll he'll fix it. That first group doesn't even know that they spent all that time and money, didn't do any work on it. And now you're you're a loyal customer to brand B instead of brand A.
Justin Lake: Yep. Yeah, I think and I actually think that happens a lot in in the service business. And that you you raise an interesting point that that is probably a little bit harder to track because you may not know about the business that you don't have anymore. Right.
Russ Wylie: Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. You only you only have the ability to look at first time fix rate issues when the customer calls you back for the second fix.
Justin Lake: Yeah. I I think that the reason I'm I'm so kind of fascinated with the cost tracking on this, it seems to be, I I literally just got off the phone. I was telling you before I got off the phone with a new customer, and they know they have problems with process and technology adoption. They don't yet, they haven't yet figured out how to measure it. And and it's part of what I really want to bring to this show is. is to help people really think about how we can turn something that we know instinctively is a big business problem, but but turn that into a business case that we can get support for some solution. Now of course the people that I'm talking to in my day job are are looking to you know potentially use our platform and our services to help solve for some of that. But it it doesn't matter whether you're talking to us or talking to somebody else or looking to use Some new process in your company. Like at some point you got to really start exactly as you said with the root cause analysis and be able to then take that back to saying, How do we measure when we're failing and how do we measure when we're succeeding? And it seems to me that it's it's some kind of like, I don't know, witchcraft or something. You know, we haven't r really been able to kind of nail it down. It seem it feels to me like it should be simpler than it is, but I I know that there's so many complexities and hidden costs that probably make that a little bit more opaque than we would otherwise think.
Russ Wylie: It it's it's it's difficult to really get to a lot of these root causes because you have to getting the data is is difficult to really understand that. So you can get you get to the point first time fixed rate rate. So I get I have a high first time fixed rate issue with part number, you know, A, right? I get that I can get that data. That's easy. I say that they're replaced on first-time fixed rate problems. there's a lot of warranty associated with that, warranty spend with that part. I can do that. At a pretty high level, pretty easily. The next levels beyond that though, that's where it starts to get difficult and it's pick and shovel. You're, you know, I haven't seen tools yet that can ingest multiple service reports from different technicians, read the issues that are associated with that, and then be able to kind of spit out what the the analysis is. I think we're getting there, but I I I haven't seen that yet. but you have to do a lot of reading of service reports, you have to read the service reports. To read the search for beyond that, you have to try to understand the the problems associated with it and be able to understand and make sure that you're you're actually fully capturing it. Because sometimes it's there are you know extending circumstances, environmental issues, there are pro you know, things that spike on dashboards could be associated with in in in spaces I've lived, like lightning storms in the area. And it it could set off a bunch of these machines and And you could have a bunch of issues associated with that. So it's it gets to be very unsexy very fast, right? It's it's always fun to be able to, you know, show these big dashboards, hey, look like this this part's our problem. But then getting into that next level of granularity requires, you know, somebody who wants to sit and actually dig through it all and try to understand it at the at this point. And then you can come up with the the solutions. I find that, you know, kind of launching teams on this is really helpful. So What I've done is I've taken, you know, some of my supervisors and I've said, we're gonna develop a supervisor-led team. We're gonna have three of you guys are gonna look at a problem that we have. And it could be new tool adoption. So you three work on new tools. And whether that's gonna be an AI, you know, chatbot tool or a new gauge that we're we're looking to go for that. A safety team. You bring those people together and say, our number one issue with safety is slip trips and falls. Particularly in in this area or cuts, develop and help develop a solution for that, right? Let's come up with that. That technicians will actually use. You know, problem with safety issues a lot of times that are developed in a in a sterile environment inside of a plant, and everybody goes, Well, yeah, this is this is the problem, you know. And you then you try to launch that to the field. Everybody, yeah, everybody laughs
Justin Lake: That doesn't this doesn't apply to us because that's not yeah.
Russ Wylie: at that stuff. and then, you know, you can look at other things I've looked at warranty and had warranty people launched at warranty issues and say, Hey, we have a a warranty issue on this this particular one machine. Why, why is that? it's all new technicians. okay. New technicians are having issues with that. Hmm. Let's review the training. Let's work with the training team to make sure that we're understanding why this team is really struggling with those things. So I think getting the buy-in as well too from Sometimes your field organization, your field leaders, and the and the technicians and interviewing them is going to get you there a little faster, but it it it gets real on sexy real fast.
Justin Lake: Yeah, I had a another customer conversation today that you're reminding me of. They they talked about The the field techs are describing the things that, you know, how the work order went in a free text field, which as you said, now it's something that somebody's got to go back and kind of read. And I guess in in the modern era, we can throw some, you know, AI tooling at that to go pick up the sentiment on that. But in most cases, that application, their field service management software, however they're tracking their tickets. Has the ability to make that data. And what they found through this conversation is that people weren't using like there was an inspection form that they should have been using in the application. But instead of actually filling out that form, they were actually just going into a free text field and kind of putting in a quick trip summary and said, I fixed it, I replaced the part, you know, case closed.
Russ Wylie: Mm-hmm.
Justin Lake: And so it prevented them from having a lot of the data on the back end that the system was actually designed to do because. folks in the field weren't actually using the system. So is that consistent with things that you've seen in in your life?
Russ Wylie: I've the best example I had that is when I worked for a large e-commerce company and I was working in customer service. And we were trying to look at wrap-up codes for the calls. So you would call this company and say, I can't find my product. I I have a problem. And so we said, we need we need more wrap-up codes. You need more data. So we added like 35 wrap-up codes. So the codes you basically have a free text field and you have like You know, the reason for the call. You just pull drop downs, you click the buttons, it it adds them to the thing. Would you know that 95% of the wrap-up codes were the first three? And and then it was, you know, maybe if somebody cared, they would go beyond the first three, but it was the first three. And so it well, yeah, it was it was yeah, but it was
Justin Lake: According to the data, it was the first three. It wasn't necessarily
Russ Wylie: always the first it according to the data, it was the first three, but you never really got that differentiation. So all this wonderful thinking about you know, adding more choice in there, it it makes things more difficult for that that frontline user. So that's That's where I I go with it. I know that's not necessarily a field service role, but it's the same kind of thing, right? You're people
Justin Lake: Yeah. It's exactly the same.
Russ Wylie: are gonna do what's easy and quick. You talked about having that customer looking over over their shoulder. They wanna get things done quickly for that customer and get out of there. They want to show that they're a competent technician. So they don't want to look like they're fumbling around with a tool at all. I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna fill this out this way, but done. This is the way I've always done it. Cus please sign here, Mr. Customer. And then and then they're gone. And you know, so it it needs to be more about the situation where you're going to you know do more to make their job easier. You to sell them that value proposition of this actually makes your life easier. And here's why. And it's not a situation where you go, it makes my life easier to know more data about you so I can make things more efficient and more profitable. You'll get a bonus at the end of the year if our our profit sharing comes in. They they're they're thinking much more in immediate terms about that. So it's how you're going to you're gonna make it easier for them. And try to do all those
Justin Lake: Right now.
Russ Wylie: things afterwards. Yeah, try to do all those things afterwards in some kind of post-processing afterwards. I, you know, service reports are an interesting thing for me. And I've I think to be fair, I I think just about the the you know, automotive dealerships have it down to a T. You take your vehicle in and they give you a full report where it's like check boxes on what the part, you know, this is what I saw, this is why I did check, check, check, check, check. Do all these different checks. They give you the information all on there very, very easily, succinctly, very easy to fill out. You know, there's little tiny spot at the bottom, say I replaced your brake caliper. Done. Easy. but it provides a really great visual. And that's why I think there's actually a lot of people that are not we're thinking about things from a service report to standpoint of too rigid, too, you know, white papery almost. This is everything I did. This is all the scientific data behind it, especially in you know spaces I am, which are very regulatory and you know the aerospace and medical and these things, they they have all this paperwork as well. But You know, is there ways that we you can make this better for people so that it is more visual? So you give it to people to be like, yeah, I I brought this in, it looks great. I don't have to dig through a 30 page report for you know the condition of my machine. I've always found that that is and that also makes it easier then for the technician, because the technician then doesn't have to use three pieces of software to assemble this giant PDF for the for the technician to say, you're calibrated now. You know, everything looks good.
Justin Lake: Yeah, I think it's y it's interesting to hear you talk about the short term versus the long term. And I think that actually does drive some of the field technicians that I've been out in the field with, which is they are trying to get that report done right now so that they can move on to the next job. But the irony is the next job, if somebody else did that work and didn't document it well, there's a good chance. That the next job that they go on is going to take longer and be more of a pain in the neck because the documentation that they have to work with isn't good. Right. And it seems so obvious and it's easy for you and I to talk about this here because we're not out in the field feeling the pressure of that work. I get that. So I'm I'm not trying to be overly idealistic on this, but I I do think that there's something to that. That there's an opportunity for us to communicate. Like, yes, it's actually gonna cost you. I I found myself talking about this on the podcast a lot. I must feel pretty strongly about this. But you know, yes, we're we're saying this might take you two or three minutes longer to close this ticket out right now. We acknowledge that. We recognize that we're not going to beat you over the head for taking a few minutes longer on this work. The payoff is actually downstream. The payoff is that if we know that we've worked on this exact same pump twice, that the third time we send somebody else out, like we should be more prepared for that, for that service visit, right? And I don't know that we always do a good job of communicating the why. I think we often go to them and say, Well, this is gonna make your job more efficient. And I think in the short term is you may be looking at this and saying, It's actually not gonna be more efficient for me right now at all.
Russ Wylie: Yeah. No, it's exactly right. They feel, you know, every time that they're minute that they're there, they feel like they're getting those those, you know, eyes buried in the back of their head, like burned into the back of their head from the customer. And they wanna really how can I I manage this and and get out of get out of this situation, provide them what they want, do a good job, how can I do that? in rapid fashion. And that's they don't want to be there any longer than they have to, because then they're They're in under the scrutiny of the, you know, the the the customer. And I've seen you you see this in in NPS resorts. Well, the technician was listening to an audiobook and it was taking too long. And I feel like you're charging me by the hour, so it's taking no, Mr. Cusper, we weren't. It's a set price. We apologize about that, but there are times when the machine actually has to run itself to like calibrate, so it has to work and I if you don't want them to that's fine. So they they feel like they're under this microscope every time that they they do something. if they take too many phone calls to help other technicians out, they do that as well too. So there's a lot to be said for that. I want to get in, get out, get my job done, get to the next place, have a good, good customer experience, make sure that I I solve my my issue and I can, you know, check that off my list and then go.
Justin Lake: Yeah. I tend to focus a lot on the problems and when things go wrong. So let me let me flip this around a hundred and eighty degrees. Any stories come to mind about where you've seen the teams that you've been around be unusually successful with the adoption of new process and and technology in the field? And tell me how that went.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, we at one place we were launching a chatbot tool with all the technology and documents behind it. And the why it was such a successful launch, it and it took some time, was the early kind of inclusion of technicians and a few people from the field. Into kind of the focus groups and they started building the tool for them. What do you want to see out of it? Okay, here's the first iteration. Let's see, test it, test it, break it, go back. And it was it six to eight months that it that it took to eventually launch that. And then it was launched out to the field. And then there were more, as you launched it, the more people there were more issues. But the support teams were there having phone calls, doing demonstrations. This is how you use it. And I think I knew that it was really successful. You know, you could talk about the number of unique users and queries and all these other ways you can metricize it, but I knew it was really successful when I was in a training room talking to some technicians. And one of the technicians turned to me and goes, Hey, you know, a month ago you you talked to us about putting this tool on our phone. Can you show me how to do that? And that was kind of the light bulb moment that said, Okay, now this is starting to this is starting to gain its own you know steam. was that was that brief interaction. So it's it I don't think it's easy or short. And I think it requires a lot of back and forth feedback to do correctly. And you have to really you have to make it useful so that you have all the connections on the backside so the data is there and accurate. Cause it's difficult once you've launched into production, it's very, very difficult to say if they find errors in it to, you know put that back because you you lose that little window that you get with that person. 'Cause as soon as they say this new tool and you they start playing with they say, it doesn't work, then they they don't want to ever touch it again.
Justin Lake: Yeah. You know, that's near and dear to me also, because in our business and my day job, we can actually let them have those first experiences in the simulation platform.
Russ Wylie: Yeah.
Justin Lake: So we kind of take all that production risk away from the first impression that we're giving the teams. And this is something we advocate for all the time. We don't always get buy-in from the project team, but it's it's really An awesome way to be able to leverage a tool. So again, it's like we're we're just putting users into simulations of these workflows. But I think the more we can close the gap between what they're used to and what they think they're about to go into, the easier we can make that whole process, right? And so we've if we've given them their first impression, the first experience that they have in the new system and the new workflows and the new process inside the simulations in our platform, then when they do run in. To that hiccup, because they will, because things happen. That's not like devastating to their first impression, you know? but it's interesting to hear you talk about how the adoption, you know, kind of built over time. And, you know, in the software world, we would call that product market fit. It's like you, it's it's not just like a checkbox, but it's when you feel being pulled into the market. And in your case, it's being pulled into the workforce that people are starting to ask about it. That's exactly where you want to be.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, it's exactly right. And it's you know, it it's a it it's a very, very I don't know, almost like a nice edge, right? To be able to go from that that situation to back backwards. And launching it though and doing it in a way where people understand that they have support and and putting the support out there and having the calls and the training and all these things, very important. Otherwise you you don't get that because you will, you know 50% of people who try it won't even or more won't won't contact support. But those people who do, you hold on to them because they're gonna give you the gold that's gonna allow you to be able to make that next iteration and make the thing work and it and and and work with them. So that's that's where that support is is very, very important. You know, you talk about sandboxes and you know, we're gonna test these and test this software in a sandbox. And I love that idea. I just don't see it a lot actually in the field. too much. They're just like the cost, the, you know, the burden rate of a technician is generally pretty high, particularly in the US. So, you know, I need to not spend a lot of money to have them twiddle around with, you know, playing with a a new development tool, particularly if I'm going to launch it for everybody. And that's I think that's actually very short-range thinking. I think long term you need to have that because you're gonna need to have these people that are bought into the tool if it's the main tool you're gonna use and can then be that ambassador for everybody else who's gonna come down the pike, who's not gonna have the benefit of all the support you have when you when you start these changes as well.
Justin Lake: Yeah. You actually just triggered something in my head. And if if we have published this document I'm about to talk to you about, I I will share it in the show notes here. We actually just produced or created a whole document about the pros and cons of going into a sandbox environment. And you just talked about this, is that there have been 40 research studies done over the last couple of decades
Russ Wylie: Mm-hmm.
Justin Lake: about the ineffectiveness, the Low efficacy of putting users into an unstructured sandbox environment.
Russ Wylie: Mm-hmm.
Justin Lake: And it's interesting because we, you know, in my company, we often get compared to just standing up a sandbox. And we may even use that terminology at times. But our version of that is putting the user through a very concise, structured walkthrough of what they're going to see in that software. So we're not just dropping them off into a sandbox and saying, go play with this, right? But a lot of people do that, which is why your your comment, you know, kind of struck a nerve, because it's something that we see and hear about a lot. And your guys don't have time for that. And they end up getting frustrated by that. And so you make a really interesting point about, first of all, just their time, right? Their hourly pay. We don't want them in there just kind of like figuring things out on their own. But that is a mistake. And I believe that the mistake is made not because they, the project team, is trying to. Create a bad experience for the frontline teams. I don't even think it's because they're insensitive to their time. I think it's because it's a path of less resistance. It's relatively easy to set that sandbox environment up and say, well, just go in there and so you can start to see it. But it's ineffective as a learning experience. It's frustrating. And it's in the long run, it's actually costly. So it's not actually accomplishing any of the goals and it's costing more money in the long run. And so we should look for alternatives.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, and that's it when I when we were working on this one tool, the the real instead of using a sandbox environment is they had it, they just had hidden links to it. So it was always in prod whenever it was given to the the teams, but it was only released to certain team members, right? And that was where I started
Justin Lake: Interesting.
Russ Wylie: with that supervisor-led team, that that little team to to start it, and then bring a few technicians into it. And it was always in a production environment. So it was always trying it was as close as a real product as they could. In the beginning and that worked pretty well. there were ways, you know, obviously there were definitely misfires, and I I mean it just it's the way it is when you're developing new, but the the ability to recover and manage that quickly was I think where this went really, really well.
Justin Lake: Yeah. Man, we're coming up at the end already. I knew this conversation will go quickly. let me give you one last chance. Any advice you would give to other service or change leaders about how to improve process and technology adoption on the front lines?
Russ Wylie: you cut out there for a second, Justin. Okay.
Justin Lake: okay. Let me let me restate that. as my final question, is there any advice you would give to other operations leaders and change leaders about how to improve technology and process adoption on the front lines?
Russ Wylie: You I think we spend too much time talking and talking inside offices, and we don't spend enough time sitting in vans, stuck in traffic, stressing out because you're 45 minutes late for this service call for a customer who is you know is going to be hot under the collar because their production is behind your machine that is not working. And So my advice is that you know spend the time to really know what they do on a daily basis. And then you can have the debate about whether those are value add or not value add services, but you gotta walk in those shoes for a bit. You have to drag a tool case. I you know, I had One of my leaders told me this you had to drag a toolcase through the large factory to see how difficult it is. Some of these walks from a you know parking lot to the machine are a mile long. And it it is brutal to to do these things. And once you learn that, then you'll understand what the real issues are with the with the organization. You'll understand that that you know plug-in. signature pad that you thought was great to be able to put in plug into your laptop. Well, the thing doesn't initialize half the time and it breaks easy. And then the the tech can't get the signatures correctly. And it is just an absolute waste of time and money. So spend the time, walk in their shoes, understand what the issues are, talk to the customers as well too. And not just the the higher level, like talk to people on the floor, try to understand it. Then you'll be able to build better technologies and process for the field.
Justin Lake: I I think that is amazing, fantastic advice. And it's something that I've recommended often. I try to get my team because none of us are field service technicians and we also serve some other kind of field based operations. And so we don't drive trucks and we don't service equipment, but I want my team and me, I wanna understand as much as I can about the men and women that we serve out on the front lines and There is absolutely no way to learn about a day in their life from a conference room or working from our home office or whatever the case may be. Like we've just got to go out and get our feet, you know, shoes dirty. And so I completely appreciate that perspective. And I think for me, I always tell the team, it's first of all, it's a more fun day than just sitting it in front of our laptop all day, right? It's good to get out of the the norm. And always, always, always we come back with some new insight, some new perspective, a new learning. that we just we could have been told this same thing, but it doesn't kind of sink in until you see it, feel it, smell it the same way as the the folks on the front lines are doing that. And so I think that's great advice and something I certainly support too. That's great.
Russ Wylie: Yeah, that's it's always the best way to be. Walk in their shoes, try to understand what the issues are and then you'll really start to
Justin Lake: Yeah. Well, Russ, I appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you so much for being part of Frontline Innovators and I look forward to being part of your network.
Russ Wylie: All right, wonderful. Thanks. It was wonderful being here and I appreciate all your time.
Frequently Asked Questions With Russ Wylie
What does poor technology adoption cost a field service organization?
Two kinds of cost. The hard costs are travel, overtime, warranty spend and parts thrown at a machine when technicians lack the right information or dispatch is poor. The human costs come when good technicians get frustrated with tools that slow them down and leave for a company that keeps up.
Why do experienced technicians resist new tools?
Often because switching costs them more than staying. A veteran may have years of notes and workarounds stored on an old laptop, and if the new one is not easier to use, the old way wins. Making the switch genuinely easier works better than pressure.
What is the parts cannon?
It is Russ Wylie's term for replacing part after part on a machine until it works, usually because the technician does not have current troubleshooting information. It drives down first-time fix rates, drives up warranty callbacks, and leaves the company paying for parts the customer will never cover.
How do you find the root cause of first-time fix problems?
Dashboards can point to the part that keeps getting replaced. The next level takes reading service reports, talking to technicians, and checking outside factors before deciding whether it is a faulty part, a supplier issue or a training gap. Small supervisor-led teams aimed at one problem help.
What makes a field technology rollout succeed?
Building it with technicians from the first version, testing and fixing it with a small group before a wide launch, and putting real support behind it when it goes out. Russ also advises leaders to spend time in the field before redesigning anything.