BACKCustomer Story: USSC Group increases productivity and improves organization with Field Service Lightning
Company Name: USSC Group
Sponsor: Managing Director
Products: Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Field Service Lightning. Integration. Support.
Headquarters: Pennsylvania, USA
Project Goals: Better scheduling process. Improve field placement management and tracking. Automate some manual tasks.
United States Seating Corp is a major manufacturer of components for the transportation industry, including seating, fire suppression, braking systems and passenger restraint and security. Their primary division is a large seat manufacturer for public transit, school and tour buses, first responder vehicles, military vehicles, and others. It is one of four companies operating within the USSC Group, including Fogmaker, VistaBrake and Child CheckMate. They serve customers all over the world but focus primarily in the United States and Canada.
The company is expanding and growing – so considering scalability is important when changing processes and investing in technology.
They Needed Help to Scale
While USSC Group is primarily a manufacturer, a significant portion of their business comes from servicing their equipment in the field.
The service team goes out to conduct demos, installations, inspections, and other types of support. The technicians can be onsite for a day or even longer. This requires that the field service team readily has access to detailed notes on products and parts, as well as account and billing information.
As the business continues to grow, this was a big logistical challenge for the one individual responsible for managing all the service teams, their schedules, and job requirements. A tool was needed to help him with scheduling and to keep track of all the moving parts of this business.
Field Service Lightning Enables Organization and Efficiency
USSC Group really takes advantage of the structured organizational components of Field Service Lightning. They use this for inspections, service calls, and other areas of support. One process kicks off when someone creates a customer service ticket, which triggers the creation of a work order, and then service appointment. The manager reviews the work order – this could be anything from repairs to routine inspections – to see what type of support is required. He then uses the scheduling dashboard to assign a technician to this task. The field technicians get this alert on their phones while they are already out in the field, arrange their travel, and do whatever they need to do to get the job done. When they finish it, they can complete the service report with customer approval right on their phone. This wraps up that assignment, and they are ready to receive the next one.
Not only does Field Service Lightning keep the team organized and enable to them to work more efficiently in the field, it helps them plan ahead. They can schedule preventative maintenance for specific frequencies for customers based on the customer’s requirements and date of purchase. What used to take hours of investigation and assembling data can be completed in 15 minutes. Their reporting is more accurate and consistent.
Better Reporting and Analysis
Having all field service data in one place allows the management team to get a full overview of operations. For larger contract customers, summary information is easily available to present the current state of their fleet, upcoming scheduled inspections, installations and maintenance, something competitors may not be able to easily reproduce.
What comes next?
USSC Group is happy with how Field Service Lightning works. It makes their jobs easier and allows them to be more productive. They are excited to continue to take advantage of Field Service Lightning features that come out with every release. They will seek to automate the small amount of manual work that still needs to be done to assist their processes and hope to integrate Field Service Lightning with USSC Group’s ERP system soon.
Please contact us if you have any questions related to our Salesforce or integration capabilities. For more information about USSC Group, please visit http://www.usscgroup.com/.
