How AI Bridges the Skill Gap of Your Aging Field Service Workforce

A major emerging concern for 2024 is the growing skill gap and aging workforce in field service.

As seasoned technicians retire, they take years of experience and knowledge—assets that aren't easily replaced. Simultaneously, new technicians entering the field often lack the skills and experience to manage increasingly complex tasks.

The challenge of an aging workforce and emerging skill gaps

The reality is stark: a large segment of skilled technicians is nearing retirement. For example, the average age of HVAC technicians is approximately 54 years old, and many are expected to retire within the next decade. This shift threatens to deplete critical knowledge and expertise, leaving a void that new technicians are unprepared to fill . Additionally, this shift can incur substantial costs and impact the health of an organization in a few ways.

• Training costs: Training new technicians is not only time-consuming but also expensive. New hires require significant investment in training to reach the competency levels of their retiring counterparts, which can strain budgets.
• Customer retention: As experience levels dip, service quality can falter, leading to dissatisfied customers and increased churn. Losing customers is costly, not only in lost revenue but also in the additional marketing and support efforts required to replace them.
• Increased operational costs: New or less experienced technicians may struggle to resolve issues on the first visit, causing an organization’s first-time fix rate to plummet. Lower first-time fix rates mean that more truck rolls are needed to correct unresolved issues. Each truck roll can cost between $200$ and $400$. When you factor in return visits, these costs can add up fast. 

AI solutions such as Service Advisor are becoming indispensable in the field in addressing these challenges.

How AI can help bridge the gap

AI captures expert knowledge and gives technicians of all levels instant access to solutions and guidance, ensuring that the workforce remains competent and knowledgeable even as demographics shift. Additionally, these AI tools are designed to be future-proof. AI retains essential historical knowledge and experience and seamlessly integrates new processes and product updates. This keeps your teams current on both longstanding knowledge and practices and new methods and information.

Knowledge retention and transfer

In the manufacturing sector, experienced technicians often develop unique fixes or streamlined processes that speed up resolution times and increase the chance of the first-time fix.

For example, a veteran technician might know a shortcut for calibrating a CNC machine that isn't documented in any service manual, saving valuable setup time. Another technician might’ve developed a technique to quickly diagnose common hydraulic issues in excavators, which isn’t officially recorded. If this knowledge isn’t captured before those technicians retire, that knowledge is lost.

One of the most powerful features of a tool like Service Advisor is its ability to capture and digitize the deep knowledge of retiring technicians. This process ensures that the hard-earned insights and methodologies of experienced workers are preserved within digital systems, ensuring that this knowledge remains accessible to all service personnel.

Skill gap mitigation

As the aging workforce begins to retire, field service companies face a growing skill gap that could cause several issues, from low first-time fix rates to increased downtime for their customers. According to the IFS' State of Service 2023, field service organizations' second most pressing concern was the lack of skilled workers.

Service Advisor provides real-time, context-specific advice and solutions, guiding less experienced technicians through complex procedures with the same confidence as their more experienced counterparts.

For example, a novice technician faces the challenge of diagnosing an intermittent fault in a large industrial gas engine used for power generation—a task that usually requires a more seasoned technician. The technician turns to the Service Advisor for assistance. This AI tool quickly sifts through a database of similar engine faults that have been documented and provides the technician with an interactive guide tailored to that engine’s specifications. The technician diagnoses the problem as a misaligned sensor affecting the engine's performance and resolves the issue without needing an additional site visit from a more experienced technician.

By upskilling your technicians, Service Advisor helps mitigate the skill gap and ensures that even new or less skilled technicians can perform tasks with the same expertise as their more experienced peers. This helps standardize service quality across the workforce and limit costly truck rolls.

On-demand training and support

The final piece of the puzzle is training. When technicians retire, you’ll need to hire new staff and get them up to speed fast. The faster new technicians reach independence and competence, the quicker they can support your company’s growth and success.

Service Advisor accelerates the training process for new technicians, significantly reducing the time it takes them to become competent in their roles. Technicians receive real-time answers via a conversational interface that guides them through troubleshooting and problem-solving processes as they navigate complex service tasks.

Imagine a new technician at a manufacturing plant dealing with an unfamiliar complex machine issue. Using Service Advisor, the technician inputs the observed symptoms, and the tool quickly supplies a detailed, step-by-step guide based on expert knowledge, service manuals, and product data. By following these steps, the technician identifies a calibration error, makes the necessary adjustments, and gets the machine back up and running without needing further support calls or follow-up visits.

This on-the-job training for technicians is crucial for reducing the learning curve and enhancing job performance, making support as accessible as consulting a seasoned expert beside them.

See the future of service with Service Advisor

Ready to see how Service Advisor can upskill your teams and help you retain knowledge? Contact us for a live demo tailored to your business use case.

We're a proud sponsor of Field Service East 2024. Visit us at Booth 103 to learn how Service AIdvisor, powered by our Decision Intelligence platform, can improve the quality, velocity, and consistency of your service decisions.