Eastern Lift Truck Company Customer Story

Motivated by the desire to simplify and digitize the customer and employee experience, Eastern Lift sought out a cloud-based, field service management solution in 2017 to replace their pen and paper methods.

Before ServiceMax, Eastern Lift relied on manual, pen and paper processes to manage the business. The resulting lack of visibility into work order status created multiple pain points both for customers and team members.

Managers had little insight into work in progress, when a technician had last been at a customer site, when they were going to be back, and more. Back office staff had to rely on technicians’ memories and notebooks to find information, which meant much of their time was spent chasing down technicians for paperwork and completed work orders. After a day of service calls, technicians would often have to bring paperwork home to write lengthy writeups.

Not only did delayed writeups result in mistakes and missing information, it caused headaches for the billing department who had to interpret and type up that information. The last two to three days of each month were notorious for being a mad dash to generate 60-70% of that month’s invoices. These manual processes all lead to a clunky customer experience that saw large invoicing delays and call back times ranging from hours to days.

As customer preferences for quick, easy, digital interactions became clear, the Eastern Lift team quickly realized that staying competitive meant making it easy for customers to do business with them. They needed a solution that would eliminate paper processes, make their relationships with customers as easy and painless as possible, and pave the way for a customer portal.

After rolling out ServiceMax’s asset-centric field service management solution, common administrative burdens and bottlenecks disappeared. Service operators and managers now have complete visibility into work in progress and actively manage the supply chain and their technicians. With insight into parts availability, expected part arrival date, last labor date, and next scheduled labor date, customer service now proactively contacts customers with updates. Billing, once a big stumbling block, is spread evenly across the month, improving Eastern Lift’s service completion to invoice cycle time and overall DSO, freeing up cash flow significantly.

“ServiceMax allows us to see where we are in the process of a work order. It has improved efficiency and allowed us to provide better customer service to get the job done. Customers get invoiced right away and bills get paid quicker,” says Jason Thompson, Corporate Aftermarket Manager at Eastern Lift Truck Co.

As for technicians, those who were once weary to use an iPad at work now bring suggestions to their managers for how to improve and expand on their use of ServiceMax. “When we meet with technicians to get their feedback, none of them want to go back on paper. ServiceMax has made everything a lot easier for internal employees and technicians alike,” says Jason Thompson.

Using ServiceMax’s field service management solution to transform the team member and customer experience, Eastern Lift's team has seen great improvements to visibility, communication, and accountability.

The newfound visibility from ServiceMax provides real- time information on work order status and eliminates billing delays, removing the frustration many customers felt when they’d receive a bill two months late and not remember what it was for. In addition, being able to easily verify work in case of a complaint or concern has reduced the number of goodwill write-offs.

“There’s no way we would have survived the COVID-19 crisis without ServiceMax, With our system, we truly haven’t missed a beat,” said Nicholas Nicolini, VP of Operations, Eastern Lift Truck Co.

ServiceMax’s easy-to-use iPad app has made technicians are more efficient and eliminated the back and forth that techs and back-office staff would have to go through to get invoicing right. Technicians save one to two hours per week by being able to input data on the job and use voice to text to quickly complete their write-ups. And now that technicians pick their parts as they go, Eastern Lift no longer has to check and recheck every work order.

“We used to have somebody in parts dedicated to quality checking every work order. With ServiceMax, they can spend time doing something else more productive and not just reviewing mechanics’ work orders all day, says Nicholas Nicolini, VP of Operations at Eastern Lift Truck Co..

As for accountability, the ability to track and measure performance has allowed teams to hold each other accountable for the first time. “In our old system, we couldn’t measure anything. Now we know when work is completed the moment it is done. On reviewing this, we can hold each other accountable for the real work that’s done and prevent pushback from customers,” says Bill Pfleger. “I don’t think we knew how much more we could improve prior to going on ServiceMax,” says Jason Thompson.