Trade fairs are the best places to engage with people and to get a good feel of new industry trends. CeBIT Australia was the best opportunity for software provider Loc8 to interact with people in order to comprehend their thoughts on what they think drives good service.
Loc8 decided to conduct an informal and interactive investigation where people could give their opinion on the matter. All participants had to answer this very straight forward question: What drives good service?
To respond, they had to pick what they thought was the most relevant answer out of five options on the panel. Each answer had a colour code which related to a tube of gumballs. Based on their answer, participants could then have a few gumballs of the matching colour.
Beyond the fact that this activity pleased and amused people, it also allowed Loc8 to identify what mattered the most to people. The five possible answers were: ‘Mobile quoting and jobs’, ‘Reports delivered to your inbox’, ‘Assets and planned maintenance’, ‘Taking payment in the field’, ‘Integration with financial systems’.
At the end of day 1, ‘Reports delivered to your inbox’ (purple) and ‘Assets and planned maintenance’ (green) were clearly the major elements that people thought were important to drive good service. At the end of day 2 and until the end of day 3, ‘Assets and planned maintenance’ was the top answer.
Regardless of their age and industry the participants who picked the green answer were all adamant that this was the best option to drive good service within a business. It is proven that knowing your assets and being on top of the maintenance cycle is a real competitive advantage for any sort of company.
This game was a smart way to interact with the public in a very friendly and unofficial way. Ultimately, all of the five answers allow businesses to drive good service yet, it was interesting to see what was the most important to people. Based on the different conversations that were held on the Loc8 stand, the mobility (blue answer) factor was another important element. However, quoting and jobs being tasks specific to certain trades, some of the participants couldn’t rely on it and therefore picked a different answer. Nonetheless, they strongly agreed that mobile was the go to.
Finally, despite being the least chosen answers, ‘taking payments in the field’ and ‘integration with financial systems’ are still two highly important components. They allow businesses to speed up processes and to be on top of their finances. They also enable better tracking of the workflow and enhanced understanding of the overall business. Real-time and accurate data is the best way to make fast and evidence based decisions.
