CASE STUDY 5
CROWD SERVICE
Crowdservice involves utilising the opinions and discussions of a crowd to boost
customer service and support. In basic terms, it’s customers helping other customers.
The growth of crowdservice coincided with the rapid growth of social media. People’s views,
criticisms and general thoughts on brands and their business model are more plentiful and
accessible than ever before.Consumers value the wealth of information and opinions provided
by other users. Examples of crowd service include videos on ‘removing an iPhone sim’ or ‘top
10 mobile phones’.
Crowd service makes it possible to offer a broader range of services. When consumers
ask questions about the product category, it is often too expensive for organisations to answer
those questions themselves. When the input on non-core questions comes from other
consumers, the cost is very limited.
Changing The Game With Crowd Service:
In addition to their employed service technicians, Swisscom crowd-sourced thousands
of freelancers, creating an ecosystem of certified experts to perform simple tasks such as
installing cable modems, setting up wireless networks, replacing routers, or fixing other issues.
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With a simple mobile app, customers can describe their problem and request on-site support.
An AI-based routing and scheduling engine finds the next best available expert matching skills,
location, and other criteria, then sends a request to his or her mobile device.
The expert can accept the service job and receive all the information needed for the tasks on a
mobile app. The experts get paid a fixed rate for every job upon completion of the assigned
tasks – and the customers can rate the performance of the experts the same way they would
rate a ride-sharing driver.
Crowd Service Works In Every Industry:
Crowd service is not limited to the consumer sector, and it’s not only about freelancers,
either. There are use cases for companies in every industry that need to send technicians onsite
to install, maintain, and repair products or equipment sold to customers as well as their own
assets. These industries include discrete manufacturing, industrial machinery & components,
high tech and medical equipment, telco, utilities, and home and office appliances.
With crowd service you can expand your in-house service organization and your service
partner network with outside experts and technicians to create a service ecosystem that can
respond much faster and – in many cases – at a much lower cost to your customers’ service
needs. Here are some examples:

You need to expand your geographical coverage, in particular in remote areas or certain
countries where it doesn’t make sense to have a full-time employee in idle mode for most
of the time waiting for a service incident

You want to have “first responders” who can be onsite to assess the problem quickly and
can perform simple maintenance and repairs or “quick fixes” before you sent a highly paid
service technician

You need great flexibility due to high volatility in demand and for peak times

You need to increase your local presence in high demand areas but don’t have the capacity
to respond fast enough

You want to leverage existing service providers such as mom & pop repair shops,
mechanics, handymen, plumbers, electricians…

You need highly qualified specialists who are rare because they have exceptional skills
and/or are mostly retired, e.g. for very specific tasks or maintenance and repair of very old
equipment
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The Benefits Of Crowd Service
At a recent conference, I spoke with the service leader of a large discrete manufacturing
company and he told me: “We are pretty good at fixing a problem, but we are not good at doing
it quickly; capacity planning is a constant challenge and we spend a ton of money on scheduling
optimization with little result in improving our response time.” He was intrigued by the crowd
service concept and said that this would solve their biggest field service challenges without
increasing the capacity of their own workforce.
There are many benefits of crowd service including:
Speed: Respond faster to service requests (on-demand service)
Cost: Lower the total cost of service by leveraging the gig economy for simple tasks and/or
jobs in remote areas
Coverage : Increase your geographical coverage through a field service ecosystem
Downtime: Minimize downtime of mission critical equipment for your customers
Capacity: Expand the capacity of your workforce with external resources
Skills: Take advantage of the gig economy to include experts & technicians in your ecosystem
who don’t want to be hired permanently
Revenue: Generate additional revenue with a larger ‘virtual’ service organization
Disrupt your industry with on-demand crowd service
Clearly, the tide is turning, and industries are relying on a strong field service
organization are no longer immune to disruption. Word is getting out that crowd service can
be a game changer and provide organizations with a significant competitive advantage.
In other words, crowd service enables you to fix customer issues quickly and spares
them from waiting and frustration. It allows you to leverage the full potential gig economy and
grow your business.
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