To Encourage Adoption, Focus On Gains For Technicians
In the South we have a phrase, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”. For those of you unfamiliar with that cryptic southern jargon, that phrase generally means you get much farther by being nice than by being a first-class jerk.
The same concept can be applied to technology rollouts with technicians. You will get faster, more widespread adoption by focusing on the value of the tool to the tech than the value of the tool to the business.
No matter the technician, when a new platform is presented and use is expected, it is always seen as additional work. Some technicians accept the change, work the process, and deliver. Others fight the shift, as hard as they can for as long as they can.
Discover Where Techs Think They Win And Reinforce
One of the most important best practices when it comes to adoption is being able to speak to and show the technician the practical gains of a new technology platform. Being able to identify where they can save time, where they can write less, where they can work less, where they can not send extra emails, where they can avoid a drive back to the office.
These are all practical gains that matter to the technician. These benefits are tangible and techs will feel them throughout their workday. These are the things that will make techs WANT TO USE THE TOOL.
If you are investing in a tool that requires usage on every call, you will be asking your technicians to do more on every job. Depending on the requirement of the platform or tool, your technicians may sniff out the duplication effect; they may complain that the new tool requires them to duplicate an effort in their current workflow. If this is true, do not argue otherwise. Be open and agree with your techs, because at the end of the day, they are correct.
Listen carefully and respond in a way that lets techs know you care about the parts of the job that cause them frustration. That is why you are always looking for technology that accomplishes two things: improving the customer experience AND making the technicians’ jobs easier.
Explain how the new technology will benefit customers and how a better customer experience will make working with customers more pleasant. Emphasize features in the new technology that will help techs communicate better, reduce their paperwork burden, or speed up calls with a faster workflow so they can get to the next call or get home to their families.
They will quickly see how the technology is a win-win…for themselves and their customers.
At the end of the day the technicians feel like they won, your company sees the utilization of the investment at a faster clip and your team realizes the benefits behind of the investment without the disruption internally.
Hopefully this has provided some insight into how you can shift the focal point of deploying new processes or technology from a “have to” to a “want to”.
At XOi, we have dealt with a few skeptical techs in our time, and we know how to empower them to win. For more information about how to manage onboarding and guide the adoption process to maximize success with XOi Vision™, contact us today.
