The recently published study--"Underpinnings of Service Excellence: Synchronizing Resource Capacity with Service Demand"--reveals that service organizations who have taken strategic actions to accurately forecast service demand and effectively plan and provision service resources to meet that demand have realized 22% increase in first-time fix rate, 18% higher SLA compliance rate, 27% improvement in workforce utilization, and 14% lower overtime costs.

"Aligning demand with resources enables a company to not only deploy the right technician with the right part at the right time resulting in high customer satisfaction, but also allows the company to move away from a state of constant fire-fighting," said Amit Jain, Research Director at Aberdeen and author of the report. "Financial gains from productivity improvements make it a no-brainer."

Other highlights from the report include:

1. Best-in-Class firms are 8 times as likely as the rest to report First-time Fix Rate of over 96%
2. Best-in-Class firms are 4 times as likely as the rest to report Work-order Completed Late of less than 5%
3. Best-in-Class firms are 3 times as likely as the rest to report SLA Compliance Rate of over 96%
4. Best-in-Class firms are 4 times as likely as the rest to measure planning and demand accuracy in real time

Jain recommends that service organizations consider the following Best-in-Class strategies as potential building blocks of a successful service organization:

1. Improve productivity by establishing guidelines for type and frequency of communications among dispatchers and field technicians.