Across industries, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a trending topic in recent years. While there’s no doubt it’s forging new paths in content creation, task management, data structure and programming, it also has the potential to provide benefits for the skilled trades. As such, industries in pest control, lawn care, cleaning, heating ventilation air conditioning (HVAC) and other service markets are already looking at how AI can be implemented within their business to achieve greater efficiencies.

Still, it’s important to acknowledge the potential risk of AI. Without proper training, AI can pose a negative impact on the security of your business data or the accuracy of information you’re using to make business decisions. Therefore, training employees on the use of AI is vital — even in service-based roles that historically don’t involve deep exposure to technology.

How To Best Train Employees To Use AI

It’s important to understand that AI is a tool meant to enhance employees’ competencies by integrating human processes and knowledge with AI — not replace them. Effective training is essential in accomplishing this. That begins with first understanding what AI is.

AI uses natural language processing to understand and extract information from text or other data. For service companies, AI can be a tool to help analyze information, understand customers and automate tasks. Potential business applications range from editing, translating, summarizing and reviewing text to scheduling projects and recognizing patterns in employee or customer behaviors.

It’s crucial to acknowledge that AI tools come with legal, commercial and reputational risks. Despite its advanced capabilities, it’s not flawless. Employees must be diligent in identifying significant risks such as inaccurate results, loss of trade secrets, data protection, copyright infringement and contractual obligations to ensure that they’re mitigated effectively. This begins by establishing best practices within your business and training employees on how to adhere to them.

• First, employees should always check AI-generated responses for accuracy and plagiarism.
• Second, employees should make sure that any information entered into AI tools complies with the company’s data privacy policies.
• Finally, it’s essential to prohibit the input of confidential information into these tools.

Employees should possess effective listening, communication, problem-solving, knowledge management, documentation and writing skills to transfer and preserve knowledge and avoid siloing information. Soft skills training in these areas may be necessary to support the use of AI.

Benefits of AI in the Service Industry

These best practices are good to keep in mind no matter the industry — yet how can they apply specifically to a field worker in the service industry? For example, a typical technician won’t likely spend much time on the fundamentals of AI during a typical day of work on a maintenance route.

Still, that doesn’t mean they won’t interact with AI at all throughout the course of their work. Many of the applications technicians utilize daily likely have different forms of AI, machine learning and predictive analytics. These are embedded within the applications to improve efficiency and/or gain insights. For example, an integrated pest control solution can feature route optimization for multiple technicians and their scheduled appointments to ensure an efficient drive and service time. In this scenario, the pest control tech should be trained to understand that any deviation from the resulting optimization would create inefficiencies, leading to longer and later work hours, misuse of resources and even customer disputes.

Service reports and customer analysis are two areas in the service industry where AI is leveraged to improve the customer experience and drive sales. Service reports rely on AI to extract key components of the service visit and present them in a factual and presentable way for customers while on site.

On the other hand, customer analysis is used by the back office to provide insights on when, how or why to present customers with specific offerings based on their history. This can allow service providers to drive sales leads to conversion, generating more revenue for the company and fostering further customer engagement.

Prospective and current customers interactions are also being supported with chatbots to help route questions faster and improve response times, which can be a benefit to companies experiencing understaffing during challenging labor markets. For example, WorkWave’s ServiceBot is an AI-enabled chatbot that lives on a business’s website and guides potential customers from their initial inquiry to accurate estimation and quotes, all the way through to final sale and payment.

AirHelp’s AI technology revolutionized the flight claims industry. Their AI solution works by collecting customer requests and automatically assigning them to the right service agents. And Toyota manufacturers and engineers are designing AI into their cars’ function to automatically detect when parts may need to be replaced before the driver feels or hears changes in their vehicle’s performance.

For companies where workers wear multiple hats and are often helping on jobs themselves, this can help them refocus their attention on customer interactions and employee support without losing potential business.

The Future of AI in Field Service

Having employees competent in AI fundamentals and specific soft skills provides opportunities for companies to integrate current and new AI tools available for service-related industries to improve customer service tasks, enhance customer self-help platforms and personalize the customer experience.

Moving into a new year, the use of AI-driven insights or workflows is becoming a prominent factor in customer engagement across various industries. As numerous providers explore ways to implement AI, there’s the potential to see significant improvements in communication and work efficiency. In turn, these advancements have the potential to support a smoother customer experience and increase customer satisfaction.

Since AI is an evolving technology, providing continuous and new learning experiences across workforces is imperative for success. Implementing an L&D strategy that includes upskilling and reskilling can empower and prepare employees for an AI-driven workplace.