You’d think the most fundamental aspect of customer service, whether it happens in the field, a shop, or across a lunch counter, would be simple politeness. And since, as we know, everyone’s mother taught them better, there’s really no excuse  Continue reading

Imagine you could start with a blank sheet of paper and design the perfect field service van. What would you change from the old standbys? What cool new features or little luxuries would you dare to hope for? That’s the  Continue reading

For fleet managers, knowing how and when different vehicles hold their value is important for optimizing overall cost and fleet performance. We spoke recently with Eric Ibarra, a 20-year auto industry veteran and the manager of residual value practice for  Continue reading

The gear-heads among us may fantasize about speedy sports cars or high-performance luxury SUVs, but sometimes you just need your vehicle to be a workhorse. Sometimes you need a van. But beware: not all vans are created equal. So to  Continue reading

With federal fuel-efficiency standards set to rise and new, greener tech being brought to market, now is a fascinating but complicated time for field service firms looking to invest in more efficient ways to run their vehicle fleet. To find  Continue reading

Just a few months ago, the Obama administration announced a whopping increase in the federal fuel-efficiency standards, a program known as CAFE, which will require vehicle manufacturers to achieve a fleet-wide fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles to the gallon by 2017. What  Continue reading

If you work for a field service firm that needs to replace its fleet’s vehicles, you face an often-tough decision: to lease or to buy? David Koelsch, a certified automotive fleet manager and fleet management consultant, has been helping firms  Continue reading

How does the ground-level view of the field service industry experienced by technicians differ from that of top managers? Few people are better positioned to answer that question that Diebold’s John Callen, who started with the ATM and security-service company  Continue reading

Are  field service firms rushing to embrace the scalability and efficiencies of cloud-based solutions? Not quite, according to Saul Sherry, the editor of ServiceManagement365, who recently spoke to SmartVan from his London office about how C-level executives have so far  Continue reading