How to Work with Your Medical Equipment Field Service Technicians Remotely

Is your medical equipment company struggling to get work completed during this time of social distancing due to a lack of expert resources? Do you want to improve the communications your experts can have with technicians out in the field? Do you want to empower your technicians to do their work swiftly and precisely via remote help? If you answered yes to any of those questions, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist might be for you!

Medical equipment companies are typically able to provide basic remote support, but for times they must send technicians on site to repair equipment, the possibility of increasing revenue and customer satisfaction while decreasing cost comes to play. Remote Assist, an add-on to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, can do all those things.

It gives technicians new ways to interact with their team remotely. Especially during these trying times of COVID-19, Remote Assist can help ensure your technicians and experts are practicing social distancing, while still finishing out their work orders, and making sure customers are satisfied.

Benefits of integrating Dynamics 365 Remote Assist into your field service management system:

Collaboration via Microsoft Teams

• Technicians can get assistance and avoid work interruptions by remotely calling experts via a seamless integration with Microsoft Teams.
• The chat feature allows the technician to communicate with an expert in real-time, vs. an email that may not get answered for hours or days or end up in junk mail.
• The technician can share his video which allows an expert to see equipment errors in real time. This will give the expert context to the problem in order to walk the technician through the correct troubleshooting steps.
• Both Remote Assist users can share files back and forth using Teams native functionality. This allows the expert to send specific troubleshooting steps, images, or schematics as needed, minimizing the chances for mistakes and allowing the work to get completed faster.

Holographic Annotations

• The technician and remote expert can draw directly on the video. This allows the expert to circle parts of the equipment to be tested, write notes, etc. The drawings stay anchored on the physical objects in the video as the technician moves around.
• Instead of the technician leaving the site without fixing the issue because of lack of knowledge, the issue can be troubleshooted remotely and corrected on the first visit.

Storing the data in Dynamics 365 CRM

• The call information along with any shared files can easily be tracked on the related work order in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. This ensures that if the problem happens again at another site, being worked on by a different technician, the problem can be resolved faster. Also, managers can keep track of the remote assist calls taking place and put together training documentation or programs in order to avoid those issues in the future.
• The historical data will ultimately increase your teams’ knowledge and productivity.

All the above will help your team solve problems in real time without needing everyone on-site, reducing travel time and cost, improving first time fix rates, especially when site access may be restricted. This will also allow your subject matter experts to help from anywhere in the world and spread knowledge to the techs who require it.

Remote Assist can be used with iOS, Android, and HoloLens devices.

Visit our Medical Equipment Field Service Management page for more resources to help your business maintain continuity while navigating the unique challenges we face in today’s environment.