Volvo Equipped 1,500 Service Technicians with Apple Watches and Customers Are Loving It
Credit: Volvo Sweden
Toggle Dark Mode
The ease of use and portability of Apple’s iPhone and iPad have long made them top choices for equipping employees with the software apps they need to get their jobs done, and now it looks like a major automaker has found a new use for the Apple Watch, too.
According to ComputerWorld, Volvo has equipped 1,500 of its Personal Service Technicians each with an Apple Watch and iPhone using the Volvo Service App to help them work more efficiently.
While that may not seem like a big change on the surface, it’s actually resulted in a big improvement in customer satisfaction as technicians can get access to necessary information and diagnostic tools more quickly, and stay in contact with customers while they’re doing it.
This results in a faster turnaround time for vehicle repairs and service appointments while ensuring that customers are kept in the loop with updates during the process, as technicians can communicate from Apple’s wearable even while their hands are occupied with a repair.
Before this new Apple Watch initiative came along, Volvo technicians had to rely on a combination of printed paper records and a common PC back at the service desk. It also took up to six months to train new technicians on the 15 different IT systems that Volvo previously used.
Volvo + Apple Watch
The Apple Watch changed all that nearly overnight. Thanks to the ease of Apple’s iOS and watchOS operating systems and the tools available for them, the company was able to build a much more user-friendly Volvo Service App that could be extended to the wearable.
It wasn’t just about simple app development, however, as Volvo had to get past a lot of its entrenched ways of doing things, both from a management perspective and the siloed nature of some of its previous applications.
Sometimes when you try to do things in the easiest way, you gain innovation out of it. Sanna Lindström, Volvo Car Sweden’s head of digital transformation
The article in ComputerWorld goes into much more detail on the approach that Volvo ultimately took to transform the experience of its technicians and customers, but suffice it to say that it began with management and development teams watching the work that technicians actually did, rather than trying to build a solution around what they thought technicians should be doing.
As a result, they found that the service technicians needed more contextual information in the middle of a repair without having to walk away from the work at hand to do things like find some printouts, look up customer contact details, or access a PC.
In fact, the old way of working really got in the way. The research showed that to do their job well, technicians needed to be mobile for 40% of the day, moving in the workshop, speaking with customers, or visiting stockrooms for parts. Scuttling back to the PC for information interrupted workflow.ComputerWorld
These engineers also wanted to be able to access what they needed, when they needed it, without being encumbered with information overload.
The team developing the Volvo Service App quickly realized that the Apple Watch was the perfect solution for this problem. An iPhone app simply wasn’t a good enough solution, especially for people using their hands to work.
In an era defined by mobility, why should engineers traipse over to a PC for the information they need? Why use paper when you can use a display? Volvo chose Apple’s solutions for their advanced security and stable app development environments.ComputerWorld
Here are just a few of the ways in which the Apple Watch makes life easier for Volvo Personal Service Technicians and customers:
- The engineer receives a notification on their Apple Watch when a customer arrives with their vehicle, so they can be ready to go out and deal with the customer immediately.
- The customer’s name, relevant notes, and details of their car are all shown on the Apple Watch face and can be pulled up at any time while the engineer is working on the vehicle.
- During the repair, engineers can access other relevant information needed to complete the repair, without having to interrupt whatever they’re in the middle of doing.
- Once the repair is complete, they can call the customer directly from their Apple Watch to tell them, and they can even schedule and make a subsequent follow-up call without having to go and visit a PC.
Volvo’s service technicians are also finding other clever ways to use the Apple Watch that go beyond the company’s own Service app. For instance, knowing that every technician in the facility is also wearing an Apple Watch allows them to use the Walkie Talkie app to quickly keep in touch with each other.
According to Volvo, 80 percent of the technicians who are using the app have increased their total customer satisfaction scores. The carmaker has also seen a 30 percent increase in post-service follow-up calls and emails to customers, since it’s so much more frictionless for the technician to do this.
It’s also good for the environment, too. The Apple Watch replaces the need for service technicians to print out details on paper to keep them close at hand, and Volvo estimates that it’s already seen a 40 percent drop in the amount of paper being used by service departments.
