Providing outstanding support with tailored training, intelligent AI, and brand-new digital channels
Challenge: Optimizing Customer Experience
Globally, consumer expectations around the responsiveness and quality of customer support are growing. Today, customers expect the ability to quickly connect with their service provider, engage with knowledgeable representatives, and rapidly receive solutions to their issues.
As the world’s largest PC manufacturer, Lenovo understands the importance of delivering the best possible customer support experience. This article highlights how Lenovo transformed its approach to field services across APAC, including a brand-new and comprehensive training program for engineers and an AI-powered parts recommendation tool. This innovative project is already making a big impact: the company has boosted first-time-right repairs by 26% and lifted customer satisfaction by 3.4%.
While this Lenovo project is focused on PC repairs, the solutions we have developed could deliver excellent results for any business with field service operations.
Challenge: Achieving Service Excellence
For more than 30 years, Lenovo PC Group has delivered cutting-edge devices to users all over the world. Millions of people use Lenovo PCs for work, education and entertainment, and the company aims to provide responsive repairs and servicing to help resolve users’ technical issues and get them back up and running quickly.
Lilian Yang, Director, AP Services Support Leader at Lenovo, says: “We saw an opportunity to streamline our approach to on-site support—empowering our field service engineers [FSEs] to deliver an even better customer experience.”
Solution: Automating Key Processes
Today, Lenovo automatically analyzes customer support requests and determines the technical and soft skills required to complete the job successfully. When Lenovo creates a work order for one of its support partners in APAC, this information is included—enabling us to assign the repair to the optimal FSE.
Sunil Kumar, Head of Data and Analytics – Infrastructure Support Services at Lenovo, says: “When customers call the Lenovo contact center, agents use a custom-developed AI tool to help identify which parts we should dispatch for the repair. The tool bases its recommendations on a massive dataset of past repairs—including fine-grained data on the symptoms of the issue, the customer’s location, the time of the year the problem was reported, and the parts used to solve the issue.”
Solution: Streamlining Support Experiences
To assist FSEs before, during, and after their customer visits, Lenovo created the Mobile Resolve App—a mobile app that brings all the information related to the customer and their technical issue together in one place. The app enables FSEs to see the specifications for the customer’s device, the results of any previous diagnostics or repairs, video guides for device disassembly and reassembly, and more.
Finally, Lenovo has created a fresh digital experience for customers in APAC. Once an FSE has been assigned, customers receive a link where they can find the engineer’s profile information, technical certification level, and past customer service ratings. Customers can view the FSE’s departure location and estimated arrival time, helping them to ensure that they are available to give the engineer access to the device.
Result: Accelerating Repairs and Reducing Costs
By combining AI-powered insights with a slick new digital experience for customers and FSEs, Lenovo is making our repair process in APAC more effective and convenient.
Kumar comments: “In a matter of seconds, the parts recommender tool analyzes the information about a fault and determines the most likely cause. We can then dispatch our FSEs with everything they need to complete repairs on the first attempt.”
For Lenovo service partners like Action Labs in the Philippines, the new approach is delivering valuable benefits. Jerome Ibasco-Als Laguna, Technical Support Engineer, explains: “We’ve replaced paper-based work orders and customer notes with the Mobile Resolve App, which puts all the information we need at our fingertips.” His colleague Alexis Pertudo, Project Specialist, adds: “We can handle cases much more efficiently, which is particularly useful for investigating and solving first-of-a-kind issues.”
Result: Exceptional Service
To date, over 3,800 FSEs have completed the new Lenovo training and certification program, helping to equip engineers with the technical and soft skills needed to deliver exceptional customer service. Since the transformation program was launched, Lenovo has measured a 3.4% uptick in overall customer satisfaction across APAC—and we are targeting further improvements in the years ahead.
Lenovo’s field service innovation is already receiving significant industry recognition. The FSE transformation project won the Field Service Excellence category at the 2023 Technology & Services Industry Association (TSIA) Star Awards—one of the most highly regarded awards in the IT industry.
To find out how you could benefit from Lenovo’s experience and AI-powered solutions in your own field services, visit Lenovo.com or speak to your Lenovo contact.