With 19 locations serving West Texas and Oklahoma, Warren CAT places great value on its ability to provide excellent customer service for the Caterpillar brand. The busy service operation, providing sales, leasing, equipment rentals, installations, regular preventative maintenance, and emergency service repairs, fields 60 calls per day at each location and sends 160 technicians to customer sites.
Operations were being handled manually by 16 dispatchers, tracking activity with whiteboards and using cell phones to inform the techs when each day’s priorities changed. Problems would appear regularly with dropped calls and outdated or poorly mapped areas.
Improving Customer Service
Warren CAT initiated a project with the twin goals of meeting every standard customer request within 24 hours or less, while saving money in the process. The challenge was given to Warren CAT’s Six Sigma team, whose purpose is to provide total quality management solutions for the company.
The Warren CAT Six Sigma team, in collaboration with CAT corporate Six Sigma, identified service issues involving both the dealer and Caterpillar. Warren CAT determined that integrating scheduling and dispatching of all CAT activities in one system would provide major benefits and improvements in customer service and cost reduction.
Since total customer satisfaction was the driving force behind the project, Six Sigma examined the critical customer requirements and dealer needs that would have to be met in order to develop a successful solution.
After careful examination, the team gathered the 38 most critical needs affecting the field service operation and researched 22 software companies who specialize in developing appropriate programs.
Finding the Best Fit
After several tests, InterGis’ Visual Control Room (VCR) was selected as the best fit for the company’s needs. The new system was tested in a pilot program in five service vehicles in Lubbock, TX from April - September, 2007. Each service truck was equipped with a NovaTracker Maya GPS unit to transmit in-vehicle tracking information. Following a successful pilot, a rollout to all 160 vehicles was immediately scheduled.
VCR is an automated information management system that efficiently dispatches, schedules, routes, and tracks each vehicle on a full-color, graphical map while providing all relevant real-time data on a single screen to dispatchers.
When unscheduled or emergency calls are received, VCR automatically determines the most appropriate technician to make the stop based on proximity (from the Maya GPS data), technician expertise, and applied business rules, then schedules the service technician automatically.
The system operates by gathering data from both internal and external sources and combining them in a Visual Control Room, giving the user total control. The effectiveness of the system derives from the increased decision-making capabilities provided to dispatchers. These include mapping and pinning of actual customer sites, detailed customer and job information, the ability to schedule and dispatch service technicians, selecting optimal auto-routes, tracking each job in the system, and viewing the resources used. By using the visual options available, the user is able to efficiently coordinate each service call from start to finish.
Increased Efficiency = Customer Satisfaction
As a result of the implementation, Warren CAT and its customers realized the following benefits:
- Reduced driving time
- More customers seen each day with same number of technicians
- Fewer miles driven; more efficient routes
- Customer wait time reduced by over 300% for jobs requiring specialized technicians
- Anticipated annual savings of $2.8 million.
