The Competitive Edge: Mobile Computing and Deregulation
Serving Customers with Information
But customer service is not confined to equipment service, installation and maintenance.
Sometimes the best service comes in the form of quick and accurate information.
Particularly in sales situations.
As the competitive environment heats up, companies with the best service and lowest
price stand the greatest chance of winning the most customers. On the front lines on this
battle for customers loyalty are mobile sales forces calling on customers. Mobile
computing devices can quickly provide the people closest to the customers with the
information the customer needs to make a decision -- what products and services are
offered at what price. By using mobile devices to communicate with central databases, a
sales force representative in the field can call up a customer’s history of credit, collections
and past purchases, and match that against the utility’s up-to-date product offering and
price list.
Mobile Comrwting Use Profile C
A large utility company in the midwest is investigating swapping the portable PCs that
were provided to the field calls organization with a new line of handheld mobile devices.
The PCs are bigger, heavier and more expensive, yet have limited communications
capabilities. Using handheld mobile devices, like the DataRover, sales reps in the field
will be able to call into a central database using CDPD and access the latest pricing and
usage costs -- all at one-third to one-fifth the cost of a typical portable PC.
The right tool for the job
Among tradespeople, there is a saying that” workers are known by their work.” And at
no time will the quality of their work be more critical to the livelihood of a utility
company than in a deregulated market.
Customer service will be more than good business; it will make or break a business. To
adapt to these pressures, utilities are finding news ways of conducting business and
improving on old ones. Response time to trouble will drop, while services, such as
installing and inspecting equipment, and routines such as collections, will need to become
more efficient with better results.
The armature that utilities will use in this battle to build a business will be small,
lightweight, mobile computing devices. The devices will be as capable computing
information as communicating it. They will be customizable for specific tasks, and case-hardened
for the rigors of work in the field.
In a world where “utility” describes both the business and the tools, today’s mobile
computing devices are delivering on the expectations of both.
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