How Smart Glass Can Help Technicians In Field Service

Field service has evolved considerably in the recent past taking advantage of rapid advancements in technology. More and more companies are leveraging the capabilities of new-age tools like augmented reality glasses that helps field technicians provide real-time data to the back-end team. This enables the latter to come up with optimal solutions for customers’ equipment-related problems.

This post will cover some of the ways wearables like smart glass equipped with augmented reality for remote customer support can help technicians in field service and the key benefits of using smart glass for field service.

How Smart Glass Can Help Technicians:

1. Delivery of Service
2. Hands–Free Capabilities
3. Increased Efficiency
4. Increased Safety
5. Cost-Savings
6. Video Streaming Capabilities
7. Training and Educational Opportunities
8. Routing Assistance
9. Return on Investment
10. Maintenance Assistance
11. Virtual Assistance

Smart Glass: History and General Use-Cases

Let’s start our discussion by looking at Smart Glass in general. The first smart glass—the Google Glass—was launched in 2013. The high price and unclear use case made the product unpopular for the general public, but in the years that followed, people started to see a valuable use for Smart Glass: Professional use. 

A few professional use-cases for Smart Glass include:

• Construction
• Manufacturing
• Logistics and Warehousing
• Field Service
  
  

The augmented reality and video recording capabilities of Smart Glass mean that wearables are all set to revolutionize field service. This is further supported by the following facts:

• A market size of $20 billion in 2015  is expected to grow to a whopping $70 billion by 2025.
• The number of wearables sold went up to over 830 million in 2020 from 325 million in 2016.
• The ubiquitous smartphones are in a sense passé when it comes to field technicians who have increasingly come to rely on augmented reality interactive devices like air spectacles and AR glasses to help provide a superlative level of field service to their customers.
  
  

Blitzz has worked with a number of organizations using Smart Glass for their field service management efforts. Our software fully integrates with Smart Glass, so we’ve seen the benefits of using Smart Glass for field service firsthand! Let’s dive into those benefits now. 

Delivery Of Service

Most customers usually have a tale to tell of how difficult it is to get a technician to properly address their problem. Somebody equipped with wearables would be able to access vital details about the customers’ equipment like the manual, the warranty details, and past customer data, even as they go about accurately carrying out the required repairs.

Hands-Free Capabilities

Using tools like augmented reality glasses imparts tremendous efficiency to field technicians who would now be able to access data at will without having to use their hands that will be better occupied in carrying out the task at hand.

Increased Efficiency

The use of tools like google glass by field service personnel leads to their achieving superlative efficiency.  For instance, the on-site video recording ability enables senior technicians located in a remote back-end office to access the feed and provide their inputs in real-time. This enables repairs to be done the right time the first time every time.

Increased Safety

Field technicians who are new to the job obtain extra protection on account of their being monitored in time by their senior colleagues. This will enable them to avoid getting hurt due to their lack of field experience. What’s more, there will be no need to deploy somebody senior for oversight, as the fledgling field technician would now be able to better manage things on his own.

Cost-Savings

Research firm Garter found out that companies that empower their field sales staff with smart glasses can expect to make a saving of a billion dollars in a 3 to 5 year period.

Video Streaming Capabilities

Smart glasses can empower inspectors to convey the successful completion of work performed by field staff. This will be of great use to service providers as it will ensure that the staff deployed at sites is following standard operating procedures.

Training and Educational Opportunities

Gadgets like Google Glass are embedded with voice-activated video recordings. They also come equipped with live sharing ability that makes it possible to use such on-the-job scenarios to give new field staff invaluable real-life training.

Routing Assistance

The fact that something like Google Glass can even provide 3D directions via a GPS mechanism that is hands-free means that field executives will be able to achieve precise and accurate street routing. This would mean saying goodbye to driving errors or missed street signs and accurate driving directions received by field personnel headed to a work site.

Return on Investment

Like any other hi-tech gadget smart glasses too cost a fair amount of money.  But if you look at the kind of savings you make, by not having to search far and wide for people with the right technical expertise, the return on investment turns out to be pretty good. That is because smart glasses empower the most average of technicians to carry out a superlative job, on account of the real-time oversight they receive remotely from their supervisors.

Related Read: 5 Key Benefits of Remote Video Inspections in 2022

Maintenance Assistance

The thing about maintenance functions is the fact that sometimes the equipment is quite complex, especially when it comes to the technology sector. Quite often the field technicians just can’t figure out the schematics and need a helping hand.  Smart glasses can save the day for the technicians by way of providing them with the necessary information on the spot.

Virtual Assistance

Field staff no longer need to memorize the contents of long instruction manuals. They can instead display all the necessary information on their smart glasses, turning them into veritable digital assistants.

How Smart Glass Can Help Technicians at Your Organization

While smart glasses and other augmented reality gadgets may not be anywhere as ubiquitous as smartphones are, the fact of the matter is that even cell phones weren’t available to everyone, not all those many years ago. Yet today smartphone and Internet penetration is at an all-time high.

Therefore, it is a matter of time before virtual and immersive technology becomes an integral part of our daily life both at home and at work. This is because these technologies will herald a tremendous amount of efficiency in whatever we undertake

As is the case with most emerging technologies, it is really industry and business that are taking to technologies like smart glasses in a big way as they can clearly visualize the benefits. The feedback that they are providing is helping in the refinement and improvement of these technologies to the extent that they become much more effective and user-friendly in the times ahead. 

Surely we are on the cusp of what may be termed as a mini-revolution of sorts in the way we work, entertain and live, thanks to the emergent technologies described above. We have just about taken the first few steps in that direction and we can’t be sure exactly what shape it finally takes. But one thing is for certain-the old ways of doing things are already way too old.

Blitzz has been at the forefront of augmented reality solutions that integrate with smart glass for years. Your customers will love our user-friendly remote solutions, and your technicians will appreciate the flexibility and insights the Blitzz system can provide them on the job. See how Blitzz can help your technicians by taking Blitzz for a free test drive today!