Drag the Tool Case Before You Design the Tool - #146 - Russ Wylie

Episode Summary

Every new tool rolled out to the field carries two price tags. Russ Wylie, Director of Field Service, sees them running side by side: the hard costs that show up in travel, overtime, warranty spend and parts thrown at a machine, and the human costs that show up when good technicians get frustrated and walk out the door. In this episode, host Justin Lake sits down with Russ to talk about what poor adoption really costs on the frontline, and what it takes to turn it around.

Russ tells the story of a new hire who connected his company's disconnected tools on his own laptop, and why that kind of initiative leaves when the organization does not keep up. He explains why veteran techs hold on to the duct-taped laptop, how switching costs and muscle memory keep people on the old way, and how to trace first-time fix problems back to a root cause when the dashboard only takes you so far. He also walks through a chatbot rollout that worked because technicians helped build it from the first version.

He closes with advice every service leader can use. Get out of the office, sit in the van, drag the tool case through the factory, and see the work before you redesign it.

Key Topics

- The hard costs and the human costs of poor adoption
- New hires who expect better tools, and what happens when they do not get them
- Designing for the majority instead of the few holdouts
- Switching costs, muscle memory and the duct-taped laptop
- An ERP change that stopped shipments for eight months
- Crossed routes, poor dispatch and firing the parts cannon
- Tracing first-time fix problems back to a root cause
- Supervisor-led teams for safety, warranty and new tools
- Skipped forms, free text fields and too many wrap-up codes
- Service reports that are easy to fill out and easy to read
- A chatbot rollout built with technicians from the start
- Why unstructured sandboxes fall short

Episode Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:53 Welcome and guest introduction
01:49 The hard and human costs of poor adoption
03:27 The new hire who connected the tools himself
06:09 Designing for the many, not the few holdouts
07:45 Switching costs and the duct-taped laptop
10:56 Unwinding old muscle memory
12:15 Eight months without a shipment after an ERP change
14:05 Crossed routes and the parts cannon
17:57 A $128 wiring harness and the cost of guessing
19:54 Finding the root cause of first-time fix problems
23:57 Supervisor-led teams and the unglamorous work of data
27:28 Skipped forms, free text fields and too many wrap-up codes
30:53 Making service reports easier to fill out
35:41 A chatbot rollout that caught on
38:06 First impressions and the risk of going live
41:12 Why unstructured sandboxes fall short
43:53 Final advice: walk in their shoes

About Russ Wylie

Russ Wylie is a Director of Field Service who leads service teams across borders from the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. His career spans field service leadership, product support for aviation customers and customer service operations, including work in highly regulated industries such as aerospace and medical. He focuses on building process and technology that technicians will actually use, by spending time in the field and bringing technicians into the work early.

Resources

Frontline Innovators Podcast: https://skyllful.com/podcast

Skyllful: https://skyllful.com

Russ Wylie LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russwylie/