A new GamesBeat event is around the corner! Learn more about what comes next. Customer expectations and needs are on the rise, exacerbating the challenge for companies facing a higher volume of customer requests during the pandemic. The issue is acute in field service work, where employees have to work on equipment with varying technical specifications -- often in confined, bandwidth-constrained, and hard-to-reach spaces. In a recent survey by The Service Council, over 90% of field workers said that more knowledge is required to service modern products while nearly 70% said that products are more complex today.

ManpowerGroup reported in 2018 that 70% of companies interviewed in a survey said that they expected a skills shortage in field service personnel over the next 10 years. Field service workers are those who travel to locations to repair goods and services onsite. Among the contributing factors were an aging (and retiring) workforce and a lack of enthusiasm among millennials for field service careers. "For large enterprises, field service must address an entire lifecycle of a product or service," said Arka Prava Dhar, CEO and founder of Zinier, which provides field service AI solutions. Field service starts with work orders, then the work is done by the field service worker, then it's either verified or forwarded to an expert, Dhar said.