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Field Service Palm Springs 2023: Recap, Highlights, and Notable Trends

Author: Drew TramelField Service, Palm Springs 2023, Recap, Highlights, Field Service USA, Field Service Resources, attendance, Trend

Field Service USA or Field Service Palm Springs, if you’ve never been, is one of the better field service conferences to attend in terms of the volume of quality information available — particularly if you’re a leader or member of a field service organization.

It features field service experts from various industries, who provide highly valuable opportunities to learn from their experiences, insights, and best practices via panels and sessions. 2023 was no different, which I’ll talk about more in the next section, as well as provide a short event recap, and review of notable trends.

Field Service Palm Springs 2023 Recap and Highlights

Palm Springs, California is the event’s flagship location (the conference is also held in various other locations throughout the year), and 2023’s event was held April 25th-27th. This year marked the conference’s 20th anniversary, and the theme was “Celebrating 20 Years of Reimagining The Future of Service.”

As mentioned above, the panels and sessions at this event are one of the key benefits of attending, due to the experience level and variety of the speakers. What stands out is their honesty when discussing the challenges they’ve faced, and how it’s helped them better understand where to focus. 

From a personal perspective, as a field service expert, these 5 panels and sessions stood out as highlights:  

  • The partner keynote, “Are You Ready to Power the Field Service Teams of Tomorrow,” hosted by Taksina Eammano, EVP & GM Field Service at Salesforce 
  • The partner presentation, “Demystifying Generative AI for Field Service,” hosted by Chad Barbour, Senior Director of Field Service Product Management at Salesforce, and Kendra Fumai, VP of Product Management at Salesforce 
  • “Best Practices for Engaging Yourself and Others for Optimal Team Performance” 
  • “A Lifestyle Approach to Service: Why You Should Explore the Holistic Approach” 
  • “Mindset Meets Toolset: Adopting a Remote-First Service Strategy to Meet Evolving Customer Needs” 

As you can see by their titles, every session and panel I listed touched on field service trends, which I’ll discuss below.  

Notable Field Service Trends

Long-standing trends, such as using a single platform solution to achieve widespread improvements and growth, and digital apps and solutions which work towards improving both efficiency and customer satisfaction during B2B- or B2C-facing tasks — are still worth noting.

Newer trends are mostly centered around improvements in AI, and how these innovations are being incorporated into all aspects of field service.

  • Trend: Generative AI use to enhance solution performance
    • What We’re Seeing: This has completely changed the game for every field service industry; think better workflows and extensive functionality to improve the customer experience 
  • Trend: Using technology to shorten service cycles 
    • What We’re Seeing: Again, better, faster, smarter automation and workflows, but what sticks out from a field service perspective is how this is being used to shorten service cycles — which has a positive impact on customer satisfaction 
  • Trend: Keeping your workforce happy through configuration and next generation field service apps and mobile solutions  
    • What We’re Seeing: Improving workforce quality of life to increase employee retention isn’t new, but it has become more widely accepted 
    • This has led to a larger push for solutions and services to make field service tasks easier, safer, and more stress free  
  • Trend: Adding solution functionality and tools to optimize outsourcing  
    • What We’re Seeing: Investment in tools and solutions to optimize outsourcing and fill workforce gaps is becoming more common 
    • Think investment into easier communication, better workforce management and process visibility, and solution mobility    

 

As a Salesforce partner, this was an opportunity to see some of these trends in action. What stood out was how generative AI has rapidly expanded Salesforce Einstein AI and Tableau’s capabilities, and the ways it has positively impacted the performance of Salesforce Field Service and Service Cloud.  

Additional Field Service Resources and Support

If you want to discuss how these trends relate to day-to-day functionality for your field service organization, or you need field service solution information or advice, contact us. 

Additional resources: 

  • Take a look at our website for information about our field service and industry-specific solutions: https://diabsolut.com/