Buildings that talk in Facilities Management

Imagine if a building you managed could talk. Well that is totally possible today for FM companies that are prepared to innovate and deliver A1service to their clients, oh and maybe win more bids!

Voice automation is an accessible technology not only for business to include in their services, but also for the end clients and users to interact with.

Of course, there are websites, apps and portals that you will use to deliver your management service and these are usually integrated enough to raise a ticket without having to call into your business.

But still this relies on your client and end user, having the access, the knowledge and the time to start off your ticket process to log a complaint or issue that needs to be resolved and we all know that a service team is still under resourced when it comes to incoming and outbound calls to clients.

What if you could call the building? What if the building was the point of contact? At Disruption Works, we think that building or any large scale project should be the centre of the FM journey as its own entity. A dedicated number to call and log issues that is integrated with the service team. Sounds like a good idea?

If we are being honest, what happens if the job is completed, but it is not really to standard. Would it be a good idea for the building to call the client and ask if the issue is now resolved to their satisfaction. Powerful stuff if you can follow that up directly with another ticket and actually fix the issue.

Just to be clear, the voice automation solution that we deliver is so natural that we do not pretend that it is not a robot, but you start to forget as you interact with him or her.

We have lots of conversations with different businesses and it always interesting what comes out of these conversations around the art of the possible and we are always stretching what that might look like and how voice automation could be a really powerful tool.

A recent conversation touched on IOT in buildings and how that whole area is deluged with data. With the correct triggers in place, the building could actually proactively call or message the client to warn about air quality or potential service needs and get a feedback loop on that issue. “Just asking, but is it a bit hot in here?”

Ok that could get out of control, but key questions could be asked and triaged before a ticket is pushed out. Better to tell the client that we think there is a problem rather than them raising the issue themselves. This is how service should be and would a potential new client see it that way as well?

So I suppose we need to avoid a building turning into HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey, but the service level that can be achieved by thinking disruptively could be dramatic and could win you that next tender.

Hello Dave…. sorry I cannot do that Dave…..

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