Remote Services

Remote services on the rise

The range of issues that can be solved remotely is astonishingly high


Almost everywhere, remote services are now in high demand to ensure business continuity. Today, advanced technologies are so refined that companies can save considerable time and costs by avoiding the need for external service technicians to travel to the site – especially when the loss of revenue due to downtime is also taken into account.

The potential customer benefit that comes from the remote approach is astounding. At Hapa, experience so far already shows that 80 percent of Helpdesk issues could be solved remotely, provided customers allow the use of appropriate remote tools.

"We already had this experience before the Corona pandemic started," explains a Hapa service expert. "So, this picture is not distorted by special effects such as lockdowns and quarantine rules. Rather, the opposite is true: precisely because we had already invested heavily in innovative tools beforehand, we were able to scale remote services particularly quickly under the conditions of the Corona pandemic, and in a way that also meets audit and compliance requirements."

At Hapa, the success story of the remote service support is based on machine and people connectivity. A helpdesk engineer can access a machine network remotely via a secure internet connection in order to search for a problem in the PLC, the panel, and the headboard – let’s call it the “brain and the nervous system”. 

Additionally, Hapa Customer Service has been using the enhanced possibilities of Mixed Reality very successfully for some time now. While the machine is remotely connected, an activation link is sent to the customer’s smartphone so that a Hapa engineer can use the camera and microphone to support them during the troubleshooting. It also allows the Helpdesk engineer to get a broader picture of the situation and the status of the machine by seeing what the onsite operator sees. Even better, he has the possibility to virtually position items on the operator’s mobile phone or tablet screen or point directly on parts of the machine as part of mixed reality to guide the customer. Our remote service video demonstrates these simple but effective steps. 

"This way, troubleshooting is much faster than if a helpdesk engineer has to laboriously explain the procedure only by phone or by e-mail."
Remote service not only minimizes machine downtime, but also allows access to a wider range of Hapa experts, if the situation requires it. Connection to the machine is always maintained through customer-controlled access. A military grade encrypted connection ensures a high security level for all activities. Furthermore, an activity log is created for the audit trail for every online access session.

The fact that Hapa had long since established the technological prerequisites for remote services paid off twice during the restrictions imposed by the Corona pandemic. The infrastructure was also in place for remote FATs directly from Hapa’s headquarters to customer sites. Thanks to video calls and high-resolution camera technology, customers were present live and in real time despite travel restrictions. "Remote FATs were something we did before the Coronavirus, and they will certainly play a role after it," says the Hapa service expert. "They won't replace physical FATs, but they remain an important part of our service offering." Either way, it appears that remote services will continue to be on the rise.
 

Reference: Hapa Service Sales / service-sales@hapa.ch / + 41 43 399 32 00

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