When Ford technical assistance wanted to streamline customer vehicle repairs globally, it turned to TeamViewer.
Bryan Jenkins, powertrain operations manager on Ford’s central troubleshooting team, says his colleagues must diagnose some of the most complex and complicated vehicle issues for customers.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes that still wasn’t quite enough, and we needed a way to see something live and in action. And that’s what really kicked this whole programme off,” Jenkins says.
TeamViewer’s Frontline solution was adopted to deliver ‘see what I see‘ support via augmented reality (AR) to automotive technicians across Ford’s global dealer network. This helps them more accurately diagnose problems with the vehicles, Jenkins says.
Dealer technicians contact Ford via phone or a web-based portal, and can join a remote AR session via on-site smartglasses that can display exactly what the repair tech is looking at in real time.
The troubleshooting specialists can also annotate views and documentation, zoom in, share screens, record sessions and more via Frontline. This additional layer of support is now used by some 400 dealers worldwide — from the USA and UK to Thailand and South Africa.
“Feedback from the dealers has been really good,” says Jenkins. “They just turn on their smart glasses and accept an incoming call, then it is like my specialists are there looking over their shoulders.”
Patty Nagle, president of TeamViewer Americas, notes that most workers globally do not sit in front of a desk.
“Our goal is to enable those frontline workers with AR guided solutions to enable them to do their jobs better by digitalising and streamlining processes,” Nagle says.
TeamViewer has a burgeoning suite of AR and IoT connectivity solutions but is perhaps more widely known for its remote-working connectivity products like Tensor.
( Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash )
