Service Council inService™ Podcast Series – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Every service interaction is made up of countless micro-moments: brief, high-impact tasks that either move the job forward or slow it down, ultimately coming together to form an experience. Whether it’s simplifying documentation, streamlining parts ordering, delivering relevant insights or surfacing revenue opportunities, these micro-moments are critical to frontline success. For service leaders, the question isn’t just how to adopt AI, but how to apply it meaningfully to positively impact technicians and drive efficiency and growth.
Tune in as we’re joined by Edwin Pahk, SVP of Presales and Customer Success for Aquant. He’ll discuss how organizations are rethinking process clarity, frontline empowerment, and even commercial strategy by meeting techs where they are and reducing friction at every turn. Whether you're a service leader navigating AI strategy or a frontline advocate looking for smarter solutions, this conversation offers practical insights and strategies for transforming the frontline experience through AI.

Edwin Pahk is the Senior Vice President of Presales & Customer Success at Aquant, bringing over a decade of expertise in sales and product marketing within the tech industry. With a distinguished background in leadership positions at Salesforce and ClickSoftware, Edwin specializes in deploying and scaling AI solutions across enterprise organizations, ensuring their successful adoption and impact.

For service leaders chasing efficiency, profitability, and better customer outcomes, there’s one lever that’s often overlooked: service parts. Despite its central role in uptime, technician productivity, and customer satisfaction, parts strategy is rarely treated as a strategic priority. But amongst top performers, that’s changing—and fast.

Tune in as we’re joined by Cole Sutter, VP of Global Customer Success for Syncron. We’ll explore why service parts are becoming a critical pillar of modern service operations. Cole will share insights from the field on how companies are rethinking their approach to spare parts—not just as a logistics challenge, but as a driver of profitability, retention, and long-term customer value. Whether you’re focused on operational excellence, servitization, or workforce stability, this conversation will challenge how you think about your parts strategy—and what it could unlock.

Cole Sutter is Vice President of Global Customer Success at Syncron, where he leads customer satisfaction, retention, and value realization across the company’s global portfolio. Syncron empowers OEMs to sell more parts, more profitably, through aftermarket intelligence that seamlessly connects planning, pricing, warranty, and service. His career spans consulting, product operations, and customer success leadership, including previous roles as Syncron’s Chief Operating Officer of Products and Chief of Staff.

Preventative maintenance agreements play a critical role in business growth. Not only do they secure contracts, but they also boost revenue and customer experience. It’s no surprise that many service leaders are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to unlock new ways to deliver lasting value. The 2025 State of Artificial Intelligence and Service Technology revealed that over a third of service leaders see 'Predicting installed base maintenance needs at scale' and 'Proactively triggering service events' among the most urgent challenges to address through their AI and service technology efforts.
Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, March 6th at 12PM ET as we dive into the power of preventative maintenance agreements. Host Gerardo Pelayo and special guest, Alex Kablanian, General Manager of Commercial & Construction Markets at ServiceTitan, will discuss how organizations can connect every part of the process—from prospecting to converting service agreements—so you can better track, nurture, and expand opportunities. We’ll also talk AI strategies organizations can deploy to gain a competitive edge and build a foundation for lasting growth.
Alex Kablanian is the General Manager of Commercial & Construction Markets at ServiceTitan. With deep experience in the trades, Alex plays a key role in shaping and executing ServiceTitan’s strategy to empower the success of Commercial Service and Construction contractors. His focus is to help contractors succeed in all aspects of their business - whether that’s running it more efficiently, growing profitability, finding new revenue streams, and everything in between.

Few industries have transformed as rapidly as service and support. Digital advancements have reshaped manufacturing and field service, significantly intensifying both asset complexity and service delivery expectations over the past decade. This tidal shift means both service leaders and frontline agents are feeling the pressure to deliver more for the customer today while also achieving long-term profitability. How can organizations break down existing data silos to gain a holistic view of the service lifecycle that drives aftermarket share and customer retention?

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, February 20th at 12PM ET as hosts John Carroll and Gerardo Pelayo welcome guest, Sean O’Neill, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Syncron. We’ll explore strategies for retaining customers post-warranty, optimizing inventory, and aligning pricing and parts planning to boost service delivery and cash flow. We’ll also discuss how organizations can utilize data analytics to be more proactive with parts management, unlock new sales opportunities and stay competitive in complex industries.

Sean has spent the past 25+ years at the intersection of client needs, tech & data possibilities, and business impact. Sean is the Chief Product & Technology Officer for Syncron. Syncron aligns all aftermarket services for OEMs & distributors with its Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) cloud platform, helping companies differentiate themselves through exceptional aftermarket experiences while driving significant revenue and margin growth. Prior to that Sean spent long cycles at Amazon, Tesco, GfK, and tech start-ups in building teams that build products that customers love. Sean holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management (Northwestern University), is a co-author of multiple patents, and was certified as a Six Sigma Green Belt at Amazon. Outside of work Sean enjoys painting, traveling the world, and dismantling things.

The challenges created by the labor shortage continue to be felt in field service organizations across all industries. The latest research from The Voice of the Field Service Engineer shows this trend is not slowing down, with half of the engineers who expect to make a career move planning to do so within the next 3 years. While service leaders continue to grapple with these challenges, the frontline feels the pressure as they strive to meet utilization rates and customer demands amidst an ever-increasing flow of data.

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, February 6th at 12PM ET as Michael Gonzalez, Salesforce’s VP of Product Management, stops by the studio to shed light on how customers like AAA are utilizing AI agents to augment their workforce. He’ll discuss how organizations can implement similar transformative strategies that improve the experience of field service teams while continuing to drive the customer experience.

Michael Gonzalez is the Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce, specializing in Field Service. With a tenure at Salesforce spanning over a decade, he has played a pivotal role in enhancing the Lightning App Builder, focusing on dynamic pages and component visibility to improve user experience. In recent years, Michael has led initiatives integrating advanced technologies into Salesforce's Field Service offerings, including the use of Apple Vision Pro for spatial computing solutions. His leadership continues to drive innovation in AI and data-driven field service solutions.

As AI continues to redefine how we deliver service, the opportunities to provide smarter, faster, and more cost-effective solutions are mind blowing. But with these advancements come complex challenges: how do we make the case for AI investment, scale existing platforms without disruption, and foster alignment between IT and service teams, all while ensuring our teams remain engaged and energized? The key to AI success lies in navigating this transformation with clarity and purpose.

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, January 16th at 12PM ET as hosts John Carroll and Gerardo Pelayo tap into the AI expertise of our guest, Niken Patel, CEO and Founder of Neuron7.ai. Having helped many enterprise organizations navigate AI successfully, Niken will help demystify AI and all that comes with it. He’ll explain how to successfully traverse the many crossroads of the AI landscape to ensure you are prepared today for tomorrow’s service transformation.

Niken is the CEO and co-founder of Neuron7.ai, a company that is transforming customer service with AI solutions for complex, enterprise organizations that need fast, accurate resolutions at scale. Niken has 20+ years of experience in customer service and support, making 400+ customers successful in the last two companies that he led. As a serial entrepreneur and senior leader in high-growth technology companies, Niken has experience in strategy, sales, marketing, M&A, and board duties, with an excellent track record of growing companies from a nascent stage to successful enterprises that create tremendous value for customers and stakeholders.

For service leaders, 2025 brings a lot of promise, as well as trepidation. How can they prepare for all the new year may hold while maintaining their competitive edge?

Kick off the New Year by joining Service Council CEO, John Carroll, and VP of Research and Advisory, Gerardo Pelayo for this special edition of the inService Podcast. Drawing on research data, as well as discussions with Service Council members and partners, they’ll discuss the trends, challenges and opportunities they expect to see over the next 12 months.

They’ll answer questions such as:
• What will the top competitive danger be for service organizations?
• Is there an existential threat facing service leaders in 2025?
• How will customer and frontline experiences evolve and what can organizations do to prepare?
• What technology and data strategies are best-in-class organizations implementing?

As service leaders head into 2025, many have a similar question on their mind: What will the new year hold for customer expectations? The research shows that challenges around customer experience (CX) continue to grow for service leaders. According to the 2024 Service Leader’s Agenda, 41% of respondents said that changing customer expectations would have the most significant impact on their organization, a staggering 12% increase from the previous year. Additionally, troubling reports from Forrester found that CX quality hit an all-time low in 2024. As customers increasingly demand hyper-personalized, seamlessly integrated, omnichannel experiences, how can service leaders anticipate those needs, shape the experience and deliver exceptional outcomes at every touchpoint?
Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, December 5th at 12PM EST, as Chris Dexter, Cisco’s Vice President of Customer Experience, stops by the studio. He’ll discuss Cisco’s bold, omnichannel approach, including autonomous remediation and virtual engineer bots, that is propelling CX to Best-in-Class standards and delivering exceptional outcomes regardless of channel engagement. We’ll also explore how CX trends and best practices might be evolving in 2025 and analyze ways in which data, people, process and technology can be operationalized to rise to the occasion.
With over 25 years of industry experience, Chris Dexter is responsible for ensuring exceptional results and the ongoing evolution of Cisco’s industry-leading Technical Support. Chris has a long record of building and leading successful global teams, delivering operational excellence and strategic business transformation. As an influential innovator, he is responsible for developing disruptive new concepts relating to customer value, productivity, efficiency, and service delivery quality. He is also a featured industry speaker and panelist, discussing the role of analytics, automation, and cognitive systems in service delivery.

Sustainability is becoming an indispensable part of corporate strategy for many companies. In 2022, 96% of the companies in the S&P 500 Index published sustainability reports, while this figure in 2011 was merely under 20% according to the Governance & Accountability Institute. Has this represented a transformational shift in the definition of strategic priorities, the allocation of resources and the strategic differentiators? Or is incremental reporting simply checking a box?

Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, November 21st at 9:00am EST, as Dr. Arzum Akkas, stops by the studio. Pulling from her professional experience and her academic expertise, she’ll share her perspective on how multiple practices across the supply chain can reduce an organization’s environmental impact while accounting for the necessity of building a business case.

Arzum Akkas is an associate professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems and a Master’s degree in Supply Chain Management from MIT. Before becoming an academic, she worked in industry for 8 years as a management consultant at the strategy and operations firm Archstone Consulting, an operations manager at PepsiCo, and a business systems consultant preselling and implementing solutions of the supply chain software Blue Yonder. Her research has been published at leading academic journals including Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management.

AI continues to be a top investment for service organizations across all verticals. As the expectations and applications of this game-changing technology continue to expand, some organizations seem to be at risk of pursuing the “advanced” while losing sight of the “relevant”. To succeed along this journey, organizations would do well by learning from the incremental value perceived by those whom AI is meant to empower.
Join the inService™ Podcast Live on Thursday, October 17th, as Circuitry.ai CEO and Founder, Ashok Kartham, stops by the studio. He’ll share his observations and lessons learned from organizations who are utilizing AI to successfully influence the frontline’s experience (a path to higher productivity) and the customer’s experience (strongly impacted by product uptime).
Ashok Kartham is founder and CEO of circuitry.ai, a decision intelligence platform for manufacturers to optimize sales, service, customer outcomes. Cirucitry.ai provides Service Advisor to provide answers, guidance, and recommendations to customers, field service, and contact centers.