The ROI of Innovation: How Australian Field Service Leaders are Winning with AI

Key Takeaways

AI is becoming standard equipment: 98 per cent of Australian field service organisations use AI, and 90 per cent plan to increase investment over the next one to two years; both figures ahead of the global average (95 per cent and 85 per cent respectively).
Where it’s applied to scheduling and dispatch, it shows up in revenue: 53 per cent of Australian organisations report higher revenue per job.
Yet the workforce hasn’t kept pace: 68 per cent report mobile worker turnover rose over the past two years, with scheduling demands ranking as the top driver locally (25 per cent), a different pattern to the global #1 issue of insufficient training.
Even trained workers lack context onsite: 53 per cent say mobile workers have limited access to the customer data they need.

Field service leaders across Australia are investing heavily in AI to improve customer satisfaction, boost productivity and increase revenue. But the pace of change is so rapid that organisations are also struggling to prepare their workforces.

Salesforce’s new report, State of Field Service: The Road to Revenue in the Agentic Era, surveyed over 2,300 field service professionals across nine countries, including 255 in Australia. It found that the biggest barrier to realising AI’s full value isn’t the technology itself, it’s whether organisations can equip and retain the people who use it.

“Australian field service leaders are moving faster on AI than almost anywhere else,” said Nick Rosen, SVP, Salesforce. “However, technology alone doesn’t win the job. Scheduling pressure is driving turnover, signaling that the fastest path to ROI is providing teams with the context and support to use tools effectively.”

AI adoption has reached critical mass — and investments are accelerating

Australian adoption has reached critical mass, with 98 per cent of field service organisations having deployed some form of AI, while 90 per cent are planning to increase investments within two years. This shift is primarily focused on improving customer satisfaction, worker productivity and first-time fix rates, with a notably sharper focus on customer satisfaction than the global average (46 per cent in Australia compared to a 35 per cent global average).

AI is delivering measurable impact and ROI across the field service business

For organisations that have connected their systems and prepared their teams, AI is working: 84 per cent of Australian leaders say they have seen measurable ROI from their AI investment, including:

36% report higher mobile worker productivity
33% report improved customer satisfaction
31% report fewer safety incidents

AI’s most concrete impact is in scheduling and dispatch, where over half of Australian organisations (53 per cent) now see higher revenue per job alongside reduced emissions (51 per cent) and lower labour costs (43 per cent).

Barriers to Scaling: Workforce Strain and System Fragmentation

Despite dedicated investment, 68 per cent of Australian leaders face rising turnover. Unlike global peers that are being hindered by training gaps, local workers say scheduling pressures are the number one reason they leave a role. This finding reveals a fundamental tension, where organisations are deploying AI faster than they’re preparing their workforce to use it, and operational pressures like scheduling are compounding the strain.

A data gap is compounding this problem: 53 per cent of Australian organisations say mobile workers lack the customer information needed to act on AI recommendations.

Other critical scaling barriers include a limited ability to quote (49 per cent) or convert visits to sales leads (51 per cent), and a reliance on manual logs or spreadsheets by nearly half the industry.

Disconnected systems prevent AI from scaling

The root cause of many of these challenges is fragmentation. Only 18 per cent of Australian organisations say their field and back-office technology are united on a single platform, slightly ahead of the global figure (16 per cent), but still leaving the vast majority with customer data, schedules and asset records living in separate places.

Asset data reveals the scale of the fragmentation in Australia:

66% use mobile apps
63% use inventory management systems
60% use GPS trackers
62% have connected sensors
53% still use spreadsheets
37% still rely on manual or paper logs

“What stands out in this research is that the organisations seeing real ROI from AI, higher revenue per job, better productivity and fewer safety incidents, are the ones that have connected their systems and equipped their teams, not just deployed a tool,” continued Nick Rosen. “Only 18 per cent of Australian field service businesses have their field and back-office technology on one platform. Closing that gap, and investing in the people on the front line, is exactly where we’re focused in helping our customers turn AI adoption into a durable revenue advantage.”

This fragmentation complicates measurement. While 84 per cent of Australian leaders say they’ve measured AI ROI, up to 43 per cent say that struggle to verify if AI is working when data lives across disparate apps, sensors, spreadsheets and paper logs.

The Customer View – The Living Company

“Technology should make people’s lives better, not more complicated,” noted Mirko Gropp, General Manager – Digital, Data and Technology at The Living Company. “For us, AI is only valuable when it’s built on connected, reliable data that gives our teams the confidence to respond quickly and make informed decisions.

“Bringing Field Service together with the rest of our CRM means our onsite teams and contractors have the right information at the right time, helping them deliver a more seamless experience for every resident, whether they’re a student, renter or senior living with us.”

“As The Living Co continues to grow, our focus isn’t simply on scaling operations – it’s on scaling care, service and community. The technology sits quietly in the background, enabling our people to spend less time navigating systems and more time creating places where people genuinely feel at home.”

Leaders are investing carefully, and looking for partners who can support the journey

AI adoption is widespread across Australia, but it’s not unconditional. When selecting a partner for AI agents, organisations aren’t primarily focused on cost. Instead, they prioritise transparency into how AI makes decisions, data security and privacy practices, quality of ongoing support and service, and external validation.

Australian organisations understand that AI is now critical infrastructure, and they’re evaluating vendors with the rigour that decision demands. While the majority of Australian field service organisations plan to increase their AI investments over the next two years, scheduling pressures are driving a talent crisis. Clearly the organisations that succeed the most won’t just be the ones with the most advanced AI, it will be the organisations ones that prepare their people to use it.