Service Manager 101: 10 Reasons to Give your Technicians a Mobile Field Service App

In 2016, mobile field service apps are essential tools to connect, organize, and advance your service organization. Here are 10 reasons service managers should equip their field techs with apps to manage service operations.

As service organizations move away from paper methods, service managers are quickly adopting mobile field service strategies to compete with other service providers.

Mobile field service apps allow technicians to productively complete daily tasks while improving customer satisfaction. Technicians can share, store, and view job data in the field, giving them a real-time, virtual link to the back office. They can also view information like daily schedule of job visits, customer histories, and billing information on demand.

As mobile remains at the top of field service trends lists, it is essential to equip your field technicians with the tools they need to provide the service experience your customers expect. Here are 10 reasons why it’s time to invest in mobile field service apps.

1) Get Paid Faster

A good mobile field service app will allow your techs to easily record their time, parts and tasks against an equipment asset and work order. The app will sync that data into your billing system upon closing out, accelerating the service to cash cycle.[/para]

2) Impress Customers with your Comprehensive Knowledge

Utilizing the customer files available on demand through the mobile application, show up to the customer site fully equipped with the service history of their equipment. Customers will be impressed with your fast, productive and informed interactions.

3) Make Decisions Based on Today’s Information

Does your service organization have big business decisions to make? Data-driven decisions are better than educated guesses, and real-time data is better than month-old data. This morning’s field work can become this afternoon’s business intelligence with a mobile field service app.

4) Turn Tech Observations into Actionable Business Intelligence

Are your service technicians only collecting the bare-bones data in the field you need to bill the customer? Start taking advantage of the service technicians’ privileged position at the customer site to gather competitive, business development and other intelligence that can propel your service business forward.

5) Assign the Right Technician, Right Away

Mobile apps for service technicians are automatically connected to centralized service scheduling software, helping schedulers make rapid work order scheduling decisions and assignments based on technician location, availability and skill set.

6) Trust but Verify

Technicians can quickly and easily provide evidence of photos, customer signatures, inspections and other service app-integrated means of backup for work done at a customer site.

7) Realize More Profits by Leaving no Task Untracked

The more you know about the specifics of the work your technicians need to do and how long it takes, the more profit you can find in each work order, particularly in the case of those with a preventive maintenance call. Hook up your service packages with detailed mobile task tracking to accumulate rich data on package cost, productivity and profitability.

8) Tighten your Spare Parts Inventory

Gone are the days of stocking a service van with random spare parts. Now, inventory levels are based on collected data and analytics that inform inventory purchasing, stocking, and allocation. With a mobile field service app, field spare parts consumption can be visible from service van to office, warehouse to service van, and van to van, providing the intelligence you need to run a tightened inventory. [/para]

9) Reign in the Rogues (aka; Be More Consistent)

Old school means of field data collection, like paper and disconnected spreadsheets, make it tough to enforce consistency. With field service apps, it’s easy to build and centrally modify standard field forms such as inspections, checklists, audits and more, requiring the data you need in order to close out work.

10) Keep your Team Connected, Without all the Busy Work

An always-connected mobile field service app connects technicians and the work they’re doing with the scheduling and service management group continually, making for a more connected, more accountable team.

Conclusion – Invest in the Future of your Organization

Clearly, there is no better way to improve customer service, increase field service technician utilization, and boost enterprise service efficiency than with proven, cross-platform mobile field service applications. By equipping your technicians with mobile apps, you can start providing the best service possible to your customers, while increasing business profitability.

Buyer’s Guide to Mobile Field Service Software

In the market for a cross-platform or cloud-based mobile app for your service business? Learn important tips, guiding questions, and to-dos in our free, educational guide to purchasing a mobile field service solution.