As the economy reopens and your service schedule fills up, use these 3 strategies to keep your customers – and employees – happy.
Just a year ago, surveys showed nearly 40% of service organizations agreed their biggest challenge was meeting customer demands.
So much has happened since then.
A global pandemic hit. Travel stopped. Events canceled. And service companies needed to shift to remote work fast.
Now with many countries reopening for business, meeting customer demand is likely the top challenge for most service companies. Customer equipment that’s been unused for several months now requires maintenance. That means more field service work to get your customers back up and running.
But how can you provide more quality field service to more customers without an increase in headcount? Read on to find out.
Eliminate manual dispatching processes with automated scheduling
Say your biggest client calls you to schedule preventive maintenance appointments for the rest of the year. That’s good news, isn’t it? Well, it’s definitely good news for your bottom line. But maybe not so much for your scheduling team.
If you don’t have automated scheduling in place, arranging dozens of service appointments might be a huge time suck for your scheduling team. Your dispatcher has to manually schedule each appointment with the right technician at the right location. And it’s not over yet. Next your dispatcher has to call or text your technicians to notify them of these new appointments. All told, it might be a couple hours of manual data entry before the schedule is updated.
With automated scheduling, you can set up dozens of service appointments with just a few clicks. And there’s no need for your dispatcher to call or text the technician to update him – an automated notification pops up on the technician’s smartphone so he has complete visibility of his schedule.
Streamline dispatcher-to-technician communication
How many times a day do your technicians call dispatch to get information about an appointment? Three times, four times, maybe even more? That’s time wasted on internal communication that should’ve been spent servicing customers.
With a connected field-to-office service management solution, multiple phone calls between employees are a thing of the past. All the job details, customer site information, and customer history are right in the palm of the technician’s hand.
And as a bonus, your technician labor time, overtime, billable time, and more are tracked as separate line items automatically, meaning you’ll achieve 100% accurate technician time reporting.
Meanwhile, the back office team can track the technician’s location and status in real time from the field service management (FSM) software. And that’s a big step toward achieving field service excellence. In fact, almost 60% of service leaders agreed one of the best-in-class strategies for field service is the ability to monitor real-time performance via mobile.
In short, it’s like having a window into the field for your back office team, and a portal into your ERP software for your field technicians. Truly a win-win for everyone.
Boost technician efficiency with an all-in-one field service mobile app
Armed with just a text, email or call from the dispatcher, your field technician likely doesn’t have all the details needed to prepare for appointments in advance. This means the technician might show up to a customer site not knowing specifically what the issue is, where the asset to be fixed might be, or how to resolve the issue. All this missing data may result in a costly, reputation-damaging return trip to get the customer’s equipment back up and running.
Empower your technicians to get the job done right the first time with an all-in-one field service mobile app. With comprehensive customer and equipment data at their fingertips, your technicians can see their appointments as far out as they’re scheduled, allowing them to can prep for their jobs well in advance.
And there’s more than just customer information in an FSM mobile app. Your technicians can take pictures, capture customer signatures, collect customer payment, and record notes all from their mobile device.
Conclusion: Delight your customers and employees with field service management software
Whether your service business has 12 or 12,000 technicians, an FSM solution can help drive efficiencies throughout the entire field service process.
In fact, a recent survey of FSM software users showed that nearly 40% of these companies are able to work remotely through COVID-19 because of their FSM system. Another 30% agreed they wouldn’t be able to continue working at all without their FSM system. The truth is, without having their FSM software in place, these companies would have had to close their doors.
Get started on driving customer and employee satisfaction with FSM software today. It doesn’t take much more than a 30-minute discovery call followed by a 60-minute demo to dial in a solution that will really improve areas of your service business. Request a demo now.
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