Category: Blog

Effective field service management involves the interaction of many moving parts, such as dispatching service technicians to the field or working with a warehouse full of required parts for repairs. Unfortunately, the challenges of field service management have been amplified in the post-COVID landscape, where a large-scale remote transition across many industries has happened with little in the way of preparation.

Switching over to remote during the pandemic creates several concerns for field service. Without a centralized reporting office. there is no single place for personnel to get required parts, submit reports, and receive tasks. Additionally, it is important to minimize contact with customers as much as possible – that means avoiding any contact that is not directly related to an actual field service visit.

In this article, we explore 4 important tips that can help you overcome these challenges, and even leverage the advantages of remote field service teams to improve your productivity and efficiency – even if you return to regular operations. We also provide you with a recommendation for FieldConnect’s software, which combines all of our advice into one unified solution.

1. You MUST Implement Dispatch Software

If you were running an informal phone-and-notebook dispatch system before you went remote, this practice will no longer be sustainable when you’re managing a remote team in the pandemic era. Having a paper-driven office requires a lot of people working in close physical proximity, exchanging potentially contaminated physical documents.

It is imperative that you switch away from cluttered notebooks and stacks of paperwork, and migrate to dedicated field service dispatch software that can help you schedule orders for your personnel and optimize your task management. Such software includes real-time analytics for performance and ongoing orders, and can help you achieve greater efficiency in managing all dispatched personnel. You’ll also reduce paper waste as you move away from your physical records.

In order to make the most out of any software you implement in your processes, it’s essential that you take the time to onboard and train your personnel in best practices. Without this training, your people may end up forming their own processes and habits, which could throw a wrench into your organizational efforts.

2. Equip Every Technician With Time Tracking Tools

Keeping track of your technicians and their orders requires a huge amount of manpower, which may not be available if you’re running a skeleton workforce. With time tracking tools, you can easily determine whether technicians are taking efficient routes and whether they show up at a customer’s home at all. Some tools even provide analytics for routes taken, allowing you to measure fuel and time efficiency.

Coupled these with time-tracking tools to measure billable hours to the minute, you have a recipe for efficiency that frees up your administrative staff for other tasks.

3. Set Up Digital Inventory Management For Your Parts

Without a centralized office and warehouse, technicians may find it difficult to secure parts for service orders. A digital inventory management solution can solve this problem, automating the entire process of stockroom management and making it easy for anyone to determine the availability of a part, and order it for a customer.

Going digital also streamlines the interaction between technicians and administrative staff, reducing the number of calls made or the amount of bureaucracy that must be navigated to get a part. Not only does this reduce friction, it also reduces the amount of face-to-face interaction between personnel, which can help prevent exposure.

4. Remote Quotation And Support

Many customers will be understandably wary of allowing technicians into their homes during the pandemic. By using remote support and estimation tools, your technicians can skip an in-person survey visit, by instead having the customer remotely walk them through the problem. From here, technicians can diagnose, assess, and even create a quote from the software.

Field Connect | An All-in-one Remote Field Service Management Solution

We advocate the use of digital tools wherever possible in your field service management pipeline, and having a single software suite that solves all your problems would be even better. With FieldConnect, you can improve your field service processes, increasing performance and customer satisfaction across all avenues while making life easier for you and your team. From dispatch tools to remote quotations, FieldConnect gives you everything you need to transition your team to remote work.

Contact us now for a free demo, and find out how we can improve your processes!

The Internet of Things (IoT)—and the growth of digital solutions broadly—have had a significant impact on the creation, distribution, and security of data. Data is now far easier to generate, with a breadth of nuances beyond most of our imaginations.

From the raw data collected to the resulting data produced from analyzing this aggregate information, our reliance on sophisticated analysis—and the awareness it generates—has increased.

Each of these progressions in data generation and data transfer has had unparalleled benefits. But as with most innovations, new technology and opportunity often result in new challenges.

One of these challenges is security. There are manners in which protections against the loss of data have dramatically improved. And, of course, there are now unique issues we must recognize and offer a response.

IoT and the development of digital solutions have a distinctive influence on the relationship of data to field service work. IoT has influenced the equipment and the nature of tasks and training for technicians and management alike. Digital solutions have modified workflows and administrative resources.

Data stands at the center of this technological evolution. And field service management solutions are offering support against the risks of these essential resources

This article examines methods to avoid the devastating effects of data loss on a field service organization. Our approach involves the way innovating your procedures can protect data and key features to keep in mind with the adoption of advanced digital solutions.

Innovating to prevent data loss

Many traditional business operation methods have resulted in unnecessary loss of data which can be remedied with modern solutions. Field service management solutions offer innovative and broad resources for protecting against data loss—the types of losses that result in costly risks to customers and businesses.

Lost forms

The field service industry is heavily reliant on myriad forms—from invoices and billing to scheduling, dispatching, and service. Antiquated paper-based operations have been ineffective and costly. Recording and storing data on paper is vulnerable to even the smallest of errors in the daily process of operations.

By transitioning to a field service management solution, organizations can digitize their data in a way that protects against the losses that are common to paper-based operations. Some of the solutions include real-time data entry, allowing for errors to be remedied quickly, and cloud-based solutions offering reliable and efficient storage of this data.

Data transfer

Traveling to and from the office to transfer necessary data is an inefficiency in labor and time. It is also a common cause of data loss. By equipping technicians in the field with mobile devices, data can be transferred in real-time and securely. Moving in such an efficient way protects against the loss of raw data, but it also functions to protect against the loss of data produced from research.

Analyzing the raw data from operations permits the creation of new data on trends and processes. Ensuring the original information is safeguarded and inputted correctly results in further data loss protection, increasing efficiency, and revenue growth.

Using a viable field service management solution protects data associated with tracking work orders and tasks, customer calls and contracts, parts and inventory, technician capacity and specialization, and various other data points specific to an organization.

Protecting against the loss of digital data

The benefits of transitioning to digital data with field service management solutions, outlined above, are substantial, but they do present unique and critical challenges. Not all field service solutions are created equal. From mobile devices to cloud-based storage, it is essential to find solutions that take a thorough and detailed security approach and prevent data loss.

Cloud-based solutions

The advent of cloud-based solutions is an extraordinary resource for field service organizations, but the risks involved must be a priority. It is critical to recognize that not all mobile field service solutions perform at the same level. Too many underperforming field service solutions do not place enough emphasis on cloud-based security. Failure to encrypt and protect data storage and transfer leads to vulnerabilities and losses through theft, cyberattack, and leaks. These are losses that have been devastating to many field service organizations. A solution is to discover a mobile field service solution with a proven and verifiable data security commitment.

It’s also vital to find a solution that respects data backup. Backing up data should occur regularly to avoid even the smallest data losses. Find a solution that respects the opportunity and risks of cloud-based services through dynamic encryption, efficient patching, regular system updates, and other exhaustive security practices.

Mobile devices

Implementing mobile devices has a specialized relationship with the remote nature of work in the field service industry. There is little risk in saying such technology has revolutionized workflows and efficiency. But as we have mentioned, every innovation involves changes to risk factors. Data must be especially guarded when it comes to mobile devices, and not all field service solutions provide the necessary foundation for security.

Low-cost software options too often do not provide the solutions necessary to protect the applications that empower mobile devices. Using faulty or inferior applications on mobile devices can result in unintentional loss of private financial data or critical data about your customers and business.

The physical devices also need to be safeguarded. Your mobile field service solution should involve strong user authentication. Minimum password lengths and character requirements are basic security of applications using cloud-based software. More advanced security measures utilize multifactor authentication and single sign-on features—such as fingerprint scans or temporary text codes. Each of these steps will add extra layers of security and prevent the loss of data that is critical to avoiding the risks that impact revenue and efficiency.

Employee training

Employees that lack necessary technical training can also lead to data loss. Typical data loss trends involve employees inadvertently downloading malware or accidentally exposing critical business information. Other trends include leaking passwords or access codes and numerous different scenarios. A well-functioning mobile field service solution will provide safeguards to these data breaches and losses while offering accessible solutions for employee training.

Partnerships and integration

Protecting against security risks and data loss with your mobile field service solution also hinges on effective and experienced partnerships and integration with current systems. A quality solution seeks partnerships with proven experts that provide polished and skilled services that protect your data.

Partners such as Microsoft Dynamics and Sage Intacct can seamlessly interact and integrate with your mobile field service solution. Your mobile solution can also extend other services’ native functionality, like Vista Service Management and Spectrum Work Order modules. Creating partnerships with these skilled and renowned organizations is critical in responding to security risks and potential data loss.

Further Resources

A leader in the field service industry for nearly two decades, FieldConnect has been developed with data security as a central priority.

With a diverse suite of products, FieldConnet’s solutions offer the highest quality in innovation and protection. Secure and efficient cloud-based resources are coupled with the finest partnerships in the industry. This multifaceted approach ensures that their support will meet the ongoing and changing risks associated with protection against the loss of your essential data.

Schedule a demo with FieldConnect to begin learning how your mobile field service solutions can be identified and implemented. We will help your organization achieve its business goals, retain employees and customers—and grow your revenue.

Digitizing Field Service Management To Improve Customer Retention

Empowering your customers is key to inspiring loyalty among them. This loyalty, expressed as customer retention, comes with very measurable benefits – retaining an additional 2% of your existing customers can yield similar results to cutting costs by 10%.

Providing this empowerment means that you must upgrade your customer service to respond to your customers’ needs, not just react when they have problems. In fact, 95% of customers expect proactive, not just reactive communication from the companies with whom they do business. For field service, this means personalizing how you provide service, giving them faster and more convenient access to technicians, and ensuring that they have all of the information they want, whenever they need it.

How do you provide this empowering experience to your own customers when providing field service support? In this article, we’ll explore some of the ways that digital field service management platforms can empower your customers and create repeat business for your company. We’ll also demonstrate how our own solution, FieldConnect, can help you provide this empowerment.

Set Up Self-Service Portals To Give Customers Easier Access To Support

There’s no doubt that quality customer service is critical. However, in some cases, empowering the customer means giving them the freedom, information, and control to perform certain tasks themselves.

This can easily be done with field service software that features self-service portals. Customers will be able to request a service order or site visit at the touch of a button, without having to call your support hotline. They’ll also be able to modify their account details without going through support.

By providing on-demand access to many of their most frequent tasks, customers can feel independent. It also frees up your service staff from these requests. Additionally, users are free to request service or information 24 hours a day, even if you do not provide round-the-clock support. This is especially helpful for customers who work on international timetables or mission-critical systems.

Use Analytics And Feedback To Improve Your Personalized Service

One aspect of empowerment that service providers should take note of is personalization. Customers who experience highly personalized service feel that their needs are being addressed – sometimes even before they express them – and this, in turn, makes them more likely to return to your business when they have further field service needs.

To achieve this degree of personalization, you must collect data about your interactions with each customer. Digitizing your processes with field service management software gives you that data, providing you with a wealth of insights about how your team fulfills each request.

With these analytics, you can suggest optimal service visits to customers based on their preferred times, schedule regular maintenance based on their needs, and even send their favored technicians in order to build relationships.

You also want to consider your customers’ suggestions. Most software options will allow you to request feedback after every site visit. Take everything they say into account, and use data to gather insights on what they don’t say, but would prefer.

By creating a customer experience that encourages feedback and actually listens to it, your customers will feel like they have contributed to your processes and will be more likely to continue seeking that level of service.

Ensure Your Customers Are Kept In The Loop With Their Service Requests

Another part of customer empowerment is allowing them to check in on their service requests so they are always aware of the status of each request. Having this ability means that they won’t need to keep calling back to follow up, and they can also check on their maintenance history as well for their own purposes.

FieldConnect | The Key To Long-Lasting Customer Relationships

To ensure customer retention, you must choose a digital field service management solution that represents a continuum of customer empowerment – a single suite that features self-service portals, feedback and analytics, status updates, and easy access and management of customer information, all while offering all of the benefits of digitizing your mobile workforce management.

Field service technicians — jack of all trades, master of…many? This is how we should start looking at our tech’s capabilities when thinking forward in our businesses. Their value isn’t just in their ability to install or repair — they’re in the perfect position to grow your sales.

After all, sales are the name of the game in any business. Without sales, your business will die. There is a cycle that indirectly affects all aspects of your sales and service process; when you provide a wonderful customer service experience, customers are more likely to buy from you. Specifically, Bain & Company states that companies who excel at the customer experience grow revenues at a rate of 4% to 8% above their market.

Part of creating that awesome experience for your clients is your back-office customer service team. When they’re handling issues flawlessly, your customer experience will go up. But what if we could improve that at the time of service?  What if we could utilize our field service staff to not only handle customer service issues but increase revenue opportunities?

The list of reasons why you should be cross-training your technicians is plentiful, but in this guide, we’re going to concentrate on what we believe to be the four most important.

Teaching Technicians to Sell and Serve

Some people hate being ‘sold’ to. There’s something unsettling about pushy sales tactics that seemingly offer little value. And even if the proposition does offer value, when presented in the wrong way, it can be a huge turn-off for a lot of customers. This is where cross-training your technicians comes into play. As you’ll soon see, selling and customer service go hand in hand, and when properly utilized, are both huge aspects of creating memorable customer experiences.

Social Proof and Influencers

Social proof is the idea that people buy things from people they trust or want to imitate. In our case, we want to demonstrate social proof from the ‘expert’ aspect. Since your technician is already on-site fixing an issue or performing some sort of service for the customer, they’re in the perfect position to upsell additional products or services. Consider this the first step into real-life influencer marketing without the need for a selfie filter or ring light.

To be clear — you should never sell something that a customer doesn’t need.

This could come back to haunt you especially if they feel like there’s no visible or tangible benefit. But a value-based recommendation from a field expert has an immensely powerful effect on the purchasing decision.

For example, a semi-annual HVAC inspection could lead to an on-the-spot filter change, ductwork maintenance, or even a smaller installation like a duct booster fan.

Part of this comes from the knowledge we gain when asking discovery questions during the scheduling process. You should offer some sort of data-gathering process — while checking to make sure all of the customer’s needs are addressed, you can look for revenue-generating opportunities. Active listening is another useful skill that benefits both service and sales opportunities. In our HVAC example, let’s imagine the customer states that one room is stuffier than the others. A well-trained technician will seize this opportunity to solve that problem on the spot. Maybe there’s a leak in the ductwork or an opportunity to perform an airflow test.

Having a sales-conscious technician allows those opportunities to be handled on the spot, which both increases the value of that job while decreasing the total cost of that technician’s labor rate.

Speaking of sales-conscious, it’s important to remember that their role is and should always be technician first, salesperson second. This helps maintain focus on your company’s true purpose of field service. If performed with integrity, their product and service recommendations will ultimately be a boost to customer service efforts.

Customer Service

Customer service isn’t just about fixing problems — it’s about recommending preventative solutions, too. While we’ve gone into great detail about sales, remember that this won’t always be the case.

Thanks to your employees, your customer may already be in great shape! This further bolsters our stance as to why we recommend this form of cross-training for all of your field service reps. While not every customer encounter needs to be an attempt to upsell or increase revenue directly, each interaction should be an attempt at providing great customer service experiences.

If your field technicians aren’t yet trained in sales or customer service, you can start by including them in those particular staff meetings. This will give them first-hand knowledge of how to approach customer issues or how to spot those revenue-increasing opportunities.

While in the field, commonly handled tasks such as billing or scheduling can still be routed to your back office team if they prove too complex for an in-person resolution or would otherwise interfere with your service tech’s current schedule. However, giving your technicians the ability to deliver value-added upsells or schedule simple services will only further your company’s efforts to keep your customers happy.

Tips for Ensuring Dispatchers Maintain Scheduling

The role of dispatch in the field service industry cannot go understated. Dispatchers are at the center of successful field service organizations. Many allusions to other professions can help us understand the critical and dynamic role dispatch teams fulfill in their support of a business’s operations. Let’s explore two.

Imagine the dispatcher is like a circus ringleader. A great leader of any circus ring can be seen juggling—sometimes literally—numerous and diverse acts from moment to moment. They organize and direct these acts with precision while maintaining the highest level of engagement possible from the audience. The circus ringleader balances organization with a customer experience like few others.

It can also be revealing to understand a dispatcher as a team of parents with multiple children. The high school children have a variety of after-school activities or evening events. An infant is in constant need of supervision and care. A toddler regularly finds mischief in the yard or bathtub or a handful of paint on the wall. Parents are charged with managing complex schedules while knowing any plans—regardless of how thorough or exhaustive—must remain flexible and account for sudden changes or emergencies.

Dispatchers play each of these roles in a field service organization. They are organized and multi-talented like the ringleader—directing active, evolving, and complex situations. And they manage these tasks while remaining informed and in communication with a diversity of customers. A dispatch team is also quite like a set of dynamic parents—planning a broad schedule, directing multiple parties, and developing strategies for constant change and emergencies.

The dispatch team orchestrates these responsibilities with the same level of vital importance that a ringleader has to their circus or a parent to their children.

Field service organizations require the pivotal role of the dispatcher, and achieving growth depends on the dispatch team to be optimized for efficiency and reliability.

In this article, we offer a few tips and ideas on reaching and maintaining the highest level of dependability and success from your dispatch team and their core goals for scheduling.

How dispatch management is critical to field service work

The dispatch team is the frontline for both technicians and customers. Dispatchers need to excel at communication. They must be able to manage the concerns and challenges not only of customers but technicians as well. Dispatchers commonly function as a bridge between the service team and the customer—a task that requires the ability to organize, multi-task, and access critical information quickly and efficiently.

Dispatch representatives have a unique and broad vantage point on operations, technicians, and customer profiles. The dispatch team maintains a position similar to the circus ringleader. A dispatcher observes an entire operation and understands where various skills, assets, and priorities can best serve the organization’s overall picture.

Multi-tasking and organization are the life source of dispatch strategy. Dispatchers are always orchestrating a balance between detailed planning and on-the-fly decision-making. The best dispatch team will be empowered with the right resources to elevate their responsibility to the organization and multi-tasking.

Emboldening the critical role of dispatch with the most innovative tools is paramount to any field service organization’s expansion and success. Resources—such as FieldDispatch software from industry leader FieldConnect—ought to mobilize, engage, and simplify access to information for dispatch teams to achieve and maintain optimized planning and scheduling.

Tips for elevating dispatch management and scheduling

Any list of tips for promoting optimized dispatch services should focus on developing more advanced skills for the organization, diminishing pressure in high-stress dynamics, and the adaptability to respond to evolving priorities for technician and customer needs. Ensuring that schedules are sustainable, reliable, and consistent involves a robust approach beyond merely assigning tasks in a calendar.

1. Master prioritization

We would all like to offer the same priority to every customer and technician every time. But limited resources and scheduling restrictions do not permit this. Dispatch must become adept at triaging each task, technician, and customer request. A slowly leaking pipe in the garage of a home, for example, is unlikely to need the same priority as the failure of frontline medical

equipment at a hospital. This is a stark comparison, but the principle plays out in dispatch services daily.

Dispatchers need to be equipped with the most relevant resources to ensure proper prioritization of tasks can be executed. A field service dispatch software can reduce a set of complicated tasks to a vastly more manageable system. Dispatch teams can look into service history and access contracts, and quickly make decisions on priority. With features like drag-and-drop calendaring and a robust set of views, dispatchers can ensure that their schedules are sustaining ideal priorities for any field service provider.

2. Refine routing

The time a technician spends on the road directly correlates to service costs and cuts into profits. Dispatchers require awareness of the technician’s location at all times. The dispatcher should use this enhanced knowledge to correlate with traffic demands and predict the fastest and most efficient routes to the customer. Minimizing the costly impact of gas and travel time will maximize scheduling and contribute to sustaining revenue.

Equipping dispatchers with the ability to track technicians through their mobile devices using a field service software solution will dramatically impact the capacity to refine routing. FieldConnect’s experience and services are optimally designed to provide this precise support to your dispatch team.

Keep in mind that part of refined routing is the ability to re-route. Using a dispatch software solution will allow dispatchers to make quick and accurate changes to routes as they arise—fully concentrating on ideal performance.

Ease access to information

Dispatch is a fast-paced set of tasks with multiple inputs and outputs. Customers and technicians are consistently relying on and communicating with dispatchers for information critical to their service. A dispatch team must efficiently and reliably access information while on calls or establishing broad strategies. Having access to a report on the technician’s locations, skills, and availability is critical to managing a successful and flexible schedule. The same information concerning customers should be accessible. Dispatchers need to have a customer’s work history and profile available at the tip of their fingers.

An informed customer is commonly a more profitable customer. Empowering the customer through informative and customized portals is a valuable resource to a dispatch team’s efforts. Suppose a customer can find an answer or make an appointment without the direct assistance of a dispatcher. In that case, the entire operation runs leaner and cleaner. The same customer profiles can embolden dispatchers to make the most informed and timely decisions while on a call.

The FieldDispatch solution will engage any dispatch team in troubleshooting with online access to customer, site, and equipment work order history. Using their own web portal, customers can make service requests on an electronic dashboard and significantly amplify their experience.

Further Resources

Field service management software will assist in optimizing your dispatch efforts and ensure sustainable, refined scheduling.

Any optimal field management software should be guided by a combination of advanced solutions and real experience in field service. FieldConnect combines these unique qualities, utilizing technology informed by years of expert training in the field.

With nearly two decades of expertise in the industry, FieldConnect has grown to be the leader in software solutions for Mobile Field Service providers.

Explore FieldConnect’s suite of services and request a demo today.

Field Service Technician Scheduling Tips

Few industries rely on scheduling management in the same way as field service businesses. Being skilled and strategic at managing schedules is a necessary and critical function for any business that relies on field service technicians and other similar types of employees.

The typical office job may have a wave—or two to three—of employees scheduled to arrive in the morning and depart in the early evening. Perhaps scheduling is further complicated with an evening shift or an overnight shift. But even these scheduling scenarios are considerably less dynamic than the challenges and nuances facing field service businesses.

A mastery of scheduling distinguishes one field service company from the next.

Managing a field service business requires a capacity to anticipate issues, adjustment on the fly, and implement proactive planning. Scheduling customers and providing assignments to technicians is a complex challenge that can be unpredictable for numerous reasons. Equipment, machines, customers, and employees all play interconnected roles that can be difficult to foresee.

Scheduling management in the field service industry can be understood as a practice that incorporates both art and science. Management necessitates the capacity to remain nimble and improvise in the face of inevitable fluctuations, but it must be informed and structured within an architecture of best practices.

9 Tips for Field Service Technician Scheduling

In this article, we explore nine tips that inform your ability to develop a strategy for schedule management that can heighten your ability to anticipate issues, while remaining grounded in real data and strategy that enable you to adapt efficiently in real-time.

1. Prioritize Employees

Field service scheduling can include a diversity of employee types, including full-time, part-time, and freelance technicians, with varying skill or specialization levels. It is paramount to successful schedule management to centralize priority around the needs, abilities, and desires of employees. Communicating that an employee’s life and work is at the core of any business strategy will result in a sustained satisfaction that drives employee retention.

The key to prioritizing the needs and concerns of employees is maintaining access to management. When management is accessible for communication and feedback, healthy work culture can be sustained. Taking the employee into consideration with scheduling should balance with the demands of the business, and it can account for such things as a technician’s specialized knowledge of particular equipment or their strong rapport with a customer.

2. Assess overall labor force

Any attempt at schedule management should begin with an assessment of available resources. This process can be informed by focusing on two primary areas: historical trends and establishing a baseline.

The first of these is developed through reflection on previous trends in the business. Your company can execute a full audit of all the elements that contributed to the most efficient days on record. One such example would be assessing a day when the highest volume of calls was received and executed. Analyzing such sample days for efficiencies that can be mirrored is a best practice in developing future strategies for scheduling. Similar efforts can be made to reflect and analyze less efficient days as well.

Once an audit of best and worst performances is analyzed and mined for clarity, a company can establish a baseline. This can involve figuring out the minimum necessary labor for an average day and then affect further estimations on how many additional resources or hours are required for response to any additional calls.

3. Develop a system of prioritization

In an ideal world, every customer and every call would receive the same priority. Unfortunately, limited resources and shifting demands do not permit such a luxury. As a result, it is necessary to establish a hierarchy of precedence for types of customers. These priorities can be informed by such dynamics as a type of work, urgency, or any elements unique to your business. Establishing such priorities also provides the benefit of being able to decline work that would detract from defined priorities and potentially interfere with profitable decisions for scheduling.

Once the architecture for priority has been established, it is critical to communicate the system with everyone on the team, especially essential technicians and the dispatcher.

4. Emphasize the role of dispatcher

Too many field service companies attempt to cut costs by hiring inexperienced dispatchers or deemphasizing this function in general. The role of the dispatcher should be given high priority and sufficient resources. Cutting back on this critical role sets a shaky foundation for effective schedule management.

A capable dispatcher will excel in customer service and manage to multitask. They must also be supplied with the correct tools. Tools such as FieldDispatch software from FieldConnect are invaluable for creating a dispatch system that ensures fluid operations. This type of solution permits mobility and flexibility, allowing for quick troubleshooting and simplifying scheduling for preventative maintenance calls, emergency rescheduling, and accommodations for new business opportunities.

5. Balance Manual and Automated Scheduling

As with the resources applied to dispatch services, the best performing schedule management strategies take advantage of innovation in technology. Automating scheduling will save time, produce efficiencies, and redistribute necessary resources across a broader spectrum of operational needs. To maximize the technology available for automating scheduling, a manager should always be ready to improvise essential changes. The ideal solution builds a foundation on automation and blends it with the adaptability of manual scheduling.

6. Use reminders

Effective schedule management develops plans ahead of time. When appointments are scheduled in advance, sending out reminders for management, technicians, and customers is essential. This can assist in identifying scheduling issues early on and being able to pivot appropriately. Customers forgetting about appointments or running late consistently propose complications to established scheduling that can be mitigated or reduced by using technology to send reminders.

7. Empower analytics

We cannot emphasize the need for effective and exhaustive technological solutions for the management of scheduling. It is critical to track all data related to jobs, monitoring numbers such as first-time fixes, emergency or unscheduled calls, delays, and the myriad other challenges that arise specific to your operations. Work can be scheduled according to the days of the week, month, or seasons when call volume is highest.

To collect, analyze, and properly implement such data, key resources such as FieldGateway can be installed. Data can even be provided in real-time to create a seamless integration between your back office and the field.

8. Implement GPS tracking technology

Using GPS technology to track field technicians is illuminating for both management and the customer. Management can know which technician is closest to a job site or if they have arrived at the customer. This software can also inform the customer of a technician’s location, offering

them comfort and assurances that result in satisfaction. Tracking such information can also inform future audits of business operations and clarify where efficiencies can be amplified.

9. Technology that integrates with current solutions

Whether you are a new business or further expanding your horizons, it is vital to leverage modern scheduling tools for your company’s growth and success. As with most innovations, it is essential to find tools that integrate seamlessly with your current tools.

FieldConnect offers an array of resources that integrate with your current systems and go beyond even the best practices listed in this article. If your field service division still uses outdated systems and workflows, you are missing out on the measurable benefits that impact customer satisfaction, service capacity, and productivity, as well as field service staff retention.

FieldConnect offers a full suite of complete service solutions that will enable your scheduling management strategy to function at its peak performance.

You can easily request a demonstration of these many resources with FieldConnect today.

As a field service business owner, manager, or foreman, there’s no shortage of people ready to dish out advice on how you could run your projects better.

You may hear advice from your peers like, “Always have the best price,” or “Give them more than what they’re expecting.”

Generally speaking, this is decent advice. Competition amongst businesses is always increasing and customers have more choices than ever when deciding who to give their business to. And while the advice we just mentioned is good, with a few tweaks, it can be even better.

Success in the field service industry is all about the “three exes”:

• Expectation
• Execution
• Experience

By understanding what customers want as well as setting the proper expectations, we can execute tailor-fit solutions to provide a better customer experience. These three factors will determine every interaction with customers regardless of business or industry sector.

How to Create Better Customer Experiences Through Expectations

When people think about getting the best price possible, they usually mean cheapest. After all, as customers ourselves, we like to feel we’ve gotten a great deal on a product or service; what feels better than saving money?

The second piece of advice is usually assumed to mean that, as a service-based business, you do more than the scope of the work provided without additional compensation. And while a customer should always expect that their service technician is competent, well-trained, and knowledgeable, there should never be a situation where they’re expected to do more than the scope of the work provided.

Here’s a quick example to help drive these points home further.

EXAMPLE: An HVAC business receives a residential service inquiry to service a malfunctioning thermostat.

A lead comes in, the customer describes the issue they’re having. Your call center acknowledges the issue, reassures them that help is on the way, and then informs the customer of the $50 service call fee. The customer agrees to the pricing and the company deploys a service technician to the job.

While on the job, the HVAC tech checks the thermostat but determines it to be functioning normally.

Moving on to the condenser, the technician notices that coils are pretty gunked up and proceeds to give them a very thorough cleaning. After the coil cleaning, the technician heads back inside and checks the filters — they’re very dusty and need replacing. They head out to the truck to grab a pack of replacement filters. The technician informs the customer that the thermostat seems fine but that they noticed a vent that wasn’t producing any airflow. The customer states that it hasn’t worked properly in months and they haven’t had the chance to get it looked at.

Being the nice guy that he is, the HVAC tech takes a look in the attic and notices that some of the ductwork is ripped and should also be replaced. He heads out to the truck, grabs about six feet of flex duct, and quickly replaces the deteriorated section.

After delivering the final invoice, he tells the customer that the ductwork repair and coil cleaning are ‘on the house’. “I even went ahead and replaced your filters for you at no charge. Just remember us for your future heating and cooling needs!”

The customer is ecstatic that the HVAC company’s technician did more than what was asked of them and at no additional charge. Win-win, right?

Well, let’s step back for a moment.

Did the HVAC company actually provide the customer with the best possible price? No.

It’s not the best possible price for the customer because the company didn’t seek out any customer pain points or perform any further qualifications. While we know that customers shop for the cheapest price in most cases, that cheap price coincides with a purchase solving their needs. And in order to truly solve their needs, we need to figure out what all of their needs are.

Did the technician give the customer more than they were expecting? Yes.

They absolutely exceeded the customer’s expectations — they worked for free! The customer reached out to the business with the expectation to pay some denomination of money for the service to be rendered.  In our example scenario, the technician certainly went above and beyond with the coil cleaning, duct replacement, and free filter replacement. However, by working for free, we run the risk of devaluing our services in the future.

Sometimes the customer knows exactly what they need — other times, there will be opportunities to discover more needs. When fielding an inbound lead – meaning a lead that reaches out to your business – it’s important to make a habit of fully qualifying that lead in order to provide the best possible solution.  One of the best ways to learn more about a customer’s needs is through discovery questions.

What Are Discovery Questions?

Discovery questions are open-ended questions used to discover more information about a particular topic from your customer.

The reason why the HVAC company didn’t give the best possible price is that they never probed the customer for other needs. In the residential service sector, especially home improvement and maintenance, most homeowners have nine pending home improvement projects and are putting them off. In our example, the HVAC company was called out for the first problem only to discover several more while on-site. If they had asked some discovery questions at the first point of customer contact, the customer may have cited more issues. Additionally, this could increase our total service billables.

By gathering this discovery information, the technician would have also been better prepared to handle various situations on the job while adding incremental revenue for his company.

Asking discovery questions may seem daunting if you’re not used to asking them, but in reality, are incredibly simple. While there’s not necessarily one better way to ask discovery questions over another, a good formula for asking is: KAT

The KAT Method of Asking Discovery Questions

The KAT method is a simple, formulated method for discovering pain points that is both brief and repeatable.

Keep the questions open-ended – This simply means asking questions that cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Ask for clarification – This is when you ask a closed-ended question, which means a question that can be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Thank them for their answer, then restart the process if necessary – Until the customer says there’s ‘nothing else’, restart the KAT formula.

An example of the KAT method in use is:

HVAC Call Center: What issues are you having with your thermostat? (K – open-ended question)

Customer: I’m not exactly sure but I don’t seem to be getting any cool air.

HVAC Call Center: Is there more than one room affected? (A – clarify with closed-ended questions)

Customer: No, it seems to only be in the living room.

HVAC Call Center: Ok, thanks for that. Are there any other issues you’ve noticed? (T – thank them and repeat the process if necessary)

By asking discovery questions, you’ll be better equipped with the information needed to provide effective solutions for your customers.

So now that we have a good idea about the ways we can better understand our customers’ expectations to deliver an incredible experience, let’s talk about how to execute these principles successfully.

How to Create Better Customer Experiences Through Execution

Improving Customer Response Time

If field service was a restaurant, discovery questions would help us build a perfect menu. Response time, then, would be how fast we’re able to feed the customer — from taking the order, cooking the food, and serving them at their table.

Having great field service software certainly helps with aspects of response time like technician deployment, location-based check-ins, and job priority. But if we’re not sticking to arrival schedules, we’re failing customer expectations, which — you guessed it — creates a bad customer experience.

It goes beyond just arriving on time, too. See, the first customer of the day’s response time directly affects other customers in your service queue. When we can achieve the fastest possible response time, we provide better customer experiences overall. It can also help as a time buffer should a job go on for longer than intended. And while we definitely don’t want to take more time than needed, having that flexibility can be game-changing. Jobs that go over their expected time can quickly lead to a disastrous day, both for you and for your customers. Most jobs, especially in an occupied dwelling, will require a customer representative to be there. In some cases, a job cannot be completed without final customer approval or without them being on-site. This leads to more delays, low first-time fix rates, and potentially a negative impact on customer retention.

When jobs start on time and are completed efficiently, customers can get back to their day. This allows your technicians to serve more customers, have a better work-life balance, and most importantly, maintain a happy clientele.

For more on this topic, check out our guide on the best ways to improve your customer response time.

Customer Self-service

One of the best things you can do as a field service business is to empower your customers with various self-service options along with the education to complete it effectively.

A good example of customer self-service would be instructing a customer on how to turn off their sink’s water valve in the event of a plumbing issue. This is doubly effective for two reasons; an empowered customer can save themselves money while also saving your technician’s time.

If the customer had the knowledge and ability to turn off the kitchen sink’s water valve, it could’ve helped eliminate water waste while preventing further potential damage to kitchen fixtures or flooring. For the technician, this can speed up their time on the job by eliminating the need for cleanup and giving them more time to address the main issue, such as a leaky sink or a pipe leak. Thinking back to response time, faster job completions mean more jobs can be completed per day.

A knowledge database on your company’s website is a great way to provide continuous value for customers by providing helpful tips for common maintenance issues. This can be in the form of an FAQ page, a blog post, or audio and video content. A quick video on how to properly reset a breaker is extremely beneficial to customers who may have otherwise called and scheduled an appointment.

Keep in mind, this shouldn’t be seen as a missed opportunity for additional work. In fact, content like this will help to further establish your company as an industry authority while helping customers through education.

Additionally, you can create an online self-service portal that gives your customers the ability to schedule their own service on their own terms. They’ll also be able to access billing information along with current work order status and maintenance history.

These and other self-help resources not only provide excellent value for new and existing customers alike but also serve to increase trust and authority for your business.

For more on this topic, check out our guide on empowering customers through self-service.

Technician Customer Service and Sales Training

When we think of the best advocates for handling customer service and sales, we usually think of dedicated customer service reps and sales reps. But it’s the field service technicians that have the biggest opportunity to capitalize on sales opportunities while providing stellar experiences.

In truth, your technicians are probably your best assets as they’re able to not only complete a job but also sell more jobs. It starts with training them on customer interactions which should be a part of your overall experience strategy. When they perform site inspections, they can spot incremental revenue opportunities firsthand. This allows them to make on-the-spot product or service recommendations.

For example, a garage door technician may be called to a job to fix a busted spring. When replacing the spring, they notice that the customer’s rollers are worn out and prone to failure. Since customers may not be able to easily identify roller issues, the technician can make the recommendation to go ahead and replace them while they’re on-site.

Now, the customer is happy to avoid having to pay for another potential service call in the future and you’ve increased the job’s value while delivering an excellent customer service experience.

For more on this topic, check out our guide on increasing technician productivity through sales and service training.

Maintaining Customer Records

Customer records are a pain point for lots of companies. A successful business may be adding hundreds or even thousands of new entries per month. This is great for business — it means you’re doing something right! But managing all of those records can be a daunting task, especially if you’re still on a paper-based system. Even a basic understanding of computers or smartphones can open up an entirely new world of potential productivity tweaks.

By maintaining accurate records, we can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to process invoices, handle scheduling issues, and complete other time-intensive tasks. Aside from the productivity benefits, poor customer records could lead to the biggest business killer of all — lost revenue.

If you’ve ever double booked a service appointment, the ramifications probably still hurt and at least one of your customers was left unhappy. Customers rely on your service to address their needs and they trust that you’ll be there on time to get the job done. The last thing you want to happen is for that expectation to properly execute a job to leave your customer with a bad experience.

For more on this topic, check out our guide on the powerful benefits of maintaining customer records.

Expectation, Execution, Experience

You’ve got a lot of moving pieces in your business. From accounting and scheduling to active service requests and increasing sales volume, the life of a field service business is constant and demanding. Despite the complexities that can come with the business, it’s one of the most rewarding and profitable businesses when done right. No matter where you’re at in your current business or which system you’re currently using, we offer powerful solutions that cater to many different industries. Your business — and your customers — will thank you for it.

If you’re ready to spend less time managing tasks and more time completing them, REACH OUT, AND FIND OUT how FieldConnect can revolutionize the way you do business.

Improve Technician Productivity With Mobile Field Solutions

Paper-intensive processes and manual data entries cause delays, errors, and duplicates – mostly as a direct result of overworked technicians. By taking a more digital approach to field service management, your workers can work smart instead of working hard. 

Nowadays, companies running field service operations can equip their workforce with digital tools that maximize efficiency and convenience. This includes artificial intelligence, real-time monitoring, and mobility across all communication platforms.

With integrated cloud-based software and remote tools, you can sync workflows and create more effective strategies based on real-time data. In this article, we’ll be giving you tips on how to improve technician productivity and customer experience with reliable mobile field solutions. 

Provide Dispatch And Scheduling With A Cloud-Based System

Without integrated field management software, you risk double bookings, missed appointments, or late on-site visits – all of which negatively impact customer experience. For seamless scheduling and dispatching, your technicians need instant accessibility and data syncing. 

Through dispatch and schedule management tools, technicians can work at a faster pace without compromising accuracy and quality. Cloud-based integration allows you to track bookings as they come, assign them to the correct technicians, and monitor the progress of each job from start to finish. 

Technicians get real-time updates, ensuring that they’re working on the right tasks in the most efficient order. Companies that switched to a dynamic dispatch system saw an 80% increase in job completions per day and a 30% reduction in waiting time for customers. 

Enable Route Mapping And Planning With Device Tracking Capabilities

Without a device tracking system, you have no way of monitoring technicians and how much time they spend on the road. This could result in longer waiting times for customers, increased dissatisfaction, and higher gas and vehicle maintenance expenses.

Field service companies can keep up with time-sensitive jobs and cut down on costs by finding more efficient routes. With route mapping and planning, technicians can make on-site inspections in a timely manner – improving efficiency as well as the customer experience, while also reducing travel-related costs.

Technicians will be able to navigate through traffic and find faster alternative routes. If they’re servicing multiple clients in one area, route planning allows them to efficiently travel from one customer to the next. In addition to this, device tracking also logs your technicians’ every move – back-office staff gets real-time updates, which allows them to assign tasks and schedule visits more effectively.

Digitize Inventory Management And Support With Remote Accessibility

Technicians who conduct on-site visits and inspections need reliable access to customer and company information at all times. Without mobile features, working remotely becomes stressful and disorganized – technicians have to wait for assistance if they encounter technical issues or require additional parts for a customer. This means more delays and more frustrated techs.

By digitizing inventory management and support systems, you empower your technicians to handle complicated situations from their mobile devices or tablets. An interconnected mobile network gives staff instant access to inventory, nearby technicians, and support documents – making it easier for your team to collaborate and solve problems. 

Automate Analytics To Monitor Technician Performance

Getting a clear picture of your daily operations takes more time when you have to manually analyze customer data, inventory, and technician productivity. And when there are delays in reporting, managers can’t provide accurate feedback or make data-driven decisions. 

Automated analytics can help you understand how efficient your operations are at a glance. If you notice that technicians are overloaded, you can quickly delegate responsibilities to staff with lighter workloads. With real-time data syncing, you’re always sure that you’re working with the latest figures and making the best decisions.

Making projections is also more convenient and more accurate when you have all of your information in a single dashboard. This gives you a better idea of which areas need the most improvement, which in turn makes it simpler to find solutions and improve customer experiences.

FieldConnect | Boost Productivity With Innovative Technology

Investing in cloud-based, end-to-end technology can improve your technicians’ productivity and help you monitor their progress. With FieldConnect, your field service staff will have all the tools they need to perform their jobs well and according to your business standards. 

Our platform simplifies scheduling, device tracking, accounting, reporting, and inventory management. You can even automate tasks, freeing up valuable company resources for other jobs.

Equip your team with the digital tools they need to increase efficiency, capacity, and profitability. Get in touch with us to request a demo of our software today.