Field service businesses include handyperson services, dry-cleaning pick-up and delivery, pressure washing, pool cleaning, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems maintenance, among others. All these involve working on sites away from the office. Failure to enforce appropriate measures may make coordinating between the office and field staff challenging. Below are tips to improve the efficiency of your field service business:
- Create quotes in the field
Consider that 90% of US citizens base their decision to work with a company on customer service. Further, 58% of them will ditch a company if its customer service is terrible. Thus, it’s in your best interest to up the ante regarding customer experience.
Part of an excellent customer experience is giving timely responses to queries, for instance, requests for quotes. When a customer takes you to the job site to assess the project needs, they expect you to give the cost estimates as quickly as possible, so they know whether to hire you.
A sophisticated field service management software should help you in this case. For instance, HVAC software enables you to build quotes right in the field as you converse with the client. In fact, you can give the cost estimates at your first meetup without going back to your office for lengthy computations. This is possible through a database of similar previous jobs stored in the tool.
- Streamline staff scheduling
Confusion can quickly arise in field service jobs when working on several sites. It’s not uncommon to schedule one staff member on two different job sites for the same shift while forgetting to dispatch workers to other sites. But that’s possible if you keep using manual duty rosters.
A robust field service management tool should help you to avoid such confusion. Appropriate algorithms ensure no team member is assigned two tasks at a time. Plus, you can see at a glance what sites haven’t been staffed and act accordingly.
- Take advantage of route optimization software
Commuting from site to site for various jobs can consume more time than anticipated. It’s one of the most rampant time wasters for businesses. With statistics showing that US businesses lose an average of USD$1.7 million yearly because of wasted time, you’d want to reduce time wastage as much as possible. And one way to do that is through route optimization.
Route optimization aims at choosing the shortest and most cost-effective route, taking into account factors like time of the day, traffic snarl-ups, accidents, distance to be covered, vehicle capacity, and driver schedule. Using route optimization software is especially critical if your team is spread across several job sites and needs to move from one to the other within the day.
- Use video to convey instructions
You’ll often need to instruct field technicians on one thing or the other. While texting and audio calls can work, a better approach is to illustrate the instructions through a video. You can either record the video and send it to the technician or hold a live video call.
The visual nature of these approaches helps technicians who are still learning the trade. Videos convey the message clearly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Stats indicate that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Furthermore, the brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. The clearer the information you pass across to your teams, the quicker and better they do their tasks.
89% of workers confess they waste time every day at work. It gets even worse in field service businesses where staff members are far from the office. You can reduce time wastage by requiring your crew to track time as they work.
A reliable time-tracking tool captures images every few minutes, showing what the staff member is working on. And coupled with the Geographical Positioning System (GPS), you can tell precisely where a given worker is at any particular time. Moreover, you can use the time tracked to process payrolls accurately and provide fair compensation to all workers.
The decentralized nature of field service businesses can make workers lose touch with the rest of the team members. Thus, it’d help to have a platform that every team member can access as they perform their duties. Cloud technology facilitates real-time collaboration between remote teams. As long as the team members have mobile devices and an internet connection, they can seamlessly communicate with the rest of the staff, no matter their physical location.
Conclusion
Field service businesses require some tactics to maintain high productivity among a workforce spread geographically. It may not be as easy as in-office work. The decentralized nature calls for more effort to ensure the crew does its job. Luckily, technological innovations, such as field service management software with the right capabilities, have made it possible to run such businesses. Acquire a fitting one for your company, and you’ll boost its efficiency.
Miscellaneous5 months ago
Gaming2 years ago
Gaming1 year ago