How to Streamline Daily Operations in Your FSO

Is your team of field service technicians working from a clipboard? If the answer is yes, the conclusion is simple: they’re wasting precious time.

If your technicians set out for customer service appointments with a binder full of paperwork and carbon copy forms, there’s a high likelihood that they will arrive unprepared to delight your customers. Your technicians won’t have the latest data about the problem they’ve been hired to fix and they may not arrive with the necessary parts at the agreed upon time. For customers who are short on time and patience, that’s a big problem.

According to Accenture, 89 percent of customers get frustrated because they need to repeat their issues to multiple representatives. Even a little bit of frustration can be a killer when it comes to driving repeat business and referrals. If your customer isn’t satisfied after the first interaction, 13 percent of them will share their experience with 15 or more people.

To boost customer satisfaction and positively impact your bottom line, it’s essential to put your technicians in the best position to boost first-time fix rates (FTFR). They should always leave fully prepared to tackle the task ahead, arriving at each and every service appointment with the right asset components, the right tools, and the right equipment. If they’re empowered to succeed, your field service technicians have a much better chance to solve their customers’ problems more quickly and efficiently than your competitors can.

Below, we’ll explore three ways field service management leaders like you can enable your mobile technicians to arrive feeling prepared and confident using modern field service management software that decreases wait times and drives efficiency.

1. Implement Connected Systems that Pull Data from Serviced Devices

To keep pace with the field service industry transformation that’s fueled by the advancement of modern technology, it’s crucial to adapt your service approach to accommodate the world of connected devices: the smart home. With refrigerators, washing machines, and countless other home products evolving into intelligent machines that are connected to the Internet, field service organizations have a choice: proactively connect to these devices, or be left behind.

Smart appliances are talking and the best field service management companies are listening, 24/7. By 2022, the total consumer spending on smart home automation devices will reach up to 80 billion U.S. dollars. Is your field service organization prepared to service this demand?

If your answer is currently no, that can change. By implementing connected systems that pull data from serviced devices, your technicians can use connected device data to identify pre-failure conditions and deliver predictive maintenance that improves the service experience.

Instead of arriving at appointments with little to no insight about the broken appliance or its service history, technicians can leverage field service software that offers customer alerts, real-time analytics data, and insightful reports about smart home devices. Armed with the right data and the right parts long before they meet the customer, your technicians will spend less time running back to the warehouse, and more time delighting your customers.

2. Invest in Asset and Inventory Management Software that Refreshes in Real Time

So how does a modern field service manager ensure technicians avoid as many of these time-consuming trips to the warehouse as possible? Through investing in a robust work order, asset, and inventory management solution that updates in real time as stock changes.

Using technology to manage your assets and inventory, rather than a piece of a paper and a pen, makes it much easier to plan part requirements and monitor part utilization to ensure you have the parts technicians need at all times. When an important part that technicians need to resolve customer issues is almost out of stock, benefit from proactive alerts that help you manage your inventory long before it runs out. With a well-managed inventory, technicians can use resources more efficiently and reduce the number of truck rolls, which usually cost companies $100 and $200 per visit.

Your busy team of technicians will be relieved to know they’ll be able to get a detailed view of key assets, parts, and inventory availability in real-time simply by logging into their workforce management software application on their smartphones.

3. Ensure Field Service Tech Mobile Devices Receive Data Updates

In addition to connecting to smart home devices and getting real-time parts inventory data through an intuitive mobile app, your field service technicians need to receive other kinds of data updates throughout their busy work days to remain agile and customer-focused.

Technicians need to be able to access the following data at a moment’s notice:

• Real-time notifications of new jobs and canceled jobs to effectively plan their days
• Inquiries from customers who are looking for a direct line to an available technician
• Device diagnostics that notify technicians when devices reach pre-failure conditions

When your inventory management system is connected to smart home devices, the devices themselves can tell technicians exactly which parts to bring to service appointments. As a result, technicians aren’t frantically running back to the warehouse to get what they need.

Streamline Daily Operations with Intelligent, Forward-Thinking Workforce Management Software

In the world of field service management, embracing technology that drives efficiency is the name of the game. To stay competitive with other software-enabled competitors in your area, implement software that knows how to talk to smart home devices, in real-time. Let an automated software solution intelligently manage your inventory. And finally, empower your technicians with the data they need to walk into appointments with the necessary parts at the agreed upon appointment time.

Your technicians will appreciate smoother workdays and your customers will experience the top-notch service they expect.

Discover ServicePower's field service management software solutions today.