Are you committing these field service mistakes?

If it’s not first, it won’t last.

Let us be honest. Everyone would appreciate getting their issues resolved at the earliest. Delays are always unwelcomed. Still, many organisations of this field service management industry fail to maintain a high first-fix rate. Strictly avoid repeated visits to resolve the same issue or complete the same work. As they say, ‘The First Impression is the Last Impression!’ Make sure that your field workforce creates a lasting impact on the customers by helping them in the first service call itself.

The best way to achieving high first-fix rate is to dispatch jobs with precise details. Knowing the complete customer history and passing the 360-degree information about the task. You can always take the help of smart scheduling software platform. Thus, the technician will be aware of the nature of work, priority, and location. And it will well-align to his schedule.

Neglect monitoring, invite suffering.

Managing field workforce is no easy job. In fact, it is quite tricky to extract maximum performance. The key point is to have real-time visibility of your workers’ schedule and activities. Don’t let your business goals and profits suffer due to mishandling of field employees. Being attentive and responsive to the field force is critical. Real-time monitoring ensures there are no white spaces in technician’s schedule. It also alerts you about his safety.

Modern workforce management applications have made it possible to track your field force whilst they’re travelling to different locations. Besides that, you can also dispatch urgent jobs to them by knowing their whereabouts. These apps also guarantee a level of worker safety with advanced features.

If you’re not prepared, then you’d regret.

One of the most important aspects of field service management industry is inventory and stock control. Arming your field force with the right set of equipment is more than necessary. If the service technicians do not have the required tools and stock of repair parts, they certainly cannot accomplish their job. It will also annoy the customer to see the unfinished job due to unavailability of the tools. Moreover, it would add insult to the injury by disturbing the worker schedule as that particular job would have to be carried out again the next day.

Keep a check on the use of spare parts, availability, missing stock, and encourage your workforce to update the stock right through their app which is centrally synchronised with the service desk. Maintaining accurate inventory is possible with a holistic field service platform.

Jammed to the old ways, you’d waste efforts and days.

We have observed many companies still being hooked to the conventional paper tickets, Excel or Quick books to manage schedule and tasks. Remember that old is not always gold! We are in the 21^st century where running around in circles is not worth it. There is no wisdom in using these old methods for reporting and balancing the work manually. The new-age applications promise to reduce the cumbersome workload. It shifts the employee focus to business-oriented tasks for high efficiency.

Transiting to advanced cloud-based solutions with automated workflows is very vital to the success of the field service management industry. It requires no extra infrastructure budget and promotes effortless administration. These apps free up employee time with the use of automation, auto-routing, smart scheduling, SLA management, etc.

Lack of communication, loss of revenue–generation.

Effective communication is inevitable. Field service success relies on the use of communication channels and proper coordination. To retain customers and expect repeated business, keep them informed. Provide them with all the conveniences to connect with your team. On the other side, it is significant to balance communication of field employees and back-office executives. Synchronising updates and data helps to get better insights of the work. It also assists in future decision-making to boost revenues.

A single source of truth in the form of software and mobile apps is useful to connect, collaborate and collect information. Self-service applications for customers and mobile working greatly simplify the communication and generate custom reports for future analysis.