When you operate or own a field service company, you know just how hard it can be to keep your field service technicians up to date each day. There are many things that are going on at the main business location that these staff members might not be aware of as they are in the field. In addition, your team members who service client needs in person might not have access to the tools that they need to get their jobs done efficiently.
These kinds of bottlenecks to productivity are the reason that many field service companies struggle with customer satisfaction and with the turnaround on resolving customer needs. Being able to increase the productivity of your company that provides service in the field means that mobile solutions need to come to the top of your list. You can make big improvements with the mobile field solutions that we are going to discuss and make your company stand out from the crowd.
Mobile Field Solutions That Improve Productivity
1. Quality Field Service Management Software
One of the best things that you can do to help with services that are provided at customer locations, is to upgrade your business tools with the addition of quality field service management software. These products can make all the difference when it comes to communication between the main office and your teams in the field and it can also improve customer communication with your company. There are many ways to customize these software tools to maximize business productivity and customer satisfaction.
From ensuring that the entire staff can see client account information and the tickets that need to be serviced on a daily basis to a shared calendar or mobile time clock plug-ins, there is pretty much nothing that these software solutions cannot do for your business. When all of your business information and client record-keeping data is stored in one easy-to-use tool, you can trust that everyone who works for you is on the same page.
Add to this the option to use a very effective customer service portal, and your clients will feel much more in the loop with regard to the services that they are paying for. Client real-time chat functions, as well as client access to their personal information and their company contract, can help to ensure that everyone works together cohesively. Clients can choose to schedule appointments, look up their billing invoices, or update their information all on their own time. Being able to track all of this information without waiting on hold or waiting for the technician to show up can greatly improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Mobile Devices
Field service technicians in the field need to be supplied with smartphones or tablets so that they can easily interact with client records, see the schedule of tasks that need to be done each day, and do things like chat with clients in real time. These devices are pretty much essential these days, and they can greatly foster communication with the main office.
While nearly everyone has a smartphone these days, it is always wise to offer field service technicians a dedicated device to use to communicate for work. This helps to prevent customers from finding out personal contact information for the field service technicians who have come to their location and it can improve work-life balance to make sure that personal cell phones are not used by technicians.
The other benefit to something like a tablet is that it is much easier to use a device of this nature to view client information and to make notes in tickets or to make notes on client invoices. And perhaps best of all, client information is not at risk of being stored in someone’s personal cell phone device, which increases client confidence in your business.
Offering your field service technicians the technology that they need to be able to work effectively is key to operating a reliable and effective field service company these days. This is an area where efficiency is often neglected and which has a simple solution.
3. Real-Time Chat
Being able to contact your technicians in the field to ask them questions at a moment’s notice can be a big benefit to upgrading your field service technician’s mobile experience. Real-time chatting or messaging can be allowed between the main office and technicians, and you might also want to allow customers to chat with their technicians directly as well.
There are many ways to use this communication method to foster teamwork and to help with communication with clients. You want everyone to be on the same page about the expectations of the scheduled services each day, and you want to be sure that you can redirect technicians to other jobs when something about the schedule changes. Chatting through messaging is a great way to keep everyone moving in the same direction each day and to ensure that clients are kept informed about what is going on with their requests.
You can make sure that the software solution that you select for your business allows for this functionality and ensure that these messages are stored so that no one forgets what was said. This is one of the other benefits that outstrip the old-school method of calling and talking to techs in the field without documentation. Being sure that you can point back to conversations in the past can help with clarity and can improve customer satisfaction as well.
4. Mobile Time Clock
If you have lots of teams in the field all day long, you don’t want to expect them to come back to the office every time they need to clock in or out. This can lead to lots of wasted time and fuel and it can make it impossible for technicians to finish the jobs that they are working on at the end of the day. Being able to leverage solutions that allow technicians in the field to clock in and out while they are away from the office can improve customer service as well as efficiency.
Best of all, this single tool will greatly improve your staff’s satisfaction with their work. Everyone who works away from the office on service-type jobs is frustrated when they have to come back for administration-type tasks. The fewer of these trips that your teams make in a day, the better.
5. Contract Management With Mobile Access
Contracts are the bread and butter of the field service industry and there is nothing that is more obstructive to the progression of client needs than documents that are not visible to those in the field. Your technicians might need to check on contract details before providing a specific service, and they might also be asked questions by clients that they cannot answer without looking at the client contract.
When you use an accessible method of contract management to keep track of your client’s information and documentation, you make it easier for your field service techs to be able to service client needs. This also cuts down on calls to the main office, and it can eliminate confusion that leads to incorrect resolution of client problems or services that should not have been offered and cannot be billed for.
Keeping all of your client contracts in a very visible location is a great way to make sure that your teams in the field can handle all of their daily work without hang-ups. This can also ensure that client contracts are kept up to date and that no one is confused about what to do for clients when they ask questions about the services that they are paying for.
Mobile Field Solutions Can Improve Field Technician Services Exponentially
When you are considering ways to improve the services that your company offers, as well as customer satisfaction with your work, you need to make sure that mobile solutions for your field technicians are at the top of your list. These are the employees on staff who interface in person with your clients, and they need to have access to the tools that are required for them to do their jobs perfectly every day. The more visible that client and company information is, the better your services will be and the more effective your teams in the field can be when faced with client questions and requests.
Using a quality field service management application is one of the best ways to start improving your field technician’s work away from the office. You can improve these efforts with devices that allow for better communication between the office and your techs and might even be used to allow for customer communication to improve. There are lots of other ways to streamline and improve your field service offerings that focus on the experience of your technicians in the field. Using these tips and tricks will ensure that your business stands out from the crowd and that your clients are thrilled with the work that you do every day.
