5 min readDec 12, 2019

5 TIPS TO HELP YOU SELECT THE RIGHT DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

The capability of scheduling your service team depends largely on your business. Whether your company is handling break fixes, repairs, you have customers that are linked to contracts, provide installation services, getting people to places is essentially what field service is all about.

The service dispatch tracker tool is an efficiency tool that many households are using and are quite common today. Nearly every field service provider has a story related to time when their dispatched did not come through. Using field service scheduling software these stories are becoming a thing of the past.

It is often talked about how optimized scheduling keeps your business near the profit margins. However, this is not expected to happen overnight. That is because it takes much more commitment and dedication to making this happen. This takes dedication from your dispatchers and technicians in order to be much more effective.

Dispatchers need to have and learn proper dispatch management and optimization skills. And technicians need to be well equipped with field service mobility applications in order to help reduce the administration time.

There is plenty of work that is involved in order to make dispatch management a true profit-making investment for any business. Let us have a look at some tips for better service dispatching and scheduling.

1) KNOW YOUR TEAM:

You cannot start using service dispatch management software without knowing who your team is. You may not have enough workforce in your team to grow your business. So the amount of optimization efforts that you put in using field dispatch tracker will grow your revenue.

You need to look across your entire workforce and take a true count of who is working for you. How many good and talented people do you have.Full-time technicians, Part-time workers, Regular subcontractors, Specialty subcontractors, Interns and Apprentices

With this information, you will be able to see how many manhours you have to work with. If you keep taking services calls for your company than the number of people you have, either you use service dispatch management software to build new practices or look at increasing the number of people your workforce categories.

2) KNOW YOUR CONTRACT WORK WITH DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

Preventative maintenance service calls are not just about helping your customers keep the equipment from breaking. These can be recurring work you can easily count on. They are dependable revenue your business knows they are getting throughout the life of the contract.

And they are dependable service calls that you will be able to automate in your field dispatch management software. That’s important when trying to build a more efficient workforce. That’s because recurring work can be the foundation in which you build your service delivery model.

You know when and where these calls are going to happen and you will have more freedom of scheduling. Unlike an emergency repair, where a customer needs you at that moment, preventative maintenance service calls can come with different scheduling options.

Use them to build your schedules and put them in time slots where you normally don’t have emergency calls coming in. Many field service businesses use morning time slots for this type of work. That leaves the afternoons and evenings open for emergency calls.

3) CATEGORIZE AND ORGANIZE YOUR SERVICE CALLS AND TECHNICIANS USING DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

No service call can be the same. But these calls generally can fall into a specific category of work that needs to be completed on time. By using categories of work, you are well off to better utilize technicians who specialize and have the skills in that category of work. Basic service calls can be performed by your apprentices or interns.

While more complex service calls can be completed by full-time technicians or specialty subcontractors or workers. When a service call comes in, the dispatchers can use a skillset search in their service dispatch software in order to narrow down the field of technicians. From there, they can make appropriate scheduling decisions and use their skills efficiently.

By categorizing the types of calls you will be able to take and the technicians’ skillset, you can narrow down or open up your workforce as well as schedule service calls to the technician that makes the most sense. You can easily take it a step further by then using resource routing tools to select a technician based on their location.

So, you have a request for service, put it into a category type of service call, narrowed own your technician pool through a skillset search and found the closest one available to that call. That’s how you optimize your scheduling practices.

4) USE SERVICE DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

Using a feature-rich service dispatch software, running a successful field service business has become very easy. That’s because the days of doing everything by hand and manually are over. Whiteboards, emails, and Outlook have become things of the past. Paper-based work orders should never be printed again.

If you want to save time dispatching and scheduling technicians, you need to give them a dispatch tracker mobile application such as Field Force Connect that limits the time they spend coming back to the office. And the time they spend performing administration work.

To be more efficient, you also need software that handles all of your services. Break/fix, contracts as well as projects require technicians to complete them. And some businesses have specific and dedicated technicians for each type of job.

But using the field dispatch management software, you can have your entire team comprising of the workforce available to use for any call. You will be able to share the resources among your entire team and then get jobs done faster.

5) THINK OF YOUR PEOPLE:

In all this talk of service dispatch software and the optimization, the truth is you need the people to complete the work. And in order to acquire those people, you need to attract them to your business.

The field service industry has seen a shortage of skilled and experienced technicians, so it’s more important than ever to take care of the people you got. That means having a good on-call policy and also being sensitive to your technicians’ time is something you need to note.

On-call policies are very much required in the field service industry. However, if you are having technicians work extra hours every day, that can turn them off your business.

It’s important to build a rotation that works for the entire business and keep that in mind when using field dispatch management software. Built that rotation in and have your technicians only available for on-call service when it’s their time.

CONCLUSION:

We have listed down tips that will help you to select the best dispatch management software. If you are looking for an all-round dispatch Tacker and scheduling software then we will recommend you try out Field Force Connect. Contact us at info@fieldforceconnect.com for more details on how this software can help you to manage your dispatch and service workforce.

5 TIPS TO HELP YOU SELECT THE RIGHT DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

The capability of scheduling your service team depends largely on your business. Whether your company is handling break fixes, repairs, you have customers that are linked to contracts, provide installation services, getting people to places is essentially what field service is all about.

Dispatchers need to have and learn proper dispatch management and optimization skills. And technicians need to be well equipped with field service mobility applications in order to help reduce the administration time.

There is plenty of work that is involved in order to make dispatch management a true profit-making investment for any business. Let us have a look at some tips for better service dispatching and scheduling.

1) KNOW YOUR TEAM:

You cannot start using service dispatch management software without knowing who your team is. You may not have enough workforce in your team to grow your business. So the amount of optimization efforts that you put in using field dispatch tracker will grow your revenue.

You need to look across your entire workforce and take a true count of who is working for you. How many good and talented people do you have.Full-time technicians, Part-time workers, Regular subcontractors, Specialty subcontractors, Interns and Apprentices

2) KNOW YOUR CONTRACT WORK WITH DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

Preventative maintenance service calls are not just about helping your customers keep the equipment from breaking. These can be recurring work you can easily count on. They are dependable revenue your business knows they are getting throughout the life of the contract.

And they are dependable service calls that you will be able to automate in your field dispatch management software. That’s important when trying to build a more efficient workforce. That’s because recurring work can be the foundation in which you build your service delivery model.

You know when and where these calls are going to happen and you will have more freedom of scheduling. Unlike an emergency repair, where a customer needs you at that moment, preventative maintenance service calls can come with different scheduling options.

Use them to build your schedules and put them in time slots where you normally don’t have emergency calls coming in. Many field service businesses use morning time slots for this type of work. That leaves the afternoons and evenings open for emergency calls.

3) CATEGORIZE AND ORGANIZE YOUR SERVICE CALLS AND TECHNICIANS USING DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

So, you have a request for service, put it into a category type of service call, narrowed own your technician pool through a skillset search and found the closest one available to that call. That’s how you optimize your scheduling practices.

4) USE SERVICE DISPATCH MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE:

If you want to save time dispatching and scheduling technicians, you need to give them a dispatch tracker mobile application such as Field Force Connect that limits the time they spend coming back to the office. And the time they spend performing administration work.

To be more efficient, you also need software that handles all of your services. Break/fix, contracts as well as projects require technicians to complete them. And some businesses have specific and dedicated technicians for each type of job.

But using the field dispatch management software, you can have your entire team comprising of the workforce available to use for any call. You will be able to share the resources among your entire team and then get jobs done faster.

5) THINK OF YOUR PEOPLE:

In all this talk of service dispatch software and the optimization, the truth is you need the people to complete the work. And in order to acquire those people, you need to attract them to your business.

The field service industry has seen a shortage of skilled and experienced technicians, so it’s more important than ever to take care of the people you got. That means having a good on-call policy and also being sensitive to your technicians’ time is something you need to note.

On-call policies are very much required in the field service industry. However, if you are having technicians work extra hours every day, that can turn them off your business.

It’s important to build a rotation that works for the entire business and keep that in mind when using field dispatch management software. Built that rotation in and have your technicians only available for on-call service when it’s their time.

CONCLUSION:

Written by Field Force Connect