How to Build an Effective Field Service Management
Efficiently managing a team of field service workers can be a stumbling block for many businesses. The reason is that this process involves a lot of factors and variables that can easily get out of control, so it takes a significant effort to keep track of all the unpredictable changes.
When it comes to delivering field services, companies often face such challenges as poor quality, delays, and miscommunication, sudden changes in schedules or routes, lack of information, etc. Field management software (FMS) can help monitor and manage various field operations components and improve overall efficiency.
Here are some things worth your attention if you’re willing to build smoothly running field service operations.
Quality assurance
The consistently high quality of services is the key component of any company’s operations. It involves developing quality metrics and assessment scales, implementing quality guidelines, training employees, monitoring their performance and the quality of services delivered.
A good idea to maintain a consistent quality level is to use checklists, making it easier for field workers to follow the guidelines and not miss any steps. Besides, monitoring checklists can help managers control the operations more efficiently. Another way to ensure quality is to get employees to send photo reports of the completed work (which can also be a step in a checklist).
Better control of operations and employees
Every manager is willing to know where exactly their employees are (while they are on duty) and how much time they spend at work. Sometimes field workers may not be motivated enough to perform as many tasks per day as possible. Besides, they may pretend a particular job took longer than it really did and thus carve out some time for side activities.
Luckily, modern FMS solutions with advanced time- and geotracking features make it possible to control field workers and their job in real-time. For example, Planado allows you to understand that an employee has finished the assignment even if they didn’t hit the app’s corresponding button. You can also tell if the amount of time they spent on a particular task is reasonable since you can check out a complete history of their actions in the app.
Flexible schedules and routes
Another issue to address is managing schedules so that employees have a stable workload and don’t stand idle in the case of canceled orders. It is also essential to provide them with optimized routes and change those routes quickly if needed.
This can be managed manually if you have two or three field workers, but when there’re dozens of them, the best solution will be to adopt an FMS. For instance, with Planado, the dispatcher is always aware of an employee’s current workload and location and can alter their schedule on the go.
Client interaction
One of the most critical points for service companies is interaction with clients. It’s an integral part of providing service excellence and a positive customer experience, crucial for a company’s success. Communications with customers should be timely, polite, and meaningful — on behalf of both managers and employees.
Since a large part of client interaction follows standard patterns, you can easily automate them with FMS. The system can send out notifications to clients whenever it makes sense — to confirm an order, remind of an appointment, notify of worker’s approaching, collect feedback, etc.
Good conditions for workers
It is also essential to create safe and transparent conditions for field workers — they should be certain to get support, timely payments, necessary training, and equipment. Caring for your employees is a great way to increase productivity and curb turnover rates.
Using FMS makes it easier for your field workers to do their job since they can rely on the app when figuring out optimal routes, following the guidelines, and sending reports, saving them from dealing with their paperwork manually.
Automating processes
Most of the processes mentioned above can be easily automated, bringing your enterprise’s efficiency to a new level. Now that mobile technologies have become our everyday experience, automation is no longer a competitive advantage but a must-have.
Choosing the right field service management software can be an advantage, though. Make sure your FMS is capable of scheduling and routing optimization, geotracking, sending notifications, checklisting, logging, reporting. Also helpful would be a statistics module, integration opportunities, and interface available in languages other than English. For example, Planado comprises all these functions, making it a perfect choice for field service businesses.
