Field service organizations are constantly trying to reduce their costs to remain as competitive as possible, but this can sometimes be at the expense of providing the best customer service. It’s a balancing act between the two, as organizations want to deliver exceptional service, and they want to at a reasonable price.
In a recent study by IDC, 67% of consumers said that customer satisfaction was more important than price when doing business with a company, as customers remain loyal to the people they can trust to provide quality service. Yet 30% of companies still say that reducing the cost of support is more important than customer satisfaction, as a competitive price will make them more attractive to potential customers, and that can only be achieved by reducing overhead costs.
So, who is right when it comes to field service? The old saying, ‘the customer is always right’ would seem to apply, but field service organizations understand a slip up in their customer service can give a client enough reason to open the phone book and find a new service provider. It is a constant battle for service management teams, as they try to deliver both great customer experience and reasonable price.
Field service management software offers the solution
There is no reason to make a choice between exceptional customer service and reducing costs when service organizations turn to a field service software to solve both problems. Customers are demanding on-call service, shorter wait times and more precise timing of when a technician will show up to complete a service call, while field service managers are trying to effectively deliver service to all their clients with a diminished workforce.
A field service scheduling software can help meet those customer demands, as dispatchers can effectively manage a technician’s schedule so that they are spending less time traveling instead of not complete service calls, while also designing their schedule to fit geographically so distances between service calls are close. With the ability to move service calls around to properly fit a technician’s schedule, technicians are taking on more service calls, which generates more revenue for the organization, while customers are getting speedy service and accurate windows for when they can expect a service technician to arrive.
Reduce costs with a field service management software
Reducing service costs doesn’t need to mean hiring fewer technicians, or offering limited ways to support your clients, as that is the backbone of offering timely customer service. Instead, a field service management software can help in many other areas to reduce costs, such as the back-office support technicians need. With a mobile field service app, technicians can complete service calls using a mobile device and don’t need to phone in work order information to a call center or have a back-office staff member complete data entry of work order information into a system for billing and legacy building.
Instead, everything is done automatically and electronically, drastically reducing the time office administrators are spending on data entry work, allowing them to perform other tasks, or it gives the option for field service organization to run a leaner back office.
Simple things, such as saving on paper costs, can add up quickly, so a field service software with a mobile app solution makes sense to not only make your technicians more productive in the field but also it makes your administrators more productive in the office.
And the faster everyone works, the more service calls can be completed, which will make your customers happy as they get more on-demand service when they call, and your organization can be known as the company that delivers fast and exceptionally high standards on every job.