Efficient scheduling of service delivery generally has one goal in mind – try to schedule your technicians in a way that they can take more service calls per day. That is true for any field service organization, as more service calls leads to more revenue and less idle time for technicians.
There are many ways to accomplish effective scheduling and manage your technicians’ schedules so that they are completing more service calls and spending less time sitting in their truck waiting to be dispatched, or completing administration work. Routing software is available that helps get technicians to a job site faster, but that puts the power in the technician’s hands to take their work orders and figure out their schedule, as opposed to telling them where to go. And when you are relying on GPS location to map your schedule, you can’t tell customers when you’re going to arrive.
Mobile field service software offers an effective way to optimize schedules, plan resources, and accomplish the goal of scheduling technicians for more service calls, while also giving them the routing tools and administration support they need to complete calls faster. When thinking of moving to a field service management system, there are plenty of things to consider when it comes to schedule optimization, and how a field service software can help achieve your main goal of scheduling more service calls in a day for your technicians.
Improve communication with technicians with field service software
When scheduling technicians, the goal is to schedule as many calls in a day as you can so they are constantly working. That’s difficult to do in a world of manual processes, including paper work orders, whiteboard scheduling and telephone communication. As emergency calls come in, schedules need to change, work orders need to be adjusted, technicians need to be dispatched to different locations, but might not be in direct communication with dispatch.
Rather than dispatch trying to get their technicians on the phone to change their schedule or route them to a different job, notifications can be pushed to their field service mobile app with updated work instructions, including new work orders. Technicians don’t need to call back to the head office to get new instructions, they can just follow what is being scheduled for them on their mobile app.
Dispatchers have more control with field service software
With greater lines of communication between dispatch and technicians, dispatchers can now alter the technicians schedule without having to tell them they are doing so. They can make the choice of what is best for the business, and move work orders around to optimize their technician’s schedules so that the right technicians, with the right skill set, are on the job.
If an emergency call comes in, dispatchers can move service calls around easily with a drag and drop system in their field service software, taking a job from one technician and moving it to another one, quickly and easily. This allows dispatchers to have full control over their scheduling at every moment, any changes that happen on their end will be reflected in the field. A work order moved from one technician to another will show up in the new technician’s mobile app to be completed, cutting down on communication between the two technicians.
Optimized scheduling improves customer service
You can’t fill your technician’s schedules if you don’t have customers requesting service. Keeping your customers happy is always a goal of every field service organization, and optimized scheduling will keep their happy. The simple things like, telling them when you will arrive for a call, or giving them a time window that isn’t between the hours of 9 and 5, but instead, down to the hour, will increase your customer satisfaction. With a field service software, notifications can be sent to customers when changes have been made to a scheduled service call, notifications can be sent when a technician is on route, and status updates can be sent during the progress of the call. It’s all simple ways to keep your customers happy that will help generate profits.
Keeping the routing tools in your field service mobile app
While giving your technicians their work orders and having them plan their scheduled based on a routing map doesn’t lend well to customer service, having routing tools to get them to the job site faster certain does. In the best case scenario, work orders would be scheduled in one geographical location, making the travel time low between jobs. But for longer travel, getting technicians to the job faster is key, and routing tools in their mobile app will help accomplish this with turn by turn directions. With field service software, it’s not always point A to point B to point C when optimizing a schedule, but with routing tools, even when a technician has to crisscross a city, at least they are doing it in the fastest way possible.