Think about how your field service organization is scheduling technicians. Is it? Is it with whiteboards, spreadsheets, or Outlook calendars? For your customers, there may be nothing more frustrating than having a technician show up late to the job, or in the worst-case scenario, not at all. That’s a non-negotiating point for a customer, who will simply look elsewhere.
With customer expectations constantly increasing, today’s field service industry must be more focused than ever on scheduling technicians. This makes field service scheduling software a necessity to run an effective and efficient service department. Technicians need to be on time for their appointments and your customers want a tight appointment window in which they can expect them to be there. That can’t be accomplished if you’re looking at whiteboards and having to call technicians with changes to their schedules in the middle of the day.
It’s also not enough to just get any technician to the job site on time. It’s about getting the right technician to the job site who can properly diagnose a problem, devise a solution, and complete the repair. Skillsets vary from technician to technician and customers don’t want to have a technician come to them not knowing how to solve the problem when another technician has the skills to do it.
Scheduling would seem like an easy task and something every service delivery organization should master. However as technology continues to improve, even small-medium businesses are needing some kind of field service scheduling software to resolve their growing inefficiency problems when it comes to scheduling. This is especially true in a field service landscape that is changing drastically and seeing field service organizations having to complete more work orders with fewer technicians.
Field Service Scheduling Software is a Building Block to Successful Service Delivery
Dispatchers have plenty on their minds when handing out assignments to technicians, especially in a very complex service organization. They are constantly having to balance the many needs of customers, decide if a service call is urgent or low in priority, handle incoming emergency calls, keep up to date with preventative maintenance contract obligations and installation projects, and work with an expanding field of subcontractors.
It’s not an easy task, and it’s why many are turning to field service scheduling software to be the cornerstone of their service department. Not only does it help ensure that no service call is missed, especially important contractual ones, but also gives dispatchers a detailed look into the already scheduled service calls of their technicians. Field service software comes built with ways to optimize service delivery. All sizes of field service organizations are taking advantage of the many tools that come with an end-to-end field service management software.
Field service scheduling software is putting total control in the hands of the dispatchers to make quick decisions to optimize service delivery. With field service software, they can see the complete schedules of technicians and rearrange service calls to better optimize them by reducing idle times in which technicians are waiting for their next calls, establishing better travel lines to keep technicians off the road, and allocating resources to different areas in case of an emergency.
All of that is capable with the help of field service scheduling software that comes with a field service mobile app that allows technicians to get real-time updates from the field. So, dispatchers don’t need to track down a technician to change their schedule, they just rearrange work orders, which are then pushed to the field. It’s an effective way to manage a large service enterprise or a small-medium business shop that relies on a small workforce to complete as many work orders in a day as possible.
Field Service Scheduling Software is the New Standard
There was a time when doing things manually was perfectly acceptable, but as the field service space continues to grow and more competition enters the space, large and small field service operations are having to turn to field service scheduling software to get them past the days of manual processes. It’s becoming the new standard in the field service industry to have a field service software that can accomplish scheduling optimization while also offering work order management systems, contract modules, and project and job costing tools.
If you’re a field service organization who delivers multiple kinds of service, uses subcontractors, has too many work orders for the number of technicians you have on staff, or is still in the days of doing things the manual way, it’s time to look at a field service management software and get advanced scheduling tools that will ensure the most important thing to your organization’s success – that the right technician, with the right skillset, gets to the job on time, and delivers excellent service.