Why do you need a Field service management software to better manage your technicians?

In today’s highly competitive business environment, there’s a constant struggle that every business owner faces. And that is how to effectively manage the employees who are out on the field and ensure if they are keeping the customers satisfied. The funda is simple if you want to become a player of the profit and success marathon, treat your customers like you treat your family. Owning a service providing business equals satisfying the client on every visit, from the sale and in-service date, to preventative maintenance, inspection, and repair activities. Appropriate customer services retain customers and extract more value from them

This can be very challenging. Everyday problems such as keeping a track of your technicians, ensuring if the instructions are passed on clearly, managing customer’s complaints or feedback and responding to them, location tracking of the service providing teams …. And the list can go on. Field service software is the key to solving problems associated with field service providing. It empowers your company by speeding communications and providing accurate data for the entire operations team. Not only that, it solves many other issues too. Trusted field service management software such as Fieldproxy help you to successfully manage the end-to-end service process.

The benefits of using a Field service management software

According to many feedbacks, the customer experience with field services (plumbers, electrics, drivers, etc.) are, in most cases, still primarily negative, and management is helpless since they have no visibility into whats happening, nor is there any feedback loop. Despite each business’s particular demands, some common concerns arise at any company which has a field servicing team

Field service management software helps companies to deliver effective onsite service by tracking requests and managing personnel. It systematically helps in maintaining visibility into operations. There are several useful features. Such software reduces the responsibility and burden on your shoulders by doing all the work for you. Let us look at how you can use such free field service software to solve some major problems.

Increase efficiency

If you run a small business you might face various challenges. For example — mess in the documentation, customer complaints of delays, bills not paid in time, technicians suffering from overlaps, etc. In such cases using such software might be a great boon for you. A comprehensive Field Service Management software helps in organizing all processes according to the workflow inside of your organization. When all documentation is handled in Excel or on paper, that does not provide adequate analytics and can lead to data duplication or missing.

Field service scheduling software such as Fieldproxy allows you to create custom tasks that have to be completed for each visit . You can build custom inspection checklists, jobs, and to-do lists that help you capture the exact information you need and help you maintain high standards, and impress your clients.

Reduce costs

You and your team work hard, your prices are competitive, and you rake in the cash. But still, you end up thinking why your net profit is not so good. This is a common situation that many business owners with field teams face today. And one controllable expense is the travel costs — which tend to spiral out of control. Uncontrolled fuel consumption and mileage due to the absence of tracking, unoptimized routing are terrible to deal with. It is the right time to find a break in the budget pipeline. Here is where Field Service Management Softwares like Fieldproxy can come to help. Many features like distance calculation & expense reports will allow you to know how much distance your employee has exactly travelled through the day and generate automatic expense reports. The other section offers a user-friendly solution for business owners. Providing them with an efficient way to keep track of the vehicle’s and driver’s safety without any external hardware. Fuel consumption is a huge expense item. You can either fully believe the words of your field agent or track the fuel automatically if the numbers look suspicious. Your on-ground agents who deviate from the route or stay idle between orders cost you money. You can succeed in managing fuel consumption, spare hours, route mess, etc by using such field service management software.

Increase customer satisfaction

In reality, technicians lack corresponding means to provide the 5-star level of user experience as first they are focused on their job and perceive the organizational formalities not so seriously as expected. Using field service management mobile apps allows for increasing customers’ and technician’s engagement. Moreover, companies dealing with repair services are highly dependent on inventory management systems. Field service mobile applications enable your agents with useful real-time stock balance checking right in the field.

Parts management systems can notify you in case of any materials shortages or any other issue to ensure there is always full stock, allowing you to buy everything in advance for a better price. What else can you ask for when one field service software like Fieldproxy helps you solve so many problems. Including dispatching problems which lead to scheduling overlaps, mismatching of technician skills to ordered jobs, and inability to serve urgent requests are bound to impact your customer experience — which can be avoided with tools like Fieldproxy. Another useful feature to manage your field team is a GPS tracker. In case you receive a complaint from a customer that a technician was late or did not arrive, if your employee denies it, you can check the real state of events with the GPS tracker.

Such features help a lot in improving your customer service. They help in building trust and provide prospects with a sense of satisfaction. They will always prefer to do business with your company simply because they are updated and well informed about everything.

More accurate task matching

Using field service applications like Fieldproxy allows assigning specialists to tasks more precisely according to their matching skills. Thus, you will increase the chances that the right specialists are sent to the right place. Also, having an organized client base and client history will allow for assigning a specialist to the client whom he/she already knows, allowing the technician to grasp the problem more quickly and better prepare for the order.

Do you need another reason?

If in case yes, Field service management software such as Fieldproxy increases the efficiency of your business as you can access key metrics on the business anytime. You might agree that having a consolidated database with all your customer details and order history information, as well as technical instructions, is a treasure for any company. If an agent leaves, gets sick or retires, there will be a disturbance in the working process as another employee will be able to substitute for him/her as all previous job history is saved.

Companies that provide services to people, should have a very precise calculation to take into account all expenditures connected with fuel consumption, parts, and material management, time-tracking, and route optimization. To consolidate all these factors, you must try using a field service engineer app that takes up most of this burden. Implementing a Field Service Management system will reduce the routine tasks of your field agents and make your management more effective and impactful.

Originally published at https://fieldproxy.com on October 27, 2020.