Six Activities Your Field Service Team Should Be Automating

Source: Mendeley, cc-by-3.0, flickr

Field service is labor intensive almost by definition, but there’s no reason to add to the burden by neglecting to automate procedures that can easily be handles by your service dispatch scheduling software.

Field service optimization is easy to accomplish with the right tools in place. You should try to tackle tedious and time-consuming manual activities and activities that affect revenue or customer satisfaction early on in the field service optimization process. Consider these activities as good candidates for automation.

1. Skills management

It annoys customers and costs you money when you accidentally send a technician who doesn’t have the right skills out on a call. Automating skills management ensures you know which techs are qualified to work on specific products. You can track technical certifications to ensure that they’re current and ensure that techs complete periodic training programs to maintain specific product skills.

2. Technician dispatch

Service dispatch scheduling software excels at sending the right technician out on a job. Juggling skills, problem severity and location is complex to do manually but the algorithms in field service optimization automatically select the best employee to resolve the problem at the least cost.Enterprise mobility applications allow you to contact the techs with the details of their next job during the day, so changing schedules during the day to reflect shifting priorities is a simple matter.

3. Route planning

Field service optimization helps you to maximize the time your team spends actually at customer sites while minimizing travel time. Using location-based services, the software actually selects the best routes and the optimum order for calls. That reduces transportation expenses, improves productivity and increases customer satisfaction. Your team will finally be able to spend more time servicing equipment than they do driving.

4. T&E

Enterprise mobility solutions are great for capturing travel expenses, as well as for recording labor and any parts used during a service call. If technicians have to record these items manually when they return to the office, you may be losing revenue as well as time. Even with the best intentions, people forget about incidental parts or they estimate mileage or time.

Automating the process to use a mobile device results in higher revenue, more accurate costs and reduces the number of disputes over invoices.

5. Invoicing

Field service optimization and enterprise mobility combine to streamline your invoicing process. You will capture more of the costs for a call, and records are usually more accurate if the tech completes call records on site rather than creating them manually later. Customers can review the records before the tech leaves the premises, so there will be no questions or disputes when the invoice arrives. In addition, electronically creating the invoice detail, making the entire process is faster and improving cash flow.

6. Warranty claims

Service dispatch scheduling software also helps improve processes by tracking whether warranty or service contracts cover specific calls and claims or if the calls or items are billable. By ensuring that technicians properly record billable items, the overall service costs are lower and sales are higher.

Field service dispatching software and field service optimization automate some of the most basic activities in a field service operation. The result is not only streamlined process but also increased revenue, lower costs and higher customer service.

Jessica Aceto is the Sales and Marketing Coordinator for Euclides Technologies. She oversees all content creation forEuclides Technologies and enjoys fusing her creativity with educational content for field service workforce management solutions. You can follow more posts by Jessica and the rest of the Euclides Technologies team at www.euclidestech.com/blog.