Why You Should Invest in Field Service Technology

Today, businesses are not only competing through the quality and individuality of their products but also through the customer experience they deliver. When a company provides an in-person service through a mobile workforce, it is a significant competitive differentiator, enabling it to connect and engage directly with its customers.

However, the service experience must be streamlined and efficient to reflect positively on the company’s brand. In an increasingly digital world, it is important that field service moves away from outdated practices like managing schedules on spreadsheets and sending mobile workers into the field with clipboards and paper forms. By sticking to these inefficient methods, companies fail to give their customers the same level of convenience, personalisation, and connectivity that they are used to receiving in the modern day.

The fact is that, to deliver the best customer experience, field services must invest in new technologies to facilitate a digital connection between the business and the customer. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can futureproof your field service management processes through digital transformation.

Invest in a Connected Field Service Solution

With a connected workforce solution, companies can:

Prioritise their customers by empowering them to self-schedule, make changes, and update requests online.
Keep customers updated about the status of their appointment through automated notifications, powered by location tracking and artificial intelligence.
Leverage a workforce field scheduling tool with intelligent capabilities to automate their scheduling processes, helping dispatchers to ensure route optimisation and on-time attendance to appointments. This means that they no longer have to spend time searching for the next available mobile worker and manually schedule appointments.
Seamlessly rearrange appointments by enabling customers to request a new timeslot using an online portal or app. Dispatchers will immediately be able to see the change and reassign mobile workers in the field with real-time notifications.
Ensure that their mobile workers are fully informed and connected. Employees in the field can easily view current job information, schedules, inventory, tasks, and customer data, enabling them to gain a thorough understanding of the issue at hand before they even set foot on site. They can also log updates throughout the visit and leverage offline capabilities to download information.
Gain useful feedback from customers. Using an online portal or app, they can leave feedback about all aspects of their appointments, from whether the issue was resolved to what they thought about their engineer.

Define and Measure Success Metrics

To determine whether their investment in resources and technology to drive digital transformation is having the desired effect, companies can measure effectiveness against a core set of metrics:

Rate of resolution on first visit. With access to all important information related to customers and tasks at their fingertips, mobile workers are more likely to resolve the issue on their first visit to the site. On top of this, if they are unable to resolve an issue by themselves, they can connect with a team member who may be able to walk them through the process.
Volume of calls. Customers are less likely to call a company if they are kept up to date with the status of their mobile worker through automated notifications. This is amplified when they are provided with the ability to effectively deal with their concerns using an app or website.
Productivity of field workers. With full visibility of who is available and who isn’t, dispatchers can schedule efficiently and therefore minimise the time that mobile workers spend unassigned to tasks. Furthermore, for less complex cases, customers can even connect with a remote agent directly to fix an issue, further driving workforce efficiency.
Customer satisfaction. Using a connected solution, companies put the customer first. By enabling them to submit feedback, their satisfaction can easily be measured. Companies can leverage this information to improve their processes and training.

In field service, now is the time to invest in digital transformation. The harsh reality is that those that fail to do so risk getting left behind. To find out about how you can futureproof your operations with our mobile field service application, ServiceMaster, call us on 0203 411 1795 or email us at [email protected]. To schedule an online 1 to 1 demonstration, call us or use our website.