Encouraging Your Team: 5 Crucial Concepts of Succesful Field Service Workforce Management

For organizations small, medium, and large, managing and keeping track of a service technician team is not always easy. But as many know, having a business in field service means there is a lot of unpredictability. Fortunately, with the right workforce management, everyone can be in check regarding the progress of each task and every important aspect of the business.

However, without proper management, mistakes, miscommunication, and lack of information among technicians would be at an all-time high. As a result, customer satisfaction might decline. But satisfaction starts with an organized team. Because tasks are frequently added, changed, and delayed, it makes the most sense to manage your field service business via technology.

Digitally tending to your team and your business overall is easy with field service management (FSM) software. These are some of the components FSM software should consist of:

Scheduling

Managing your business’s past, current, and future tasks via FSM software out-beats non-digital task management. After all, digitally viewing and maintaining tasks is ideal for a business where tasks are frequently changing. If there are any task date alterations or delays, these tasks are quick to update in just a few clicks which can then immediately be viewed by your technicians.

Apart from adding and managing tasks, FSM software often allows you to delegate certain tasks to the most appropriate technician for the job. In turn, seeing which technician(s) are responsible for which tasks, how many tasks each technician currently has on their plate, and which tasks still need to be assigned is easy.

Employee tracking

Part of knowing which of your technician(s) will be the most relevant for a certain task is seeing who is currently the closest to the next job site. In fact, some FSM software platforms will allow you quickly to track where your technicians are currently located via GPS.

Being able to assign a task to a nearby employee is not only convenient for your technicians if they’re already in the proximity of the next location, but this also means your clients will be happier considering they will be getting speedier service. As one could imagine, this aspect of field service management is particularly helpful when it comes to emergency work orders.

Another great benefit of FSM tracking is keeping tabs on your employees in terms of making sure they’ve successfully made it to the correct job site. If a technician gets lost or has vehicle trouble along the way, spotting exactly where they are can make it convenient for you to provide aid if necessary. 

Client feedback

What your clients have to say about their experience with your services says a lot about your business. But client feedback means more than many might believe. In fact, statistics found that poor customer service cost US businesses a whopping $68 billion dollars in 2016. However, a business won’t know if their clients are unhappy unless they collect feedback in the first place.

Fortunately, field service management software typically consists of the ability to collect client feedback. Collecting your clients’ comments, suggestions, complaints, and praises can help you pinpoint where your business needs to improve and can even help you decide if any of your technicians are unfit for the job or deserve a raise.

However, collecting and reading feedback from clients is one thing; actually making the changes to make your current and future clients happy is another thing that needs to be done. Otherwise, future clients may have similar complaints. Responding and tending to the complaints of your clients can also eliminate bad word of mouth that gets spread regarding your business.

Payroll management 

Tracking each employee’s amount of hours worked, total travel time, and even hours worked overtime is important to ensure you’re not paying your staff any more or any less than what they’ve earned. The right FSM platform can allow you to do the latter. This is convenient for both you and your team members as logging hours no longer becomes a disorganized mess.

After receiving and reviewing your technicians’ total hours worked via FSM software, you can often eliminate or manually add hours as necessary and then pay them right from the platform. Considering digital payroll is right at your fingertips no matter where you go, remembering to pay your technicians on time should never be an issue.

In fact, according to American Payroll, approximately 49 percent of American workers look for a new job after an average of two payroll mistakes whether it be an incorrect or late payment. With digital payroll management, mistakes being made on either end – your end or your employee’s end – can be significantly reduced.

Invoicing

Quickly creating or editing quotes, invoices, and work orders is possible with many FSM software platforms from your desktop, phone, or tablet. Due to the convenience of creating the latter on the go, you can bill, take credit card payments, and receive signatures from clients right from the job site without worrying about printing these out or creating them later at the office.

Plus, because employee hours can often be tracked with many FSM platforms, if you’re charging your client for the job based on per hour worked, you can turn logged hours worked into billable hours instantaneously before invoicing them to your client. 

In general, there’s a lot that FSM software can do. If you’re interested in better managing your field service business, you can compare FSM software at TEC to find the most relevant platform.

Conclusion

To keep your field technicians on track and the aspects of your business organized in one place, opting for field service workforce management software can a big help. Some of the important components of field service management (FSM) software include employee tracking, scheduling, invoicing, payroll management, and customer feedback.

With the latter management concepts, you can eliminate communication errors and the chances of mistakes occurring at work before they even happen. The best part about having a digital platform to manage staff, clients, tasks, and business operations is that clients will be more likely to recommend your services knowing you and your team are well-organized.