FOR MANY FIELD SERVICE ORGANISATIONS, SCHEDULING WORKERS AND DISPATCHING THEM ON TIME PRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGE. HEAVY RELIANCE ON SPREADSHEETS, WHITEBOARDS, LEGACY SYSTEMS AND PAPER-BASED DOCUMENTS MEANS THAT DELAYS AND CONFUSION ARE COMMON OCCURRENCES.
Unfortunately, if you’re letting appointments fall through the cracks and not delivering speedy or reliable services to your customers, you’ll soon suffer from severe reputational and financial damage.
Thankfully, by upgrading to a field service management platform, scheduling and dispatching technicians won’t have to be a headache anymore. In this article, we’ll explain how field technician scheduling software enables you to guarantee that the right person is in the right place — every time.
HOW FIELD TECHNICIAN SCHEDULING SOFTWARE ENHANCES YOUR SCHEDULE
1. DECREASES JOURNEY TIMES
With the price of petrol spiking to an eight-year high in the UK, reducing travel times doesn’t just increase the number of jobs you can attend each day, but it also slashes your cost to serve. But, if you don’t have complete visibility over your workforce, it will be challenging to plan routes without first spending hours figuring it out.
In contrast, field service management software employs an intelligent scheduling assistant, which is a tool that matches technicians with jobs based on location, skillset, vehicle type and traffic information. As such, you can optimise hundreds of jobs at the click of a button, making it simpler than ever to plan efficient routes.
With so much spare time available as a result, your back-office team can spend less time on creating error-prone manual schedules and, instead, focus on delivering a better service to your customers and helping your business to grow.
2. MATCHES WORKERS TO JOBS
For your schedule to be as effective as possible, you must keep your first-time fix rate high. But, approximately 15% of issues aren’t resolved during the first appointment because the assigned technicians don’t have the required skills. Unfortunately, when you have to keep making additional appointments, you cause delays in your schedule and reduce the number of jobs you can attend each month.
However, as we mentioned in the previous point, field service scheduling software can match workers to jobs based on several key factors, including qualifications and skill set. By matching the right person to the right project, you can enhance your first-time fix rate and thus your reputation as a reliable field service organisation.
Better still, the best field technician scheduling software comes with an integrated app that allows your technicians to view everything your back-office team can see via their mobile devices. Consequently, they’ll be alerted to any changes in their schedule in an instant, meaning your team can respond rapidly to urgent requests and re-route the most appropriately skilled workers as and when needed.
3. ASSIGNS ASSETS DIRECTLY TO JOBS
Although it’s paramount to send the right worker to each job, it’s equally as essential to ensure they’re equipped with the right gear. Shockingly, on average, 29% of issues aren’t fixed during the first appointment because the technician has the wrong parts or the correct ones aren’t available.
Luckily, you can avoid problems with stock, tools and equipment altogether when you upgrade to a field service management system like BigChange. The state-of-the-art platform includes an asset management feature that creates accurate records of inventory levels in real-time, so you can see how much stock you have whenever, wherever.
Using data from the asset manager, your back-office staff can then assign vehicles, tools and parts directly to each job ahead of time to ensure that every technician has the items they need to complete the work on the first appointment.
Not only will your technicians appear more professional and act as excellent representatives for your organisation, but your customers will be more satisfied, and you’ll be able to take on additional appointments each month.
FIELD SERVICE SCHEDULING SOFTWARE IMPROVES EFFICIENCY IN JUST A FEW CLICKS
A recent OnePoll survey revealed that nearly half (44%) of UK workers believe their company’s office technology is ‘woefully outdated’, causing them to waste an astonishing 26% of each day on pointless administrative tasks.
Inefficient ways of working not only slow down your back-office staff, but they also don’t make the most of your technicians’ time, which will cause you to lose a significant amount of revenue each year.
It’s no secret that the pandemic has had a devastating effect on many organisations over the last two years, so companies can’t afford to be complacent and rely on ‘traditional’ scheduling methods. To bounce back stronger financially and stay ahead of the competition, business leaders must harness the power of field service management software to maximise their earning potential.
With BigChange’s field technician scheduling software, you can do the following:
- Match workers to jobs based on traffic information, location, vehicle type, skill set and job constraints
- Assign tools, stock and other equipment directly to jobs
- Communicate with technicians in real-time via the mobile application
- Book recurring jobs
- Optimise hundreds of routes at once
- Prioritise jobs with certain service level agreements
…all on one easy-to-use platform. Scheduling workers will never have to be a challenge again.
SCHEDULING WORKERS IS SIMPLE WITH BIGCHANGE
Get the right resource to the right place. Every time.
With BigChange’s field service management platform, you can work around constraints such as time, tools required, and vehicle attributes to ensure every job is completed promptly and to a high standard.
Job Management Platform in Hamilton, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, New York, Michigan – www.jobperfect.ca