Support your field service team with technology

Field service teams don’t get enough credit for all they do. These are teams of widely varying experts, across multiple industries, coordinating with colleagues, in-office personnel, local and federal regulations, as well as customers. The way they handle work is nothing short of orchestrated magic, but maybe there are ways to lighten the burden on these hard-working teams. Digital solutions, everything from online scheduling and route planning to digital sign in sheets and safety checklists, can make a substantial impact in the day-to-day lives of all field service teams. Here’s a look at some of the most common bottlenecks and problematic areas of business for field service teams, and how digital solutions can support your business’s overhead costs.

Work Order Management

As the starting point for your customer interaction, your work orders lay the foundation for your customer service and the efficiency of your field service team. In many cases, paper work orders, or even a PDF work order, can lead to a general slowdown for your teams. Work orders consist of multiple handoffs. They start with a customer call or an appointment set by your sales team, which is where initial details of the service itself are documented. This information then goes through a scheduler or dispatcher, then finally makes its way to the team going to provide the actual service. When this information is manually entered each time, it provides a wide margin for error—much like a game of telephone. But in this case, it’s ensuring your team has the right information, parts, and tools to solve your customer’s problem.

The Digital Solution

Instead of risking an ill-prepared team, missing parts, or misunderstanding a customer, what if your work order process included digital forms instead of a standard PDF? When you convert a PDF to a fillable form, you suddenly remove the need to re-enter information while ensuring every staff member sees the same information each time. The best digital form solutions can allow customizations to forms as well, meaning that your on-site technicians can edit or update forms to include more detail as they learn it, instead of creating an entirely new PDF.

Benefitting Your Business

Switching to a digital solution can immediately benefit your business overhead by improving time management and productivity, but there are many other benefits as well. You’ll see cost savings from paper and printing products, as well as storage, but even more importantly, you’ll experience a more streamlined workflow. This can result in a better customer experience for commercial and residential clients alike, and it will keep your technicians focused on doing what they do best. With the ability to meet customer expectations as the biggest concern cited by field service teams, any opportunity to exceed those expectations is a win for your whole team. 

Scheduling and Dispatch Improvements

One of the biggest challenges facing field service teams is getting technicians where they need to be. It’s the heart of your operation, but managing schedules, incorporating customer requests, and estimating work and travel time can be problematic. Many new digital dispatch solutions are incorporating GPS tracking details into their systems to better provide accurate travel estimates. By minimizing the burden on your dispatching staff, you can leave them to focus on your customer’s needs while automated systems help provide the best routes for your teams.

The Digital Solution

Adding GPS-enabled technologies to your fleet can streamline more than just your schedules. You’ll be able to automate notifications to your customers, provide better time estimates for technician arrivals, and even cut down on planning and dispatch time by letting technology automate your work for you. According to the 2021 Fleet Trend Report from Verizon Connect, 32% of businesses saw a positive ROI within their first year of adopting GPS-enabled fleet technology, though growth in this area has only been around 8%.

Benefitting Your Business

If you’re still one of the 25% of field technicians that rely entirely on manual processes for scheduling and dispatch, it’s time to consider the benefits of upgrading your systems. Aside from seeing a tangible ROI from an increased volume of visits and less stress on your dispatch teams, you’ll see better customer satisfaction and may even see improvements in total mileage and travel expenses. One of the most exciting benefits is seeing fewer scheduling mishaps, making your customers and your field technicians both happier.

Real-Time Communication

Communication across field service teams is one of the biggest adversities you’ll face. Being able to adequately communicate the needs of the customer, the importance of the work to be done, the best way to fix the problem, and ensuring you have the tools and parts to do it all is a part of that orchestrated magic that makes your team so unique. Without effective means of communicating in real-time, you can expect massive delays, disruptions in your customer’s services, and a poor experience for your customers and your fleet. While cell phones and tablets have opened more doors for faster communication, having a dedicated app or tool to streamline communication across every department can support every aspect of your business.

The Digital Solution

Invest in a fleet-focused digital communications solution instead of relying on phone numbers, contact lists, and unsecured text messages. Aside from certain state restrictions on using personal devices for business use, putting your employees’ communications in the hands of their own tablets or cell phones can be risky. Instead, opt for a messaging system or app that integrates seamlessly with your other platforms, such as a CRM, that requires a secure login to protect your customer and business information. You can automate the receipt of addresses, work to be done, and even alert your team to the presence of pets or security codes for home visits. Knowing all this information is safely behind an encrypted program instead of living on your employee’s daily-use devices provides better peace of mind for your team and unimpacted access to important contact information in case your employees purchase a new device.

Benefitting Your Business

Delays in communication can be costly for your business. Those delays can translate to missed appointments or calls, dropped opportunities to cross or upsell, and even a lack of preparedness for your technicians upon arrival at the job site. By bringing a digital communications system to your team you can ensure that all your private customer information is protected, required communications are recorded and stored digitally with the rest of the client files, and that everyone has the means to speak to everyone else on the team at a moment’s notice. Whether that’s getting immediate approvals or second opinions, or faster quotes for additional services, your team will see daily benefits from better communication.

Invoice and Payment Management

Getting paid is one of the most satisfying parts of your work, alongside pride in what you’re doing. It’s also vital in keeping your business running, forecasting for business improvements, and getting your team paid on time. With traditional paper invoices, you run the risk of missing items in your statements sending client work across multiple pay cycles, unreadable carbon copies, mismatched data entry into your accounting system, and a myriad of other challenges. Don’t make getting paid one of the most difficult parts of your business.

The Digital Solution

Kiss the paper goodbye and look into digital invoicing solutions, and the easiest way to do that is by digitizing your invoices using the same digital forms solution you’ve already implemented into your business. Digital invoicing gives you the ability to automate invoices and detailed descriptions of your team’s work to your customers, as well as tie all that information back to individual client files so you always have a stored record, without the need for physical storage. You can also use electronic signature forms to gather approvals from managers, or the signature of your customers upon completion of work. Using best-in-class digital form solutions can also provide you with direct integrations into your existing accounting, ERP, or even digital storage systems so you never have to worry about manual data entry again.

Benefitting Your Business

It’s difficult to put a price on streamlining your billing and invoicing processes, but the peace of mind knowing that all your expenses are detailed and tracked for you in a single place is priceless. Aside from a better customer experience to be able to get an emailed copy of their invoice, with their signature, you can rest assured knowing you won’t have to follow up with additional invoices for any missed costs in your next payment cycle. The transparency of using a digital form solution that also allows customized additions, like including the GPS data of your technicians or even image fields to attach proof of the work completed, can also keep your customers and your technicians protected in case of any disputes. Getting paid is a key part of running your business, and making that process as fast and efficient as possible should always be a top priority for any business owner.

About GoFormz

GoFormz is a digital forms solution that helps bring your data into a single, actionable place. We believe that everyone should be able to fill out their forms online and deliver products and services that redefine how people and businesses collect and process information. If you’re ready to bring your field service processes to the digital realm, GoFormz is ready to help. Complete with an open API and multiple native integrations, you can gather data like never before, and use it to streamline your entire business.