One of the biggest challenges businesses face when working with a team of field agents is keeping everything aligned and in order – double bookings, missed appointments and excessive paperwork all cost time, money, and maybe even customers.
Field service software can help solve a lot of these issues. Here are five benefits of investing infield service management software.
1. Increased efficiency
If you’re still working with paper timesheets and invoices, or even if you’re using spreadsheets for everything, keep track of bills and documentation can be a real headache.
And it’s one that will only get worse as the paper piles up and the spreadsheets grow – before you know it, technicians will be overlapping each other, bills will go unpaid and customers will be hit with delays – what starts off as an inefficient process can lead to a loss of business.
Field service software pulls everything together, to organise and streamline your service, and increase overall efficiency and productivity. And, unlike with manual systems, using field information software means you only need to input information once, which saves time and cuts the risk of duplication, errors and missing information.
2. Lowered costs
Using field management software cuts the need to invest in expensive computer equipment and office space. You can instead arm your fleet with handheld devices as cloud-based field service software is compatible with mobile devices. Integrated software also means there’s little or no need for printed documents, which can also help to cut costs.
3. Faster invoicing
Invoicing is an integral part of every business – it’s also one of the most time consuming and frustrating. This is especially true for a field service company, especially those not using automated systems – assessing the work done and collecting data manually can literally take weeks.
Field Service Management system technology allows technicians to instantly send all job information captures from the field and can even automatically calculate costs, taking into account warranties, special pricing conditions, and discounts.
4. Accurate task matching
Matching the correct and closest agent to the relevant task is essential when managing a team of field agents. Using field service software makes it easier to accurately assign specialists to tasks based upon their matching skills. And because all customer history is recorded by the software, you can allocate the same agent to their previous client, which can help with customer satisfaction and make for a speedier job.
5. Complete customer satisfaction
Thanks to apps like Uber, we’ve all become accustomed to getting real time information – field service software functions in much the same way to ensure customers are kept in the loop regarding ETAs and any possible delays.
Customers are given their own portal as part of the service, which automatically shows the location of the agent in real-time, gives an estimated arrival time to the destination and even final costs on the step of the booking.
This all helps to offer a streamlined and efficient five-start service that will help to improve the service you offer and the reputation of your business.
