Most Common Field Service Mistakes You Can Avoid

Let’s first review the change in customer expectations paradigm. Most of the times a field service technician goes to a customer, there is a high probability that the customer is looking for a quick fix of the problem.

74.5% of the time, field service technicians are called out to repair a broken product – not perform maintenance (according to a recent Service Max survey). And we all know how important that first impression is in the service industry.

If the customer finds their technician unprepared or having to require multiple visits, well, there goes your brand image down the drain. It may be understandable for us being in the industry and all knowledgeable but clearly, this is something your customers really notice. Fix yours, by avoiding these all too common field service management mistakes:

1- Failure to Come Prepared

The worst mistake that your field service technician can make is to go to a customer unprepared, without the right parts, tools or briefing to complete the job. Imagine putting yourself in the customer’s place, none of us would find it within ourselves to let this go, if not the technician, then definitely the company is to be blamed.

There are a number of reasons why a service agent might be under-prepared for the job, but common causes include:

• Insufficient briefing on job requirements
• Short notice jobs, giving little time to find the right equipment
• Poor inventory management

Now you must ask ourselves that how can you help your agents to be better prepared before the arrive at the customer site and change their attitude of ‘we can always come back again’?

The solution is simple, empower them with a connected field service system, which connects them over a unified platform in the cloud, for painless job management, scheduling and dispatch. So you can communicate with, inform, and monitor agents from any mobile device, and ensure everyone has access to the resources they need to prepare for every job, every time.

2- Communication Gap

Communication really is crucial to your success in the service industry. If your service agents fail to communicate with their peers and dispatch, they can’t offer a fix to the customer’s problem, hence a negative impression on the customer.

Even if the dispatch assigns the closest service technician to a job based on customer location, what good is that if the technician fails to communicate that their last job is taking longer than expected. And to make things worse, the dispatch team finds an alternate technician whom they rush to get to the customer with little to no time to prepare. You have to ask yourself, does your company has a solution to handle this common service delivery issue?

As of 2016, 52% of service agencies still use manual methods to handle their field agents. These methods leave you and your agents stuck without the means to easily communicate with colleagues’, and spot availability in a hurry.

Companies need technology that enables them to see and talk to their entire service landscape. Agents’ movements should be monitored in real-time, allowing your team to easily direct and communicate with all technicians for a more efficient, empowered and unified workforce.

3- Lack of Data Analysis

80% of service providers use less than half of their available data. That’s a huge missed opportunity to make each call more efficient and effective, and to leaving a lasting impression on the customers.

Without a proper system in place, a company may miss to flag repeated customer complaints for the same issue and dispatching the same service technician every time. But what if in reality, the technician is deployed is unable to fix it accurately and the issue keeps coming back because of that. Taking a closer look at service data can help you identify underlying issues at the customer’s site, perhaps incorrect use, or a wrong specification.

Ultimately, analyzing the data and spotting these trends enables you to act proactively, saving time, money and stress for both, you and your customer.

With Salesforce Field Service Lightning, you get the most out of your data to improve both the customer and service agent experience by:

• Managing your workforce in real time with one-click scheduling
• Accessing data and customer insights from any mobile device
• Creating work orders from any case and track job completion, fast
• Monitoring agents’ performance in real time with reports and analytics
• Unifying your team with transparent scheduling and communication

Talk to Our Service Experts

Please get in touch to find out what more we can do to help you take your business to the next level. We would be happy to offer a free consultation and also share more details and features of the Salesforce platform and Salesforce Field Service Lightning that can help enhance team productivity and improve customer experience.