Introduction
The field service management industry can often be challenging as it requires organizations to have a constant pulse of their business model to meet the growing needs and expectations of the modern customer.
As we continue to advance in the era of the connected customer, field service companies should be prepared to deliver smarter, faster, personalized service as customers’ expectations are rapidly growing along with the technologies they interact with.
But how could your business transform the way it manages field service from one end to the other? What would it look like if you can get your hands on an all-in-one field service management software that keeps you and your customers happy?
Service contractors that are providing next-level communication and services to meet the ever-evolving expectations of customers will not only grow their business quickly but will also be able to increase and sustain their customer loyalty as well.
Want to get better organized and grow your business? Consider the following reasons how your company can benefit from leveraging Service Fusion’s Field Service Management Software.
Don’t forget to download our checklist, 7 Ways Field Service Management Helps Grow Your Business and learn how online reviews help grow trust and win repeat customers.
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Chapters
Building up any business is already hard, more so when it comes to providing field services and managing your field service teams all at the same time. Traditionally, field service leaders and operation managers had to juggle and balance numerous responsibilities to ensure office staff and technicians are all on the same page to meet customers’ expectations and deliver the best service possible.
At its core, field service software provides automation and integrations to every facet of your service business. As field service technology becomes more commonplace, studies have shown that 89% of customers want to see modern, on-demand technology applied to their technician scheduling, and nearly as many would be willing to pay top dollar for it.
As a result of advanced field service technologies, everyday standard field service tasks can now be automated by taking advantage of field service management software. These tools can be used to increase the productivity of everyone at all levels and provide real-time data and insights from smart devices.
Here’s how you start managing the flow of communication and data, monitoring the quality of your team’s work, and ensuring employees engage with their customers in innovative ways.
1. Access all your customers’ information and store documents online with customer account management.
A severe weather event hit your place of business, and you just lost all of your customers’ history and important documentation.
How do you get it back?
Thanks to the power of field service software, knowing customer history, and having all your documentation has moved past the filing cabinet in the back office and has upgraded safely to the cloud.
A cloud-based field service management software like Service Fusion helps you store all the customer information you need including documents, service notes, job photos, payment history, and more. This not only helps your business be more organized, but it also provides a great customer experience when your field and office teams can pull up information at a moment’s notice.
Not to mention the peace of mind you have knowing all of your data and customer accounts are safely stored online and you can retrieve them anytime, anywhere.
2. Communicate in real-time about scheduled jobs and activate on-the-way alerts with SMS notifications.
Your customers shouldn’t have to guess on their tech’s time of arrival or feel like they aren’t important enough to receive reminders and status notifications. Today, 88% of companies now prioritize customer experience in their business operations, so if you want your customers to have a positive experience, you have to invest in it.
With SMS text messaging, your customers are never left out of the loop. You can seamlessly communicate with your customers via SMS texts, send details of the job, and give live updates throughout the job progress.
This type of two-way communication leaves everyone consistently informed and enables you to have one-to-one conversations with your customers, at scale, and leave a customer feeling happy and satisfied. After all, how a customer feels after an interaction with your business has a huge impact on their future decisions. If it’s positive, then it’s likely you just scored a repeat customer all from investing and valuing great customer experiences.
3. Create online estimates that convert to paying jobs in seconds with field service software.
Today, leading-edge technology through field service management software is at the forefront of delivering fast and efficient field service by being able to simplify the processes of creating estimates and work order management.
Gone are the days of manual processes and the associated headaches in writing paperwork order details and estimates. It’s inefficient and delays scheduling jobs that often results in incorrect data entries. Sometimes these issues even lead to excessive costs that impact your bottom line.
Once you’ve got simple, automated estimates generated by field service management software, you can earn repeat customers with less back-and-forth by making it easy for them to accept estimates with just a click of a button.
It also allows your technicians to:
- Create and retrieve estimates on the field and follow up with customers for their work order
- Send estimates online and immediately get a customer’s signature for approval
- Effortlessly move accepted estimates to a job
Once an estimate is accepted, you can easily convert it to a job in seconds—saving you the tedious work to write out job information and details. This increases work order effectiveness by instantly creating work orders as job details are captured and assigning jobs based upon availability and skillsets.
This brings us to our next benefit.
4. Get more visibility with a direct overview of your work calendar to avoid any scheduling overlaps.
The most common use of field service software is to schedule and dispatch technicians. But 52% of businesses are still using paper-based manual methods for most of their field service operations, despite the progression of field service technology.
Understandably, the top frustration among 38% of technicians is primarily being unable to access all the necessary information while out on the field. By adopting modern technology and taking action to implement changes, you can increase your business’s productivity, improve efficiency and in turn, grow your business in a more manageable, controlled way.
At Service Fusion, you may have seen the content we publish ourselves, particularly focusing on how automation offers incredible cost savings and ROI that helps grow your business to greater heights.
When it comes to scheduling and dispatching your technicians, visibility is a big deal. Your techs want to be kept busy—but not so busy that they overlap between jobs and show up late to scheduled appointments.
Getting your schedule right includes:
- A user-friendly calendar that allows you to get a 360-degree view of jobs, estimates, and tasks altogether
- Automating planning, scheduling, and dispatching with an overview dashboard to display techs’ job schedules, assigned techs, and availability of everyone on your team
- Enabling your techs easy access to all job-related information through a mobile app
- Encouraging your customers to schedule regular maintenance calls during historically slow months
We offer more details on these points in this white paper on managing field service operations during business volume upticks.
“As field service technology becomes more commonplace, studies have shown that 89% of customers want to see modern, on-demand technology applied to their technician scheduling, and nearly as many would be willing to pay top dollar for it. “
1. State-of-the-art data migration with step by step guidance from experts.
These days, more and more service contractors are looking for top-notch solutions to overcome their pain points in managing their accounting data and day-to-day field service operations.
The key to a modern successful service business is to have data flowing seamlessly from the field to your back-end office for accurate data management and visibility. By adopting a field service management software with built-in integration capabilities to accounting and other existing systems, it’s now more easy and painless to keep all your field service management information synchronized within one system.
As your field service business starts to outgrow your existing system to manage your data, you may see trends in operations billing, work orders, customer data, and more to pile up. That means more time on data administration and less time on your customers, and that’s never a good thing.
So where do you start?
Consider a field service management system that allows you to quickly and easily import your basic existing data from your legacy systems that don’t cut it for the infrastructure of your business anymore. Indeed, at Service Fusion, we have our own Customer Success Manager team who are experts in providing you a success roadmap and guiding you through every step of the way.
2. Automated job deposits, invoices, and online payments.
Invoice management and robust online payment solutions keep field service information and accounting data updated throughout the day and reduces the chance of incorrect data entries.
Whether you manage a huge corporation or a family-run business, an all-in-one field service management is made in mind to help small businesses grow and empower your team to be more time-efficient, productive, and fast.
For example, you’re an HVAC company with recurring service jobs for a customer. This scenario is best matched with having the ability to set up automated recurring invoices for that customer, saving you the time to manually create and fill out an invoice and helping you get paid on time.
When payments arrive late on a regular basis, it can interfere with your daily operations, disrupt your cash flow, and consume valuable time that could be better spent on your business.
Here are some benefits of online payment platforms:
- Faster payments
- Quick and easy to set up
- Generates trust with customers
- Your business financials in one place
- Secured payments
For more details on these benefits, we offer more insights on how online payment platforms can benefit and grow your home service business in this blog article.
3. Integrates with both Quickbooks Online and Desktop versions.
Nearly 74% of small businesses primarily use QuickBooks software to handle their accounting needs, which is why it’s best to look for a field service management solution that integrates with the accounting software you already use.
Let’s face it, finances are the most crucial matters in any business, however, you can’t forget that techs need to be scheduled, inventory needs to be monitored properly, and so on. This is where QuickBooks integration comes in handy for your small-to-medium field service business. Field service management software like Service Fusion allows for QuickBooks integration with data to seamlessly flow across accounting, managing and scheduling altogether.
What does this mean for your field service business’s operations?
All of your field service business’s information is completely integrated and organized into easy-to-use dashboards which include dispatch, payroll, customer data, financial statements, and more.
But not many field service management solutions offer both QuickBooks Desktop and Online integrations. Service Fusion’s field service management software has some of the most advanced QuickBooks integrations in the industry that allows service businesses to invoice immediately upon the closeout of a job without having to wait for accounting staff.
1. The ability to manage your stock inventory, create multi-item purchase orders, and assign them to multiple warehouses.
One of the major challenges a service business faces is not having the ability to manage its inventory. Keeping track of your inventory like proper tools and equipment is critical in providing exceptional service experiences and a big factor in determining whether jobs can be completed on time or not.
With a proper inventory management tool, it can help techs monitor appropriate equipment when they need them, and reduce the stress on them by having visibility and control in tracking and managing equipment and parts. Tracking material not only helps keep a tab on equipment usage and available tools, but managers can also get deeper insights into what needs to be restocked, popular-usage items, and more.
One of Service Fusion’s inventory management benefits is that it enables techs to view inventory stock levels in real-time so they always know what they have and don’t have.
2. With the Field Technician Mobile app, your field workers can receive and manage jobs on the go via smartphones and tablets.
Today, mobile apps are much more than removing pen and paper from your business processes. Using field service apps allows you to manage teams from the office to the field and empower your field techs to work faster, better, and smarter.
Adding mobility to your business allows for ultimate flexibility especially now with smartphones continuing to soar in user usage for everyday situations, particularly in business. With the world’s number of smartphone users exceeding 2.7 billion in the last year, businesses are forced to bring on more smart devices into their game plan.
While many other field service management software options are available on mobile devices, it’s important to select one that provides solutions to fit your business’s specific needs and operations.
Field service businesses are getting wise that investments in their mobile workforce offer valuable insights and better customer experience.
With Service Fusion’s Field Technician Mobile App, your field techs are equipped with leveraging smart and reliable technology to:
- Receive instant information to quickly get the job done right
- Set job progress status
- Collect customer signatures upon job completion
- Invoice and process payments in real-time
- And more!
Now more than ever, mobile devices are essential for field techs. Your field service workers need the right tools and technology to do their jobs in order to continue to accurately serve their customers and contribute to growing your business.
That brings us to our next point.
3. Get visibility into your mobile workforce with GPS Fleet Tracking.
According to the 2021 Fleet Technology Trends Report, GPS fleet tracking technology has helped fleet-based businesses address both everyday challenges and the unique interruptions presented by the year 2020.
Through key findings on GPS fleet tracking data, many businesses who are utilizing the software realized improvements in customer service have increased and 49% improved productivity levels.
Field service businesses can expect an immediate ROI of over 1,000% in the first year alone by implementing a GPS fleet tracking solution in the following ways:
- Promoting real-time visibility: Hardwire into your fleet, you always know where your fleet is located at all times and provide customers the visibility and information they need anytime and anywhere.
- Increasing driver safety and reducing liability: Using GPS fleet tracking, fleet managers can monitor driving behavior to improve driving performance and ensure the safety of their drivers.
- Reducing overhead costs: Managing a mobile workforce can be a daunting task without GPS tracking. With a GPS fleet tracking solution, you can lower your premiums through improved driving behavior and discounts for GPS tracking installation.
With a GPS fleet tracking system integrated into your org’s processes, you gain better visibility and can collect important data insights such as idle time, driving behaviors, tech visibility, and more to improve fleet operations and cut overhead costs. Aside from significantly reducing fuel costs and preventing authorized use ‒ it’s important to understand why you should consider GPS Fleet Tracking for your business as a whole.
Choose Field Service Software that Brings Growth
Growing a successful service business is often tricky and messy. With the right field service management solution behind you, you can scale your business and drive revenue up exponentially. Making important investment decisions when it concerns your business’s productivity and ROI is no easy feat, but it all comes down to what your customers and your employees need: to those out in the field and those in the back-end office.
By making the right call to organize and simplify your business, you not only save time and money but your business and employees will thrive too.
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