Beat the Heat with These 4 Field Service Scheduling and Dispatch Tips
It’s summertime and for many field service businesses it is the busiest time of year, especially for break fix organizations like air conditioning contractors. Service calls are pouring in and revenues are at a season high. It’s easy during the peak season to lose focus on efficiencies since cash flow is good this time of year. Here are 4 tips to keep your dispatch and scheduling process efficient during your peak seasonality:
Establish Home Base or a Field Service Geo Location
Allowing field technicians to take their trucks home at night and establishing a home base at their location will help you eliminate costly downtime during the morning office shuffle. Techs can be dispatched from home and routed to jobs within an established radius from thier home that keeps them productive. This strategy gets your techs to the job faster, minimizes windshield time and helps you save on inefficient payroll dollars along with expensive fuel consumption to and from the office.
Field Technician Skill Sets
Keep a list of field technicians and their skill sets readily accessible. Assigning the right resource to the right job at the right time will eliminate call backs and customer frustration.
Field Technician Shift Scheduling
Assess your customers’ operating hours. Do you work with retail centers or restaurants? These types of establishments are typically open late thru the evening hours. And how many times do you receive calls that go to the emergency call center after normal business hours? Stagger your scheduling efforts by assigning technicians to mid-morning to early evening shifts like a 10AM – 7PM or 11AM – 8PM. This will help you save on any potential overtime expenses that occur from dispatching an on-call crew that has already clocked a full shift.
Field Service Scheduling Software
Still using paper and a pencil to manage your crews? Consider investing in a field service management scheduling solution. There are several platforms on the market that offer “get-up-and-go” and painless setup. Look for a cloud based or SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution. These applications make it easy to get up and running and require little or no technical expertise. You’ll be able to quickly and easily enter in your resources, assign jobs and identify openings in your calendar throughout the day. Sophisticated solutions will offer automated routing and rule based employee assignment – helping you get the right tech to the right job.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here