Meet William, the passionate entrepreneur who knows how important it is to put customers first. As he tried to optimize his new service business, he stumbled upon the concept of service availability. In today’s Uberized world, customers demand immediate access to services and service availability measures how accessible a business is to its customers.
Quick response times can mean the difference between satisfied customers and disappointed ones. Knowing that it is the key to a successful service business, William decides to learn all he can about service availability. Let us follow his lead and learn about the technical, human, and environmental factors that influence it and the best practices to improve service availability.
Factors that influence service availability
There may be different reasons why service businesses have trouble meeting customer demands and delivering service on time. These reasons can be classified broadly into three categories: technical, human, and environmental factors. Let’s take a closer look at each category.
Technical factors
1. Overflowing service appointments
Handling a large number of service requests is hard, especially when you need a clear view of your field team’s schedule and availability. Such instances can be stressful, as losing customers is not an option.
To avoid such instances, ditch your spreadsheet-based scheduler and switch to an efficient dispatch board. Tapping into the power of automation to dispatch your workforce and hiring more technicians can help manage your overflowing service requests effectively.
2. Shortage of skilled labor
Meeting customer demand can be difficult, and finding qualified personnel who fit your business is equally challenging. It’s crucial to select workers who are skilled, customer-focused, and represent your company well. To bridge the demand gap, service businesses can hire gig workers and contractors from trusted marketplaces like Field Nation.
3. Service locations are far away from technicians
As a service business, you’ll receive customer service requests from various locations across the city. Your customers will expect prompt and timely service within the SLA, but it can be time-consuming and tiring for your employees to navigate to each location, especially if they’re far apart and difficult to locate.
Automated route planning can improve the efficiency of your field teams by assigning them an optimal oute for the day which minimizes travel time and cuts down fuel costs. The location intelligence feature helps ensure that your technicians arrive at the correct location on time, every time.
4. Standalone CRMs and ticketing systems
Although a CRM system can assist in managing customer communication, it may not be sufficient to handle field operations or provide a unified source of information.
By integrating your CRM with a flexible field service management platform, you can bring your customers, employees, and administrators onto the same page and streamline your field operations. Eliminate manual inefficiencies and welcome a hassle-free experience with CRM-FSM integration.
Human factors
1. Training field technicians regularly
Addressing skill gaps in service technicians through proper training is crucial for providing efficient and high-quality service to customers. It also helps to boost employee morale and job satisfaction, leading to better retention rates and overall business success.
2. Communication and collaboration
Effective communication with service technicians is crucial to ensure the timely and accurate delivery of services, minimize errors, and maximize customer satisfaction. Providing collaboration tools like field service mobile apps that can streamline communication, enhance efficiency, and improve overall performance.
FSM mobile apps that provide an offline mode option allow technicians to access the necessary information even when they are in remote, off-the-grid locations. The offline mode option reduces service delays, enabling technicians to continue their day-to-day activities as planned.
3. Employee utilization rates
Tracking field workforce productivity and utilization rates will help service businesses optimize their resource allocation and improve service availability. Distributing jobs evenly to prevent employee burnout, encouraging teamwork, and continuous improvement can be achieved through tracking and analyzing field service scheduling data and job completion status reports.
4. Unplanned employee leaves
Unplanned employee absences can significantly impact a service business’ operations and reputation. To avoid SLA breaches and offer uninterrupted service to customers, businesses can consider cross-training employees to handle multiple tasks and implement a field service management platform that reassigns such tasks automatically to available technicians.
5. Out of the blue, customer rescheduling requests
Service businesses must offer their customers the flexibility to reschedule appointments to deliver a positive customer experience. However, it’s also crucial to establish clear policies around cancellations and rescheduling to avoid financial loss or operational disruptions.
Environmental factors
1. Natural disasters
Adverse weather conditions such as snowfall, blocked roads, rains, and storms can hamper the speed of service delivery, and despite your best efforts, it may not be possible to reach a customer’s location within the desired timeframe. In such cases, communicating the reason for the delay and providing an estimated time for resolution can help manage customer expectations.
2. Power outages
Power outages can cause significant delays in field service delivery, especially if the equipment being serviced requires power to operate. This can also impact residential services such as cleaning or landscaping that rely on power tools to complete the service. In such cases, technicians may have to reschedule appointments or arrange alternative power sources to ensure uninterrupted service delivery.
3. Traffic conditions
The timely arrival of technicians to the customer’s location can be hampered by various factors such as roadblocks and traffic congestion. However, by utilizing the route optimization feature available in the FSM mobile app, technicians can identify the quickest or shortest route to the customer’s location and avoid delays caused by traffic.
Best practices to improve service availability
Here are some best practices to enhance service availability that you can implement for your business. Choose the strategies that best fit your service needs and business goals.
1. Eliminating data redundancy
Eliminating data redundancy is crucial for the success of a service business. Seamlessly integrating third-party apps with your FSM software can help reduce data redundancy, eliminate manual intervention and errors, streamline data accuracy, and reduce service delays.
2. Optimizing workforce schedules
Automated scheduling come in handy to scale and maintain service availability. It helps allocate resources, manage workload, and coordinate tasks across different teams, ensuring a reliable experience even during periods of high demand.
3. Improving stakeholder collaboration
Collaboration is crucial for stakeholder engagement and successful field operations. In-app chat, notes, attachments, and tagging options within FSM software can facilitate efficient collaboration, keeping internal stakeholders updated on job status in real-time while also sharing timely reminders and alerts with customers.
4. Retrieving insights from existing data
Analytics can reveal service trends, recurring patterns, and potential risks, helping service businesses make informed decisions. The right data analytics platform or even the reporting module of an ideal field service platform can offer insights into customer satisfaction levels, job completion rates, overdue invoices, and other key metrics. Identify process bottlenecks, predict and bridge skill gaps, and improve service delivery.
5. Implementing vacation or time-off policies
Create a clear time-off policy to prevent time theft, create a healthy work culture, and promote job satisfaction. Offering employees flexibility in their schedules can prevent burnout and increase job satisfaction, leading to improved productivity. Communicate expectations effectively and hold employees accountable in the case of policy violations.
6. Implementing a field service management platform
Improve service delivery with field service management platforms that offer a user-friendly mobile app for your technicians. Streamline processes like work order management, scheduling, invoicing, and payment collection with ease.
Gain better visibility into business processes, track performance metrics, and identify areas for improvement with an intuitive dashboard. Choose a flexible field service management software to tailor processes and workflows that meet your unique business needs.
7. Balancing workload and productivity
Balancing workload, productivity, frequency, and duration is the key to maintaining service availability and achieving business goals. FSM software like Zuper can help improve resource utilization, prevent missed SLAs, and ensure on-time service delivery. Efficiently allocating resources, prioritizing critical tasks, and investing in continuous improvement can help strike a balance and prevent missed opportunities.
Let’s wind up
In this blog, we emphasized the importance of minimizing downtime and keeping up with evolving customer expectations in the service industry. Factors such as overflowing schedules, lack of skilled employees, and inefficient ticketing systems can impact service delivery and result in SLA breaches.
Optimizing workforce schedules, turning data into actionable insights, and investing in a field service management platform are some best practices for improving service delivery. By choosing the right practices, service businesses can improve customer satisfaction, job completion rates, and workforce productivity.
Looking for an ideal FSM platform that would elevate your field service operations and improve service availability? Look no further than Zuper, sign up for a free demo and see how effortless field service management can be.
