Think about your dispatcher’s life. Your field service dispatcher starts their day, addresses multiple service calls, and contacts technicians to know their location—all day. Constantly conversing with field service teams, constantly on the go—just to dispatch the right technician to the correct job.
The email inbox is full of customer queries about technician arrival, and the phone keeps ringing with emergency service requests.
Let’s step into the dispatcher’s shoes.
The job of a dispatcher is overwhelming; dispatch management is a stressful job with more than just tending to service call assignments and enquiring about technicians’ availability and location.
Without proper dispatch tools, the manual process of assigning routes to technicians is time-consuming, and keeping everything updated in real-time is impossible.
Multiple service calls, conflicting schedules, and unforeseen issues arise—this is when your dispatchers struggle, and your business suffers.
But it doesn’t have to. Pick the right solution. Give your dispatchers what they need, and their productivity will improve—so will your business’s efficiency.
Start by providing your dispatchers with the right dispatching tools and resources. It makes their job easier and helps make their workload more manageable.
In today’s world, field service dispatchers should not be forced to rely on archaic tools when better options are available.
If you already have tools for your dispatchers, it might be time to reconsider if they are really the right ones.
The inefficiency of archaic tools
Despite the availability of modern tools and dispatch software, about 60% of US businesses still rely on inefficient tools such as spreadsheets, according to an article by Enterprise Times.
No doubt. Spreadsheets help identify skilled technicians and track their performance. But they can also lead to inconsistencies and chaos if too many users start working on the same document simultaneously.
Your dispatchers and other desk workers have to spend most of their time assessing, analyzing, and making decisions based on data gathered from spreadsheets. The worst part is that data entered in spreadsheets are recorded based on manual processes and verbal communication.
People can miss-key an entry or mishear something that was said. Inaccuracies are bound to crop up, and there are really no efficient dispatcher tools.
These inefficiencies and inaccuracies can grind your dispatching process to a halt and negatively impact your overall effectiveness as a field service business.
Top 9 breakthrough dispatcher tools to maximize productivity
Dispatchers juggle a variety of tasks. They need to balance finding the technician with the right skill set, answering customers when they ask for an update, talking with the tech team about their whereabouts, and ensuring that jobs are progressing well.
The real challenge is that juggling between a variety of different tasks is harmful to productivity. When productivity is affected, field service operations lose their efficiency.
To avoid this, take a look at the following productivity tools that can boost your field service operations efficiency. These nine tools will help your dispatchers assign calls faster and more efficiently.
Communication and Collaboration tool
Communication and collaboration are the keys to dispatchers getting their job done faster. They must communicate with customers and technicians daily to make sure the right personnel are quickly assigned to the right job.
And they need to collaborate with the back-office team too. Dispatchers are at the center of it all. Communicating job schedules, customer details, and route instructions to the field service technician team all fall to dispatchers.
In the old days, dispatchers communicated through phone calls, text messages, and two-way radio. But, these methods are no longer considered to provide the best customer service experience.
They lack visibility and transparency, which is important when assigning and dispatching your technicians. When the field service team and back office are in sync and can access the information they need, dispatchers are able to send the right technician to the correct job site based on skill, availability, and proximity to the customer location.
Start adopting modern communication and collaboration tools to make dispatching faster and more efficient by making sure everyone is on the same page.
Scheduling optimizer
As new customer bookings come in, the scheduling optimizer helps ensure that resources are assigned and managed without conflicts. More efficient use of personnel can be achieved by evaluating and optimizing schedules based on criteria such as technicians’ availability, skill set, and current location.
Using the scheduling optimizer tool, dispatchers are able to make the most efficient use of available technicians, including what tools and equipment are required for an assigned job.
Balancing the workload of each technician and reducing their travel time between various job sites is made easy by an assisted scheduling tool—making the dispatching process quicker and more accurate.
Because of real-time visibility of field service operations, dispatchers are able to make informed decisions and respond to customer issues as they arise.
Route optimization tool
It’s common for dispatchers to give mapping instructions when technicians have multiple jobs at different sites throughout the day. But, assigning routes this way can confuse and frustrate technicians. Wasted travel time increases labor costs in the field. Additionally, unclear travel instructions can lead to missed appointments.
Give your dispatchers the right tools to help them assign calls and routes appropriately—not just by finding the shortest route between A and B but also by assigning the right tech to the correct job using a variety of different variables, including service priority and which technician is available during what hours.
By using intelligent route optimization tools, dispatchers are able to reduce service delays, providing customers with an improved service experience.
Dispatch Board
The dispatch board offers a complete bird’s view of the entire field service jobs with a map view. Dispatchers can use the dispatch board to glance at all the relevant information they need in a single platform. Technicians have grouped on the dispatch board, so dispatchers can get a clear view of who is available and who has the right skills for the job.
Dispatchers can quickly reschedule jobs with a drag-and-drop calendar. The best part is they can get customizable views with improved transparency over field service jobs to make informed decisions.
Jobs are categorized as unassigned, assigned, and overdue—so dispatchers can stay alert regarding job status, helping them quickly identify and resolve any issues that may arise.
Project Management tool
Dispatchers can keep track of all projects they work on and assign work with an efficient project management tool. Cloud-based project management tools are preferred, as they can provide excellent collaboration across teams regardless of geographic location.
The tool indicates which tasks are dependent on one another—making it easier for the whole team to work together. Your dispatchers can distinguish task priorities—allowing them to focus more on their most essential work.
Dispatchers can track the time spent on every task and collect data about technicians or other desk workers. Making data-driven decisions could be challenging, but with powerful reporting and data-analyzing capabilities—dispatchers can make decisions effortlessly.
Note-taking tool
Dispatchers won’t always have a pen handy, and losing track of loose papers is all too easy. As such, modern digital note-taking tools come in handy to capture information and sync across devices.
Notes can be categorized with tags for convenience, and images, videos, and contact details can be uploaded, helping to create a clutter-free workspace.
They can quickly take notes when a customer calls and share them with other desk workers, too—ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Time tracking tool
Following the location of the field service team, live from the back office is now simple—without making multiple phone calls to them. Complete visibility of technicians’ whereabouts is now possible with the use of a time-tracking tool.
The field service team can start each job with a time tracker, a simple time tracking application, or a field service mobile app. The dispatcher’s desktop will reflect an accurate record of time spent.
Accuracy and automatic time tracking are made simple. As an add-on perk, your business can convert the data into labor costs—error-free. So, dispatchers don’t need to chase after technicians to know how much time they spend on each job—they can have the required data on their desktops without having to worry about accuracy.
Gantt chart tool
One of the best things about the Gantt chart tool is its ability to represent things visually. Your dispatchers can easily find out the status of a project with comprehensive visualizations.
Your dispatchers can make their job easier with the help of simplified Gantt charts. They can prioritize tasks, making sure that the highest priority and most essential tasks are completed first.
The cool thing about Gantt charts is they enable dispatchers to predict potential roadblocks that may delay a task or project completion. Your dispatchers are always in the know—allowing them to make proactive decisions and ensure projects stay on track.
Field service management software
Your business does not need to spend money on every productivity tool you need. Field service management software is a popular unified solution with everything you need to boost your dispatchers’ productivity.
The powerful, customizable, and flexible software streamlines your field service operations, including the dispatching process. Simply put, everything related to dispatching can be carried out accurately and effortlessly with centralized field service management software.
Scheduling jobs and dispatching the field service technician with the right skillset based on real-time updates regarding their availability, and location, and proximity is made effortless with the help of this cloud-based software.
Juggling tasks and manual, time-consuming workflows belong in the past—today, dispatchers can focus on increasing their productivity and efficiency with the help of comprehensive field service management software.
They can communicate and collaborate in real-time, schedule jobs with the latest updates, optimize routes, streamline work order management, get complete visibility with the help of an intelligent dispatch board, manage field service projects, and more. Field service management software makes your dispatcher’s work life easier—smoothening your field service dispatching process.
Conclusion
Manual dispatching processes and archaic tools are time-consuming and stressful. Provide them with efficient productivity tools to ease their job for the better productivity they can give. Get your dispatchers ready to take on faster dispatching and decision-making to boost their productivity and serve your customers better. Looking for a centralized tool or software product with robust features? Learn how field service management software can level up your employee productivity and streamline the field service dispatching process. If you’re looking for more guidance, we’re happy to help you. Let’s discuss this with a personalized demo here.
