Earlier this week, I published a post by my colleague Christine Friscic about how field service organizations can achieve more operational agility by leveraging mobility. Empowering field service techs with mobility tools seems like a no-brainer, but it’s possible some organizations are missing the point slightly. It’s not just a matter of giving techs a phone, messaging, or push-to-talk capabilities, although these are certainly considered table stakes in the field service game and you shouldn’t be without them.
Think about your current state of mobility in the field and then level up: can your field managers actually manage in the field? Or are they functioning as a middleman between techs and the back office, relaying information and waiting for a response? If they have the ability to manage teams as they’re supervising or completing jobs themselves, your entire field is prepared to be much more responsive and agile.
Similarly, while your techs might be able to message one another or even send a text to an entire group, enhancing this capability with context-aware features means your techs can request help or inventory from fellow techs who may actually be just blocks away. (This type of automation and specificity is the stuff that saves you loads of time, by the way. Stop making your techs send group texts and then sit in the truck awaiting an answer while your customer watches and tweets about it.)
And finally – empower your field personnel to be the heroes on the front lines of customer service. When they’re integrated with the call center, the warehouse, the back office, or whatever part of the organization can help them do their job better – customers don’t have to start from scratch every time they talk to someone new in the course of doing business. Your techs already know the whole story, and they can get right to work making your customers happier, sooner.
Check out the whole story here.
SARAH SHEEHAN 