Small business organizations are subject to a plethora of impediments, like dependence on clients, inadequate staff, and striking the right balance between creating premium quality products and boosting sales. In fact, the majority of the bigger challenges faced by small business owners revolve around the main theme – the crux.
Small businesses strive to expand their business on shoestring budgets and when there is a dearth of funds, this makes them tough to decide regarding allocation of funds. However, amidst all this, it is sad to note that the main area often neglected by small businesses is technical support. How often do the business owners schedule a maintenance technician? Very rare, it seems.
Considering how much these businesses rely on computer networks and systems to conduct their regular business operations, it is imperative for business owners to call them often and get things checked. Without them, the company may eventually be attacked by hackers and this day will come sooner.
Scheduling a technician – What is it?
Scheduling a technician is a process where the FSOs or the field service organizations and businesses like fire inspection companies, pool maintenance agencies, or HVAC schedule the best technicians to service the orders of customers.
For instance, in an HVAC company, the dispatchers call their technicians on either a daily or a weekly basis to attend their customer calls. The technician scheduling process is done on several factors like time and distance of travel, the expertise and skills of the technician, availability of customers, and their seasonality.
How can you enhance the process of technician scheduling?
As long as streamlining the process of technician scheduling is concerned, you have to adopt automation, personalization, and addressing customer notifications. Let’s take a detailed look into this.
- Automation is the key
Just as the right OEE formula can automate the smart manufacturing process, similarly, automated scheduling of technicians can be more accurate and effective than doing the whole thing manually. Rather than depending on dispatchers that plan routes manually, isn’t it better to leverage accurate algorithms to schedule the best routes within a few seconds?
Did you know that before adapting automation, Telgian spent around 315 man-hours/month manually planning the schedules of technicians? After automation, they slashed off manpower by 65% and this led to an 85% boost in efficiency.
- Personalize your route escalation requirements
No, all businesses don’t have similar route escalation needs. Hence, if you can personalize the factors of your planned routes, technicians can be scheduled as per their individual workflow.
Are you the manager of an entire team of technicians? If yes, you’ll know that each of them has a different set of skills and unless you adjust the routes accordingly, you can’t appoint the right technician for the right job. In case any of your technicians is armed with vehicles that can carry damaged objects, it is better to alter their routes in such a manner that they could carry as many appliances as possible.
- Keep notifying and informing your customers
Send real-time notifications to your customers so that you may plan the schedule of the technician by leveraging GPS tracking on the smartphone of your technician. How about sending a live link to the customer about the location of the technician? As you do this, they can utilize this GPS tracking to track the progress of the technician and get an idea of their expected arrival time. Boost your FTF (first-time-fix) rate to curb the total number of visits that the technicians need to make to reach a customer.
So, now that you know the importance of scheduling a technician for your small business and how to go about the process, watch out for automated tools for help. Keep in mind features like route planner, real-time order tracking, dynamic routing, and balanced workloads before choosing automation software.