Field service and customer transparency

These days, a business is as good as it is transparent. Businesses are on unsteady ground because of the ever changing face of social media and a never-seen-before demand for information. With many sources of info on the internet, being credible is a sure way of building trust and loyalty among clients.

Here is an example. Customers will always believe what they see. If they see the work you put into furnishing their favourite products, you have a greater chance of getting their approval. They can invest more in what they see. The clothing merchandise Patagonia did this for their Footprint Chronicles line to show how their jackets are made and worked out fine for them.
Transparency is a must. Nowadays, customers never forget when they feel cheated. It is even harder to ensure transparency because many clients are also experts who scrutinise every detail. So, how can you keep transparency at the forefront?

Have transparent workforce management

Customers always look for new information and want to be in the know. There is nothing worse than not being able find a product manual or an easy way to set up appointments. By giving your clients a self-service option, they can pick the services they want. This leaves more time to get stuff done rather than answering unending service calls from dissatisfied customers.

For instance, you could have a field service customer self-service application that allows customers to look for personalised services, a machine manual, book appointments, or solve any other problem. Customers then get feedback anytime. This one-on-one approach can help customers feel like their questions are being answered. They?ll also not go through the hassle of long hold times to reach an available customer service representative.

Create transparency in field service repair projects

If field technicians have access to field service software, it allows technicians to be more open to customers. This gives them vital information like customer history and the ERP, so that they can explain changes that were made after past enquiries and what is being done in current products. Such information can be a guide for future updates or let the techs suggest products that suit a client’s taste. Unlike always staying offline and out of touch with your client, using field service software can allow entry of allowances and mileage, and also let the customer know the delivery time for their products.

Show customers what they’re paying for

With field service automation, billing will also be transparent. By using the available information about your field service solution, the station can send updated service reports to the customer like mileage, allowances, parts, hours worked, and photos of broken parts from the service. After the customer authenticates the transaction with a signature, the field service agent can generate and sent to the customer an invoice based on the agreed upon services. In case allowances and mileage can be forwarded to the customer, it will be shown on the invoice.
Because you use field service automation, it means that the customer will receive the invoice really fast ? in days rather than weeks ? and transparency will skyrocket because the whole experience of the service will leave a permanent mark in their mind.

Mistaking information for transparency

Being honest with your customer is the one thing. Wasting their time with unnecessary information is another. Here is an experience I had with a small retailer. Tracking information is only useful if it has recent updates and is accurate. If the company want to use real time tracking, let them do so under one condition ? updates should be regular and on time so as not to leave the customer frustrated because they also make plans based on the same information. Late updates shed light on the nature of the service command. Everyone hates cooked-up real time information.

A company must not always have a one to one exchange of information with customers to maintain transparency..

Use simple language that all customers can understand
Don’t use abbreviations that only employees know
Never ever air your failures and flaws to your customers

It is interesting that most of the tools we use to keep in touch with our clients and servicing their requests can also be used to gather data and iron out possible errors to improve products and services. This is a good chance for service providers to evaluate and make necessary amendments.

There are some areas that will need improving while others will not, nevertheless, the client needs to always be informed and know why things are the way they are. Not all details should be told, so filter what you share.

5 ways field service supports customer service

Sales organisations are always in motion, working to deliver the right product to their customers. To keep customers smiling all times is hard and only needs close communication and fulfilling promises that were made to them. This is where the field service delivery team comes in. Field service can either meet this demand or fall short plummeting satisfaction rates.
This is a task that relies on right people using various parts and information to get the job done. No matter what, the customer always expects to get exceptional services whether it be over the phone, chats, in the field, online messaging, over email, or social media.

These five field service points are suitable for any business model and guarantee excellent company-client relations.

Proactive service

A proactive service gives more to the customer. More attention is given to the customer so that the right actions, deliveries and repairs are done. By getting everything right the first time, the customer has less to do ensuring that they are satisfied with the services.
However, the field service technician is flooded with a myriad of unpredictable situations; overheating equipment, stalled machines, and insufficient precaution. But through field management software, they get more data about the customer and type of service or parts expected and they easily ride through any storm and prevent future damage.

Transparency

Nothing frustrates a customer more than a schedule that delays repairs. They easily ditch you for better services elsewhere. By offering the customer a service where they book appointments based on their own availability, we can easily sync this to the technicians and manager?s calendar. This not only saves time but also money from otherwise idle equipment.

On-site and off-site collaboration

Having seamless communication between field and office technicians is vital. Field technicians need to know more about parts, repairs, client maintenance history, and predict what should be changed in the long run. The faster they do this the better.

There should be a system that creates and automates communication between field and office technicians. Let each have the upper hand when providing parts, products or services to the customer.

Flexibility

Information is key to field service agents. They make the first impression since they make the initial contact with clients. Regardless of the resources, the field technician must always be armed with mobile tools they will need to access online resources and be ready for any emergency.

Actionable performance improvements

Customers demand excellent service a company could offer. But as the game constantly shifts, the service management technicians must also come up with plans to stay up to par with competition. All these stems from coming up with KPIs, measuring them and turning them into a workable plan for the future.

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

About a quarter of the world’s population use the Internet. That’s approximately 1.7 billion people. How many will come to your site the moment it launches? Zero.

It will take some time before the search engines are able to index your site and allow the possibility of driving some visitor traffic there. But even when your site does get indexed, that’s no assurance people will even have the chance of finding it.

So unless you apply SEO, your chances of improving those traffic numbers from zilch would nearly be zilch too. Traffic is a fundamental prerequisite in eCommerce. Before any store, virtual or otherwise, can ever hope to make a sale, the first step is to get noticed by the potential customer.

Our SEO specialists can drive your pages to the top of search results so that potential customers can see results leading to your site first.

Depending on the product or service you’re offering, getting to be ranked high on the search engines can be extremely labour-intensive. Basically, it’s the kind of job you’d rather not keep in-house but its the kind of job our team would be happy to take charge on.

Different products and services have different SEO requirements. We won’t recommend an SEO package if we think it will only translate to unnecessary spending.

These are the essentials of our SEO packages:

Targeted keywords and keyphrases. We’ll conduct extensive research on your product line and your product competitors to get hold of the best targeted keywords and keyphrases. If your competitors missed any important keyphrases, we’ll find those as well.
Strategically planted backlinks. We’ll concentrate our backlinking efforts on relevant backlinks to achieve top search engine rankings. As an added bonus, relevant backlinks drive in traffic that really matter as this is made up of visitors with the highest potential of turning into buyers.
On-site SEO. Certain issues arising from the mere makeup of most eCommerce websites are making on-site SEO tweaking more challenging. In fact, not all SEO consultants cater to these specific problems. Our specialists, on the other hand, pay special attention to issues regarding pagination resulting in keyword cannibalisation, product pages, landing page optimisation and the like.
Selection of SEO packages. While you’re still starting out, you may want to try our basic packages first. Then once you see traffic pouring in and revenues begin to build up, you can up the ante by upgrading to our premium packages.

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IT Systems Implementation

Are you ready to find out how your newly accepted IT system fares in the real world? Although a rigorous Acceptance testing process can spot a wide spectrum of flaws in a newly constructed IT system, there is no way it can identify all possible defects. The moment the IT system is delivered into the hands of actual end users and other stakeholders, it is effectively stepping out of a controlled and secure environment.

Thus, it is during this phase wherein issues having direct impact on the business can arise.

It is our duty to ensure that the Systems Implementation phase is carried out as thoroughly, professionally, and efficiently as possible.

Thoroughly, because we need to include all relevant data and other deliverables, eliminate hard-to-detect miscalculated results, and substantially reduce the probability of business and mission critical issues popping up in the future;

Professionally, because it is the best way to address the sensitive process of turning over a new system to users who have gotten used to the old one;

And efficiently, because we want to minimise the duration over which all stakeholders have to adapt to the new system and allow them to move on to the process of growing the business.

Preparation

Louis Pasteur once said, “Luck favours the mind that is prepared.”

While we certainly won’t leave anything to chance, we do put substantial weight on the Preparation stage of Systems Implementation. We’re so confident with the strategies we employ in Preparation, that we can assure you of an utterly seamless Deployment and Transition phase.

By this we mean that issues that may arise during Deployment and Transition will be handled smoothly and efficiently because your people will know exactly what to do.

Here’s how we will prepare your organisation for Deployment:

Identify all key players for the Systems Implementation phase and orient them on their specific roles. We’ll make sure they know what possible hitches may come their way and how to deal with them.
Identify all end users and their corresponding functions, then assign appropriate access rights.
Draw multi-layered contingency plans to capture and address each possible concern that may crop up during Deployment.
Prepare a systematic step-by-step procedure and checklist for the entire Deployment stage. Both of them should have been copied from a similar procedure and checklist used in the Acceptance testing phase.
Make all stakeholders understand the conditions required before Deployment can commence.
Set the appropriate environment so that all stakeholders know what to expect and when to expect them the moment Deployment commences.
Prepare Technical Services and Technical Support personnel for the gruelling mission ahead.
Make sure all communication processes are well coordinated so that everyone affected will know who to contact and how to get in touch with them when a problem arises.
Plan and schedule training sessions so that they can be conducted “just in time”. Training sessions conducted way ahead of Deployment are often useless because the trainees tend to forget about what they learned when the time comes to apply them. Similarly, training sessions conducted way after Deployment also become useless because trainees are seldom able to internalise instructions delivered during crash courses.

Deployment

There are two sets of issues to keep an eye on during Deployment:

Issues directly related to the technology itself, e.g. application functionality and data integrity, and
Issues emanating from the end users, i.e., their unwillingness to use the new system. One reason may be because they find the interface and procedures too confusing. Another would be due to other inconveniences that come with adapting to a new set of procedures.

Despite all the meticulous scrutiny employed during Acceptance testing, there are just some problems that are made obvious only during Deployment. Issues belonging to the first set are dealt with easily because of the plans and procedures we put in place during the Preparation stage. As an added measure, our team will be on hand to make sure contingency plans are executed accordingly.

While the second set of issues is often neglected by many IT consultancy companies, we choose to meet it head on.

We fully understand that end users are most sensitive to the major changes that accompany a new system. It is precisely for this reason why our training activities during Deployment are designed not only to educate them but also to make them fully appreciate the necessity of both the new system and the familiarisation phase they will need to go through.

The faster we can bring your end users to accept the new system, the faster they can refocus on your company’s business objectives.

Here’s what we’ll do to guarantee the smoothest Deployment process you’ve ever experienced.

Employ the procedure and checklist formulated during the Preparation stage.
Ensure all end users are well acquainted with any additional tasks they would need to perform (e.g. filling up manual logs).
Assess which legacy systems can still be used alongside the new technology and which ones have to be retired.
Supervise the installation and optimal configuration of all supporting hardware and software to make sure the likelihood of errors originating from them are brought to near-zero levels.
Supervise the installation and optimal configuration of the products themselves.
Carry out data migration tasks if necessary.
Organise and oversee parallel runs to check for data and report inconsistencies.
Conduct training sessions in a professional and well-timed manner to eliminate end-users’ feelings of agitation and to take advantage of memory absorption and retention duration as with regards to their assigned duties and responsibilities.

Transition

Do you often feel uneasy whenever the reins to a newly purchased IT system are handed over to you? Perhaps there are some issues that you feel haven’t been fully settled but, at the same time, find it too late to back out, having already invested so much time and resources.

Alright, so maybe the thought of “backing up” never crossed your mind. However, the concern of being “not yet ready” is raised by many organisations towards the tail end of most Deployment stages. This usually drags the Deployment stage into a never-ending process.

Our team of highly experienced specialists will make sure you reach this point with utmost confidence to proceed on your own.

To wrap up our comprehensive IT Systems Implementation offering, we’ll take charge of the following:

Verify that all deliverables, including training materials and other technical documentation, are accomplished and expected outcomes are realised.
Make sure all technical documentation are placed in a secure and accessible location.
Institute best practices to ensure the IT system becomes fully utilised and to reduce its exposure to avoidable risks.
Establish open communication lines with the Technical Support team to enable quick resolution of issues.
Ensure complete knowledge transfer has been fully achieved so that your people will spend less time calling Technical Support and more on operations contributory to business growth.

How FieldElite helps Electricians

The need to hire an electrician arises more often than we expect. It’s quite common to come across problems with structure-wiring, whether at home or in your business premises. It’s, therefore, not surprising to come across a home or a business owner in search of electrical services.

Whether a startup or a fully-fledged business that offers electrical services, there are challenges that come with running the venture. Where you have field service electricians, the challenges are even compounded, more so on matters of assigning tasks, receiving complaints from customers, and receiving field service reports.

As we all know, an electrical business isn’t just limited to the management of field service electricians. You’ll have to manage all the processes, a responsibility that can be quite daunting.

It doesn’t have to be difficult, though. You can take advantage of a field service management software program to make the entire management process effortless.

FieldElite is one such software. With FieldElite, you can assign tasks, communicate, and receive reports from your electricians on the go. Incorporating field service management in your electrical business enables you to run your business operations smoothly.

Below are some of the benefits of using FieldElite field service management software.

Increased Efficiency

Improved efficiency is the number one benefit electricians can get from field service management software. With FieldElite, electricians can accept jobs while in the field and add attachments together with client signatures using their smartphones or tablets. From the field management software, they can get information on the optimal route to the site, the tools required for the job, the service history of the customer, and contractual commitments.

Managing and scheduling tasks on FieldElite are just a few clicks away for office-based operators. That means reduced travel times and delays that often cripple workforce management.

Improved Professionalism

FieldElite field management software gives you a professional edge over your competitors. With this field management software, you can store all your business-related information in a central place. Therefore, each of your electricians can access the data from anywhere using their smartphone or tablet installed with the FieldElite mobile application. As such, there?s no breach in communication, and that means the electricians will get the scheduled tasks on time. Building such relationships with your team in the field encourages teamwork and motivates each team member to play their part. Again, since you can monitor what’s going on in the field, you can address the issues raised by your electricians or customers as soon as possible.

Effective Communication

Timely communication is very essential if you’re working with field technicians. Since you’ll not always be with them in the field, it’s always important to establish a proper communication channel to ensure information reaches them in time. With FieldElite field service management software, electricians receive notifications and details about tasks assigned to them via the FieldElite mobile app.

On the other hand, office-based staff can access the report with the details of the job once the electrician completes the given task. This implies that both the electricians and the office-based operators can get communication instantly, enabling them to see and manage their workloads. Individual electricians can close jobs on-site and proceed to the next task without having to do paperwork reporting. For this reason, electricians can complete multiple tasks within a short time, which improves their overall productivity.

High Accuracy

With FieldElite field service management software, missing data or incomplete information is a thing of the past. Electricians no longer have to deal with paperwork, which can be daunting and time-consuming, yet with a million and one errors. With FieldElite advanced mobile features, all field service processes and operations are automated. The electricians are left with quite little to do, and that minimises data entry errors.

Because the managers get real-time updates from the field techs, they can accurately maintain and track the field processes. With FieldElite mobile features, managers can get information regarding the job status, the actual time of arrival, and the time taken to complete the task. With such updates, the electricians are better placed to do the job well without wasting much time, thus improving their overall productivity.

Improved Co-ordination With The Team

Apart from improving the productivity of the electricians, FieldElite improves coordination with the entire management team. For instance, an electrician can be assigned new tasks within the same area where they’re currently assigned instead of sending another to complete a task in that same place. FieldElite makes this possible by always capturing the current location and job status.

Whenever a new request is made in an area, FieldElite first checks the database to confirm if there is an electrician already assigned in that area. If the status of the ongoing assignment is complete or almost complete and the new task request can wait for the remaining time, the electrician in the field would be assigned the new task. By doing so, the business saves on cost and time and minimises movements.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

As an electrician, you’ll only be satisfied if the service you offer makes the customer happy. Apart from fixing their wiring problems, they?d be happy if you responded quickly to their request. This is only made possible with field service management software. With FieldElite, managers can notify the electricians on the service requests in their respective areas, allowing them to respond to the call within a very short time. Not only does this give you some level of satisfaction as the business owner but it’s also a win for the company.

Make your field work-flow better with FieldElite, and improve the productivity of your electricians. With FieldElite releasing regular and timely updates, users aren’t left behind whenever there are changes in the field service industry. The updates introduce new features and capture new standards to ensure that you get the best experience with the software at all times.