Planning the routes of your technicians is one of the most important tasks in any HVAC company. And one in which the right service scheduling and dispatch software can really make a difference.
Every day, the person in charge of route planning must organize routes in the most optimized way possible. That is, making sure the technicians don’t travel from one end of town to the other several times a day. Instead, teams should be dispatched to different jobs in a way that they can focus most of their available time on work – not on driving.
Optimizing your routes also helps you deliver a better service for your customers. Reports show that 36% of customers wouldn’t rehire a field service company if the technician is half an hour late. This shows just how important a scheduling system should be for your business.
The higher this level of route optimization is, the more efficient your company will be. And efficiency in any field service business means more revenue. Let’s see how a service scheduling and dispatch software app can help with that!
Increased productivity
When you use service scheduling and dispatch software to plan your routes, creating an optimized schedule is a lot easier. Thanks to this, technicians will spend less time on the road, driving from one job to the next one. In turn, each member of the team will be able to fit in more jobs in the same amount of working hours. This means automatically more income for the company, while not wasting any time at all.
Another immediate advantage of optimized routes is that they help create a more organized work schedule for field service technicians. When you use a service scheduling and dispatch software tool, a dispatcher can check which job is attending each technician at any time. Also, if the technician is running late, you can warn the customer. Keeping clients up to date is another way of providing a good service.
Less expenses
When you have optimized routes, your workers spend less time on the road. That means, of course, saving a lot of money. What’s more, as your company vehicles won’t make so many miles, their life cycle will also be longer. And they won’t probably need so much regular maintenance check-ups.
Planning routes is easier
The usual process in route planning involves gathering a list of all available jobs for the whole day, and then manually assigning each of them to a technician. Sometimes, the dispatcher would introduce the addresses in Google Maps to map the routes and try to order them by location.
Well, that was until now. When you decide to start using service scheduling and dispatch software, the whole thing changes. No more making lists or manually entering addresses in mapping services. Professional field service management software such as Synchroteam can do the hard work for you. It processes all the necessary data and optimizes routes automatically, in almost no time. It’s an investment that truly returns, in terms of time and energy.
The right technicians at hand
Scheduling routes with the help of service scheduling and dispatch software means it’s also easier to make last-minute changes. Imagine an emergency job comes up in the middle of the day. With the schedule and dispatching module in Synchroteam, you can easily locate the best technician to attend it by proximity, and set the best time slot for them to cover that additional job.
The same happens if a technician calls in sick or needs to take some personal time off. The service scheduling and dispatch software tool lets you move all assigned jobs from one technician to another, and calculate optimized routes again.
Even in these COVID-19 times, when many technicians start off their day from home, the software application can make the necessary changes to the optimized route. In this way, the technician’s home will be established as starting and finishing point, thus saving time and fuel.
In short, investing in a service scheduling and dispatch software application such as Synchroteam can help you save work expenses, while increasing efficiency and productivity at the same time. Work smart, earn more and make both your technicians and customers happier! Try the free demo now and see the difference.
Image by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels
