Technology is nowadays present in every aspect of our life. And it applies to both sides, personal and work life. Without a question, this innovation needs to make its way to our field service businesses. This of course includes taking our field service technicians into account. If not, there’s a very significant chance of losing competitiveness.
It is true that the IoT (Internet of Things) phenomena is streamlining procedures and automating actions. Technology helps simplify and improve a number of maintenance tasks in the field service area. And it also facilitates general contact between field service technicians, manufacturers and suppliers. However, the on-site staff members are still essential and vital to finding answers and completing the task at hand.
In relation to this matter, field service companies also confront challenges in attracting talent and providing ongoing training for their employees.
Helping technicians acquire more skills
The challenge facing service businesses extends beyond simply recruiting enough people to fill open positions at all professional levels. They also struggle to locate field service technicians with the necessary abilities. Particularly as the nature of service work changes and goes beyond “just fixing a machine.” Thus, in addition to things, candidates need to be able to:
- Adjust to and learn about the new tech tools related to providing services
- Learn about the new service protocols connected to increasingly sophisticated assets
- Work well in a group or cooperative environment
- Have the ability to connect with the customer in order to enhance their experience
5 ways to improve technicians time value
Make the tasks simpler. The qualities and prerequisites for the different service jobs vary with regard to abilities or skills. The easier jobs should be connected to junior field service technicians through intelligent allocation. And they will be able to move up the ladder based on their growth and experience.
Make information easier to access. Provide technological solutions that enable access to everything pertinent to the job. Because just the location and contact information is simply not enough. In this way we’ll make it possible for field service technicians to be more independent.
Put workflows into action. There will likely be differences in the workflows for an installation task, a breakage repair or an inspection.. These might even change based on the customer. Having a field service management tool to specify workflows would be preferable to our field service technicians. The alternative, having to learn and retain all of the options, is a waste of resources!
Assist employees with automatic learning and intelligence. A product’s life cycle generates a lot of data from both the product and the interactions with people. Making sense of this data and coming up with concepts helps people make better decisions. This also works for your management software and field service technicians.
Integrate social communication with your work. It is the personal element that unifies everything, even in cases where a large portion of the service is automated. We could refer to it as field service, but with a human touch. For instance, using voicemails or phone calls is already a crucial aspect of the work. Does your field service software work with collaboration and messaging apps?
The best solution for technicians is mobile
According to a report published by Gartner in 2018, more than 75% of field service organizations with over 50 users are expected to have mobile applications. And with this we mean apps that go beyond simple data gathering. The idea is to have a field service mobile app with features that help field service technicians complete their daily tasks successfully.
This same Gartner report states that any top-notch field service management solution should meet at least four of the following five functional categories:
- Control over the amount of work that is required
- Planning and scheduling features
- Technical capabilities, such as the essential capacity to support field services digitally
- Reports on job orders
- Integration with operations (invoicing, reporting, managing maintenance contracts, and more)
Good news: Synchroteam fully meets all these requirements! What’s more, it can be integrated with other third-party solutions to automate processes. And of course, it’s 100% cloud-based. Download the 14-day free trial and give it a go!
Photo by ThisIsEngineering
