The evolution of field service management has reached a point where mobile apps for field service engineers are no longer a nice to have but an essential component of your service delivery toolkit.
As service organizations strive for greater efficiency, these apps have become indispensable. They seamlessly connect on-site tasks with back-end operations, enabling real-time communication, task management, certification and compliance and customer engagement.
With the increasing demand for these tools, a plethora of apps have emerged, each offering unique features tailored to diverse requirements. It may be hard to decide on the right app for your engineering team, and which features to prioritise.
We have put together some tips to help you identify the right service provider during your product research.
Identify the needs of your field service engineers
Before embarking on selecting a mobile engineer app, it is essential to understand the needs of your field service engineers. Consider spending some time on site shadowing their work closely, with a particular focus on tasks involving capturing, processing, and exchanging information.
- How is this being done currently?
- Is it consistent across all your engineering team?
- What about your subcontractors – how does the process differ?
- How much relies on manual processes and paperwork?
- How many times do engineers need to involve the back-office team to be able to progress?
- How long does it take from arriving on site to completing a job, and how often is this done on the first visit?
- Is keeping up with job sheets, risk assessments, checklists and certifications frustrating your engineers?
Once you understand the challenges your engineers face daily, you can then look for opportunities to streamline the processes. This will be useful when it comes to comparing providers as you have a clear view of the issues you need to resolve.
Eliminate service-related paperwork in the field
When you shadowed your engineers, how many systems or people were involved in producing a quotation for a customer?
Look for a mobile app that enables engineers to compile comprehensive digital surveys of a job and can automatically produce a bill of materials and price-check parts at the correct rate according to the customer's SLA.
Engineers can then compile a photographic record of key property information such as location of equipment and any issues on site.
This forms part of the installation record and audit trail to provide a full understanding of what is needed so that an accurate quotation can be given to the customer. Once the customer accepts the quotation, a fixing list, and Bill of Materials (BOM) can be automatically raised on the system.
Automate van stock replenishment
During your preliminary research, if an engineer arrived onsite but didn’t have the spare parts in their van to fix the job first time, what did they do next, and how many systems or people were involved?
A complete service management system can transform your maintenance and repair operation by managing and tracking van stock more efficiently, making your engineers more efficient and increasing your service delivery profit.
Via their smart phones engineers need to be able to check parts out of their van stock. When van stock reaches a minimum level a replenishment order is automatically triggered to your suppliers.
Digital stock templates can control what parts your vans should hold. These can be driven by location and the nature of specific customer contracts and make it easy to adjust the number and combination of parts required at any time.
Provide Customer Notifications
There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a tradesman to arrive to your house, and not knowing when they are on their way. We have all been there. The same applies to your customers.
Look for a provider that provides an automated system to keep your customers fully informed of the status of their job at every stage in the journey.
The Aeromark system gives customers an estimated time of arrival as well as the ability to rebook or cancel their call. This eliminates ‘not at homes’ and helping you exceed your customers’ service expectations.
Interactive notifications via SMS or email, in your company branding, send customer’s confirmations of appointments, reminders and the expected time of arrival based on the current location of their engineer, which is constantly optimised and updated based on the engineer’s schedule. They can see how many stops away their engineer is and a time window for their arrival.
Customers can rebook their service call if not convenient and are offered several preferred dates. With quick links for customers to call or email their service team with any questions, all the doubt is removed.
Look at the bigger picture
There is little sense in investing in a mobile engineer app that stands alone from any other systems or processes used across your service delivery.
The mobile app should be part of a wider platform for service management otherwise, you are just moving the problem down the line and potentially creating more issues for your back-office team.
Look for a provider who offers an end to end solution that includes scheduling stock management and automatic rating. It may seem daunting to overhaul all your processes, that's where a true digital transformation partner can help. It will save you time and money in the long run.
It’s about time you spoke to Aeromark.
