Running a service business that has technicians working the field has a lot of challenges when it comes to proper and efficient managing. In the old days, you’d need to have them coming back to the main office every day to pick up their orders and drop off paperwork, and trying to keep everything in order would become a mess eventually. With modern technology and mobile devices, field technician apps can take over the heavy burden of management, resulting in faster responses to calls, more assurances, and less paperwork for your field technicians. To ensure your field technicians are using their time best, here are some tips for using field technician apps in the wild.
Ensure Proper Training
Just dropping an app onto your employee’s phone and expecting them to understand all its intricacies is going to result in a lot of time lost from them attempting to learn the app on the fly. If you are planning on going with field technician apps to manage your field team, then be sure that you go through the process of fully training them on every feature of the app, and that they understand it before they head out into the field. For each of your field technicians, show them the full process they need to go through each time they use the app for a job, teaching them checklists to ensure they don’t miss a step, which can result in extra paperwork later or issues with customer support.
Talk with Your Technicians
If you are trying to choose the right field technician apps for your company, then the first people you should be discussing it with are your field technicians. They know exactly what they need in the field to ensure that they have all the information they need for a job, as well as what features they need to document during the processes they go through so that they can provide proper customer service—especially if they need to return to a job later to fix issues.
Getting the Features Your Technicians Need
After speaking with your technicians, you’ll likely have a list of features you will be looking for in your field technician apps. Scheduling will be a number one feature; you need to know when and where all your technicians need to be every day to make sure they are servicing your customers with the proper priority. The app also needs to be able to give your technician all the details they need to effectively do their job when on a worksite; this will help them know exactly what they are fixing and will ensure they aren’t doing more than they should be. Doing extra services for free can cost your company a lot of money over time. Being able to track the location of your technicians will also help your dispatch center identify who is going to be closest should they need to redirect someone to an emergency job site.
Reliable Apps to Make Your Technicians Jobs Easier
If you are able to try out various apps, one thing you need to be sure of in your final choice for field technician apps is the reliability of the app. If your field technicians constantly are having issues working their app, if it disconnects or crashes often, then it’s going to make their work even more stressful. You want to choose an app your technicians actually want to use to make their life easier, one that will enable them to work more autonomously, with less time spent traveling to and from the main office.
If you are looking at field technician apps for your business, consider Field Metrix for better management of your field technicians and their jobs.
