Field service management is an important part of every organization as it ensures prompt and effective service delivery to customers. When a company has a well-oiled field service team. It becomes easy for them to deliver high-quality support services to customers either remotely or on-site. We would like to share with readers, tips we’ve discovered on maintaining an effective field service team encountered with experience.
Ways to improve maintenance of your field service team
1) Make sure staff members are well-connected
Create a culture of clear communication within your business across all teams and departments to keep operations running smoothly. For instance, implementing communication channels between all support desks and departments within your business. This provides employees the ability to clearly coordinate operations across multiple teams majorly impacting the effectiveness of overall operations.
2) Invest in technology
The world is becoming digital, relying a lot on technological investments that improve the quality of services delivered to customers. Service teams can make use of several technological investments to further support their service teams in daily operations. Service teams with enhanced technology can provide their customers with higher quality services than before.
AR-based remote visual support tools
Field service teams looking to provide customers remote support services can invest in services such as AIRe Link’s AR-based remote visual support platform. Such solutions provide the essential tools required to connect with customers visually & audibly to diagnose and resolve issues present. An effective field service team utilizes AR-based remote visual support to resolve customer issues faster than before while reducing costs associated with engineer callouts.
Provide field service technicians with mobile devices
Mobile technology investments for field service teams can enhance the way in which daily operations are untaken. For example, engineers facing challenging issues in the field can contact their manager or team members for visual assistance. Engineers can visually show issues present while brainstorming a solution without the need for additional team members to go onsite.
Engineers travelling onsite will also have access to a wide range of navigational apps that can come in handy for hard-to-find customer sites that standard satnavs cannot locate. In addition, engineers arriving onsite early or stuck in traffic, can call ahead, and let customers know the updated estimated time of arrival.
3) Don’t underestimate training
Training is critical for ensuring your field service team has the skills necessary to perform their jobs effectively and safely. Training should cover the systems in place, how to resolve the most common problems faced by your service team, and how to professionally communicate with customers. You could even utilize AR-based remote visual support such as AIRe Link to conduct remote training sessions with employees. You can learn more about remote training here.
Simply connect as usual and use the audio-visual capabilities to conduct training sessions instead of supporting customers.
Improve training resources available to your field service team
Improve training resources available to your field service team. Create outlined solution cards showing how to resolve the most common problems faced by your teams. Even when training sessions are over, these resources should be accessible. Learn how AIRe Link leads to better knowledge sharing of training resources in field service teams enabling technicians to reference them whenever they get stuck resolving customer issues, boosting the chance of a first-time remote fix.
Keep training consistent
Consistent training sessions are an important aspect to maintain an effective field service team. Over time employees can forget specific elements, especially for uncommon tasks rarely undertaken. A good idea is to keep training sessions consistent to ensure employees build confidence and polish their expertise. As a result, your customers always receive a high standard of service.
Make sure your technicians get the right training
Making sure technicians receive the correct training is essential to maintaining an effective service team. Many field service teams segregate employees into departments that handle different cases and tasks. As a result, training should specialise around the issues most commonly faced by each team.
A good idea could also be to cross-train employees to undertake tasks other teams’ handle. In the event you are short staffed, the workload can still be resolved by other employees within the business.
4) Develop a strategic plan
Create a consistent schedule
An effective field service team has a consistent workplace schedule in place so all employees know which tasks should be undertaken at certain times of the day. Employees should also be aware of business operations so they can plan daily routines accordingly. For example, they should know when support lines are busiest so they can be in position to resolve customer issues.
Remove inefficient paperwork from the field service process
As part of a strategic plan, a good idea might be to remove paperwork from the field service process and delegate it to less busy administration departments. It’s best to leave technicians to do what they best, resolving customer issues, and not waste their valuable time with inefficient paperwork. A team could even be set up to handle the paperwork to maintain efficiency within your field service team.
5) Ensure technicians have the right tools for the job
An effective field service team is one that carries out audit inspections to ensure technicians have the right tools for the job. It’s recommended to regularly check tool and spare part stock levels to guarantee your team never runs out resulting in delayed services for customers. Remote audit inspections can also be carried out using AR-based remote visual support AIRe Link which you can learn about here.
6) Communicate with your team
An effective field service team is one that is constantly communicating with management and is kept in the loop regarding business operations. You could even hold morning meetings to go over key tasks planned for the day so employees know what is expected before starting work.
Remain open to feedback
An important element for maintaining an effective field service team is having an open-door policy remaining open to feedback. Some of the best ideas come from those working internally, which makes sense as they have the most experience. After all, these are the people that decisions will impact the most. Listen to their ideas and concerns, learn from their expertise, and keep your door open to feedback.
Provide your team feedback
Field service teams should be provided feedback on the work carried out based on responses from customers, co-workers, and management. Good work can be recognised while mistakes or areas of improvement can be discussed to identify strengths and weaknesses.
Field service teams using AIRe Link can take advantage of analytical data to track support sessions undertaken by individual employees. Prior to feedback being provided. Managers can review the work undertaken by induvial employees to discover their strengths and weaknesses that require improvement.
To conclude
Maintaining an effective field service team not only helps business operations run more smoothly. It can be the difference between a one-time customer, and a client for life. There are many elements that require attention to maintain the effectiveness of a service team. From keeping employees well-trained and happy to have procedures in place to resolve customer issues fast.
