7 Warning Signs That It's Time to Adopt Field Service Automation

So, when your customers are changing, you also have to change. As you have allowed your employees to work from home, you have to allow your customers to receive your services from home too. For that, you have to empower your field workers so they can serve all your clients in their own homes.

What more you need is field service automation to manage multiple operations, customer bases, ever-changing requirements, etc. Right now, field service management software can help you streamline your customers' requirements using a dashboard to provide real-time solutions at their doorsteps.

However, if you aren't fully sure about adopting field service management, let's analyze your business operations and look for the following warning signs in them.

7 Warning Signs: It's Right Time to Approach Field Service Automation

One good field service management software won't only shorten your service cycle but will also help you build a strong relationship with your customers. It is even concluded that companies that manage their field services effectively grow 2X more than their peers who ignore field force automation.

At TrackOlap, we work with different industries daily and fix their many operational shortcomings with our field force management software. Based on our experience, we have found almost all the companies ignoring the following warning signs:

Multiple agents are working on the same route — still, on-time service is a challenge

If you are often receiving complaints from your customers about late services despite appointing multiple field workers on the same route, it is a simple case of mismanagement of resources. You have to map out your field employees' routes to ensure that no one is intersecting.

The issue here is that you can't daily spend hours defining routes for each field rep and then making sure that they are working on their designated route.

The solution is very simple. Use field tracking software to mark routes for each employee once. The tool will make sure that an employee stays within the marked route on the map, and if someone goes out of the marked zone, you will receive instant alerts. And you can quickly issue a notification to employees who have crossed his or her geographical work boundaries.

With this routine practice, you can give responsibility for one route to one employee and fix their accountability while saving your resources.

Data is everywhere — without proper management

For field employees, accessing the required data in real-time has always been an issue. Since they are always out of the office, they struggle to carry all the files in their small backpack. And now, during the work from home system, when offices are temporarily closed, the data access problem becomes more prevalent.

In fact, in some organizations, departments have started to maintain separate data silos, which is causing huge chaos. Imagine when the sales department won't receive data from the marketing and finance department; how can they create robust sales strategies? Not possible.

Thereby, field automation software is required to store all customer and employee data in one place so that authorized persons can access it anytime and anywhere. Nowadays, mobile orient field management tools even facilitate workers to access data from their phones. There's no need to carry laptops or files anymore for field teams.

You are missing out on opportunities — as your field sales reps are unable to reach hot leads

If your field forces are unable to target hot leads, it's a big warning sign for you. Despite having an army of sales reps, missing out on leads is a serious concern that you can fix with a field automation solution.

You see, field management tools can track your employees' location in real-time. It can show you which employee is available in which location in real-time. Using this information, you can assign leads to the available employees near the lead's location. This way, you can target hot leads and increase your lead conversion rate.

A daily challenge to step up with the back office

Field teams always complain that they receive limited information from the back office, which impacts their performance. When you send a field worker to address a customer's complaint without proper customer preferences, historical data, and other service details, you can't accept them to deliver 100% results.

In this case, field management software also works very well. The back office can easily share information related to the client via a dashboard, and field workers can quickly request further information if they require any. Communication between the back office and field forces became seamless with the right tool.

Struggling to assign work to the right person

All your employees are great but in different areas. For instance, you have three field workers available on a route. The first one is good at giving presentations, the second has phenomenal communication skills, and the third employee handles customers' queries the best. Using the software, you can find the right employee for the job at hand and deliver high-quality services to your customers.

Receiving more customer complaints than testimonials

If you are busy handling customer complaints rather than receiving positive reviews, you definitely need to invest in field service management software. With the employee tracking and routing features, you can ensure that your employees respond to customer complaints on time.

Additionally, a field tool allows your employees to take customers' digital signatures once services are delivered. This way, you can know whether services are delivered on time or not.

Scheduling and attendance conflicts are impacting your workflow

Often field workers don't report to the office. They directly start fieldwork on their designated route. But this raises scheduling and attendance-related conflicts among field and office staff. Field workers complain that office employees don't send them work schedules on time and the office team contradicts saying that field forces never start work on designated hours.

If you often have to deal with scheduling and attendance conflicts, you should get a field tracking tool and ask all your employees to mark their attendance digitally. Also, upload each employee's schedule on the software to bring transparency to your operations.

Parting Thoughts

Whether you are missing leads, receiving customer complaints, or struggling with late deliveries, field service automation can fix everything for you. It can even help you better utilize your resources so you can make more profits with limited resources. If you have witnessed any of the above mentioned signs in your organization, you should get a field service management tool without any delay.

To better know how to implement field automation in your organization, you can book a demo session with TrackOlap field management experts now!