How Field Service Automation Leads to Improved Customer Service (+ More!)

The ProValet Team

January 3, 2022

Are you looking for a better way to consistently deliver excellent customer service? The customer experience includes everything from their first impressions of your business to how easy and clear it is to pay their invoice for your services.

Along the way, there can be a few common pain points involving communication or the invoice process. Field service automation software can help resolve these pain points so you can deliver improved customer service across the board.

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What Is Field Service Automation?

Field service automation, more broadly known as business automation, involves leveraging technology to streamline your operations. This includes utilizing technology from a financial perspective, route optimization tools, easy self-serve scheduling, and more.

As technology continues to advance to become ever more integrated with our lives, it only makes sense to carry that integration into your business.

Automating your business doesn’t mean that robots have replaced your workers—quite the opposite, actually! Implementing business automation tools means that your employees have more time to focus on more important matters instead of getting bogged down by the minutiae of daily operations.

Common Challenges for Delivering Great Customer Service

All field service companies encounter the same challenges when it comes to delivering great customer service, including:

Miscommunication About Expectations

When you don’t have a centralized communication channel for you, the customer, and your technician, lines can get crossed and mistakes are more likely to be made.

For example, the customer calls your office directly and says they’d like the technician to address a weird sound that their pool pump is making. You write this down on a notepad and slip it into the customer’s file; unfortunately, the technician doesn’t see this message because the sheet of paper slides out of the file over the course of the day.

Then, the technician goes about their business as usual and the customer finds that the sound is still present but no updates have been communicated to them. You can imagine how that scene plays out and how frustrating it is for all parties involved!

Lack of Service Accountability

If you have a customer that works during the day and isn’t present to witness the technician perform their duties, then how can they trust that services were rendered?

It’s easy to just drive up to a house and leave a yellow postcard wedged in the door that says the job was done and then just drive away without actually doing anything.

This lack of accountability can lead to feelings of mistrust, which doesn’t bode well for delivering great customer service if there is doubt that any services were delivered at all.

Invoices—or Payments—Getting Lost in the Mail

The last thing you want to do is chase after customers for their payment, only for them to say they never received an invoice in the first place. This reflects poorly on the quality of your administrative work and further inconveniences the customer, even if it’s not your fault.

Regardless, delayed invoices or payment equals delayed payment to you and your company.

How Field Service Automation Leads to Improved Customer Service

Turns out, you don’t have to struggle with these challenges any longer—all because field service automation leads to improved customer service in the following ways:

Keeping Information All in One Place for Clear Communication

Worried your paper note won’t get read by the technician; worried, even more so, that your customers aren’t entirely satisfied with their service but don’t have a clear manner of communicating that to you?

Worry no more!

With field service automation that centralizes all communication between your customer, your technician, and your business, you can ensure nothing slips through the cracks. By maintaining an open line of communication, the relationship builds between your business and your customer and you can address whatever questions or concerns they might have regarding their services.

Notify Customers When Services Have Been Performed

Wish you had a better way to verify that your technicians actually did all that they should out in the field?

It’s important to trust your technicians—but it looks great to have a method of tracking when services are rendered. It’s even better to provide photo evidence and leave personalized notes about what the technician did.

This is so valuable to the customer because it guarantees to them that they’re getting what they’re paying for and leaves a record of services over time. Field service automation provides customers with peace of mind and you can keep your techs accountable over the course of the day.

Handle Invoicing and Payment In One Secure Platform

Long story short, you don’t want to make it difficult for your customers to give you their money. On the flip side, you don’t want to risk their sensitive information falling in the wrong hands!

Field service automation with built-in invoicing and payment options solve both of these challenges with secured accounting features. Digital invoicing means you won’t have to hassle customers about delayed payments and easy pay platforms demonstrate your efforts to keep your customers’ information secure.

Other Benefits of Field Service Automation

The benefits of field service automation don’t stop there, though; they also include the ability to do the following:

Optimize Routes for Efficiency

The fastest way to reduce wear and tear on your fleet vehicle is to optimize your technicians’ routes. With GPS tracking capabilities and Google Maps integration, you can prevent your techs from driving back and forth unnecessarily across your community.

Instead, you can ensure that they take the most efficient, logical route so that your vehicles aren’t putting on superfluous mileage that accelerates maintenance schedules.

Maximize Fleet Productivity

Adjacent to the previous point about creating efficient routes to optimize your technicians’ schedules, field service automation means you can coordinate schedules for customers who are in the same neighborhood or along the same routes. It just makes sense!

Why would you want your technicians to circle back to the same neighborhood multiple times a week when they could just handle multiple clients in the same area all at once and move on? Field service automation gives you this oversight and ability to see patterns of customers locations in alignment with routes.

This maximizes your techs’ productivity and helps you service multiple customers at once!

Put More Time and Money Back In Your Life

No matter how you look at it, field service automation puts more time and money back into your life.

If you spend 30 minutes at the end of every day tending to paperwork, bookkeeping, and other administrative tasks that can be automated, then you’ll instantly save 2.5 hours every week with automation. That’s 10 hours every month!

By handing over tedious, time-consuming tasks to processes that are streamlined, efficient, and effective, you and your team can focus on delivering great customer service.

3 FAQs About Field Service Management Software

We know field service management software and automation might sound intimidating, but we’re here to answer your questions:

1. What If My Employees Are Worried They’ll Be Replaced by Field Management Software?

This is a common concern, but we’re sure that you and your employees will swiftly see the advantages of automating certain tasks. Do they want to spend their time entering invoice information into extensive spreadsheets or do they want to satisfy their customers and service their community?

Field service management software is an extension of your team, not a replacement.

2. How Difficult Will It Be to Learn This Automation Technology?

Like any other piece of technology or new software, there will be a short learning period. Field service management software is intuitive and user-friendly for you, your technicians, and your customers to operate.

Plus, it can be accessed through desktop or mobile devices which helps you sort through dashboards or guide a new customer through the payment process.

3. Should I Automate Every Facet of My Business?

Field service management software and automation tools should only handle tasks that are tedious, repetitive, and which are essentially “mindless” tasks. Things like data entry, calculating figures, recording historical data, etc. are parts of your operations that are necessary but they can be mitigated by leveraging automation.

On the other hand, there are still loads of tasks that shouldn’t replace the human touch, such as phone calls with customers. In situations where empathy, creativity, strategy, etc. are needed, keep the human element there.

Manage Like a Pro with ProValet!

Ready to wow your customers with field service automation? ProValet is ready to help you manage like a pro and win loyal customers with our field service management platform!

Featuring a centralized communication platform, secured invoicing and payment with Stripe, integration with QuickBooks, and more, ProValet is the answer to your field service’s pain points.

Elevate your customers’ experience with your business and delight them with streamlined operations with ProValet. Contact us today to learn more!

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