5 Examples that Reveal the Power of Service Management Scheduling Software

Considering an investment in service management software for scheduling? Learn how your ROI increases with every new work order taken and scheduled per day.

Have you ever thought about what you would do if you had one more hour in the day? Maybe you’d finally let yourself get enough sleep. Or go into work an hour early so you could pick your kids up from school. Or finish that model airplane that’s been sitting on your desk for months. Whatever you’d do with an extra hour, I think we can all agree it’d be nice. Unfortunately, I can’t promise to free your day with an extra glorious hour. I can, however, paint a picture of how your field service organization could free up time and increase revenue by using service management scheduling software. How could your entire organization improve if you could tackle just one more work order per day? Here are five scenarios that demonstrate how your organization can benefit from software that frees up communication between schedulers and field technicians and improves schedulers’ ability to take more calls and dispatch more productively.

5 Ways Scheduling Software Provides Quick ROI

While we could talk at you about the hypothetical ways scheduling software improves various levels of service performance, I think specific examples paint a more convincing picture. Efficient scheduling provides more than just the extra revenue from additional work orders (though, that’s definitely a bonus). Let’s see how…

1. Reduce time to take calls, pass information to dispatch, and record call information

With scheduling software, schedulers have complete access into the dynamic calendar and scheduling board, so the time it takes them to figure out who’s available, go into the system, schedule, dispatch, and alert technicians takes only a fraction of the time. And since many service organizations take and schedule dozens of calls per day, even saving five seconds per call will add up to thousands of dollars per year.

2. Receive automatic updates from scheduler through alerts, escalations, and workflows connected to technician mobile devices

Implementing a mobile solution with a schedule board alerts system means that your field techs can update their job status in real-time right on the job site. No need for constant phone calls with status updates, because alerts are sent to the schedule board with every status change. Alerts also go from the scheduler to the technician mobile device when a work order changes or techs are scheduled to a new work order.

3. Make smarter scheduling decisions with access to customer and asset service history

When schedulers can make smarter dispatching decisions due to greater visibility into service history and technician status and location (thanks to integrated GPS technology), they save time deliberating, not to mention the higher success rate in the field when technicians know the service history and the tools and skills required to fix the problem before they get on site.

4. Increase first time fix rates with detailed visibility into technicians skill sets, availability, location, and parts.

Since schedulers can filter by technician availability, location, skill set, parts availability, etc., they can ensure that a qualified technician gets to each job site in the shortest amount of time possible. While improving first time fix has the potential to save organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars due to reduction of second-trips, increased tech utilization, and quicker service times, it’s also the number one factor determining the level of customer satisfaction.

5. Automate preventive maintenance and service contracts.

With easy to manage scheduling software, schedulers can set recurring PM work orders and forget it. PM contracts and annual inspections are automatically placed in a scheduling queue so they’re out of sight out of mind. Then they appear on the schedule at the appropriate time without revisiting or revising order details.

The Far Reaching Benefits of “One More Work Order”

Improving each of the following scheduling areas by just one more work order per day, or one hour saved per day, will more than adequately provide a return on your software investment. Odds are, though, you’ll receive much more than just one more work order or extra hour. Improved scheduling is where it all starts, so by investing in and focusing on building service revenue in the call-taking and scheduling stage, you’ll lay the ground work for greater service numbers all around. Stay tuned as our Power of One series continues with more benefits—both ROI and soft results—which service departments can gain by making incremental improvements across the organization.

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