In most instances, customers of field service management companies only ever come in contact with the technician who provides service. They're scarcely aware that it takes an entire back office team, including administrators, phone representatives, and field managers, to ensure that their service needs are met.
No technology can negate the need to do our best to meet customer needs in a professional and timely manner. These are the essential ingredients to ensuring the best reputation for your field service-based business.
Personal interactions with customers must always be kind and courteous, but there's a lot more to field service customer service than that. Let’s take a closer look at how you can optimize your field service business to provide the best customer service experience for the people you serve every day.
Empowerment Through Self-Service: It's What Your Customers Want
Gone are the days when customers sat by the door, waiting for technicians to fix their cable or connect their phone lines. Today, customers expect better connectivity to your field service business. There are a few different ways to achieve this, but two tech-driven methods stand out. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools help your company communicate with clients and manage accounts. On the other hand, chatbots communicate directly with clients through text messaging or website chat support.
Chatbots
Chatbots provide helpful service options for customers through website chat boxes, text messaging, or SMS. These AI-based programs can answer common customer questions by recognizing specific keywords and responding accordingly.
At times the chatbot may not have the answers that customers are seeking. When this happens, they can alert representatives with a notification, allowing the customer to speak to a human agent if the need arises.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
By managing customer data like addresses, phone numbers, and appointment times, a CRM makes it possible for your field service-based business to streamline its service. A good CRM offers an automated platform to set up appointments, reschedule appointments, or find your nearest location to specific customers. But features like finding out how far out a technician is, where he or she is en route, and almost down to the minute when you can expect your technicians to arrive at specific jobs make a CRM exceptionally helpful for field service businesses.
Not only does a CRM effectively answer internal questions and give your team information they need, but it will also dramatically reduce the amount of time your representatives have to spend on the phone answering frequently asked questions, especially when paired with chatbots.
With many CRM options now being cloud-based, they offer remote usability for technicians on the go. They also allow office representatives to add emergent appointments to routes and reschedule customers accordingly.
Use FSM Software to Enhance Response Times
Today, most field service providers understand that customer happiness depends largely on how quickly technicians can get to them and handle their needs. This can be a double-edged sword, though, because providing a quick response time for one customer means you must ensure that your technicians have met the last customer's needs as expeditiously as possible.
When technicians are busy and overwhelmed, this can lead to errors or hasty and incomplete work. It can also cause issues like forgetting necessary tools or parts to complete a job. Field service management software shows your technicians and managers precisely what is needed for each task on each route of the day, ensuring the highest customer satisfaction levels.
Another way to maintain the right balance is to consider creating service windows with five to 10 minutes of padding at the beginning and the end of each service call. Then, if a technician completes one job with a little extra time on his or her hands, your software can alert the next customer that their technician is en route. Closing the loop this way through the use of advanced technology is just one more way to ensure customer satisfaction.
All the FSM Tools You Need in One Suite of Solutions
To manage everything from customers and technicians to jobs and fleet vehicles, Azuga brings you an entire suite of field service management solutions and software for your FSM business. Our field service solutions are perfect for field service businesses of any size or scope, and can also scale right alongside your business.
To learn more about the options we offer in fleet management, GPS fleet tracking and more, visit us online today at www.azuga.com.
