In the business of field service operations, every service call matters. But behind every service delivered, there’s an underlying high cost that detriments the quality of service provided. Does that mean you need to compromise the quality of service to reduce the extra cost? Absolutely not.

All you need is a modern-age solution – field service management software. Here are 6 effective ways it can reduce field service operation costs without compromising on the quality of service.

1. Improve the Effectiveness of Your Technician’s First Visit

According to a survey, almost 54% of technicians face the issue of going to a field operation with minimal to no information of the client’s service history. This increases their follow-up trips which ultimately means that their initial visit has been ineffective. The more follow-up trips your technician goes at, the extra those will cost your business.

You can eliminate this problem with field service management software by storing the customer service history and assigning work orders to your most qualified technician in the area. If the technician has a history of his customer needs, he can go on the field with appropriate equipment.

2. Get Digital and Ditch the Manual Labor

Manual methods of field services are neither cost-effective nor time-saving, yet with these drawbacks, 52% of organizations still use manual methods for field services. Manual methods include hiring people to collect and report information throughout the field service delivery process.

Ditch the labor and save yourself time and money by switching to field service management software. With it, you can collect signatures, invoices, contracts, employee leaves, and attendance, making your employees work more efficiently.

3. Retain the Best Talent and Save Recruitment Cost

Did you know that bad hiring costs 41% of organizations a loss of $25,000? The talent war continues to exist in the field service industry. As a result, you need to retain your best employee and save the money and time spent on the recruitment and training process.

In order to not let the best employee slip out of your organization, you can create a performance profile of your field service team by tracking:

• Number of work orders that were assigned to them
• Number of work orders completed by them
• Current status of their tasks
• Inspection and validation of their assigned tasks

These metrics will help you evaluate the performance of your field service team and allow you to reward or compensate the best-performing employees, which is an excellent way to retain talent.

4. Reduce Inventory Management Costs with Asset Management

Field service operations include storing valuable spare parts, tools, and equipment. They are distributed in various storage locations and field service vehicles where their condition is not monitored. This inefficiency in storage leads to unsatisfied customers because technicians do not have the equipment required to deal with their issues.

You can avoid all of this with an effective asset management software system that handles and records stock held in different locations. The system also keeps track of where and how stock items have been previously used.

5. Use Scheduling Software and Save Time

Time is money and every minute your technician spends on the field costs you a penny. While rushing them into completing their work will only affect their performance poorly, you do want to cut down on the wasted time.

With the help of field service scheduling software, you discover waste-cutting options by managing your time efficiently by reducing:

• Extra time spent due to sending the wrong person on the field
• Lost time due to miscommunication
• Wasted time in traveling to get the tools if they weren’t sourced and packed for the first trip

6. Decrease Time and Cost Spent on Traveling

Giving job slots to teams based on their ability is not enough. You also need to consider their geographical location while assigning work. Sending one team repeatedly across an entire city will waste their hours. This unnecessary travel time adds up a large expense on your shoulders.

A field operating management system will help you cut down this unnecessary waste of time and money. You get an overview of the trips your technicians will go through the day. You can remove unnecessary town trips, open up more space in a team’s schedule, and let you serve more customers.

Getting your field service process digitalized with field service management software helps you cut extra costs in multiple areas and direct the flow of your organization’s earnings to a more automated, efficient, and error-free process.

Author Bio: Akhil Rajan is a Customer Success Specialist at Zuper, an intelligent workforce management platform for service-oriented businesses. Working with customers on a daily basis, he has a deep understanding of their needs and pain points and so he is able to contribute to the marketing strategies for Zuper with the content he writes. He writes on topics like how to increase workforce utilization, how to reduce the service turnaround time and increase workforce efficiency, customer adoption, cost reduction strategies, etc – to name a few. He is often found buried in books or playing chess in his free time.