Everybody sends upcoming appointment reminders: Your doctor, your hair stylist, the vet. Are you sending them to your customers? If so, is it a phone call or an email? How informational is it? Is it boosting your brand image?
Why Service Contractors Should Send Appointment Reminders
Whether for your business or for your vet, lost appointments are lost money. Confusion happens, appointments fall off of schedules, and people get flakey and forget. So it makes a ton of sense to remind customers about appointments. In case you need convincing:
You don’t want to show up when the customer isn’t expecting you and not be able to do the work. Even if you can do the work, they won’t be happy about the surprise.
You’ll remind people of what you plan to do, and give them time to think about what else they might need your help with while you’re on-site.
You’ll keep your brand at the top of their minds as a helpful, responsible partner.
You’ll be seen as easy to work with. Email is a great way to deliver a reminder because they are not an interruption, they can be referred back to, easily shared, and contain more info than you can share in a brief phone call.
You’ll save labor from not sending techs on wild goose chases.
There is a good back-story about how ServiceTrade appointment reminders came to be.
The Story
When Service Link was created, we only thought of it as an after-service online report. A few months after it launched, we started to hear from customers who were sending Service Link before the appointment, too.
It was a brilliant idea! Service Link included the list of services that were scheduled. It arrived in their customer’s inbox in a nice, mobile-friendly, branded email. So we supported their innovation with a few small changes to make it explicitly clear that what the customer received was about an upcoming appointment.
Using Service Link in this way was one of the most eye-opening ideas that was shared at the Digital Wrap Conference. More than half of attendees surveyed said they’ll start using Service Link in new ways.
How it Works in ServiceTrade
My quick Google search today returned dozens of appointment reminder software vendors. Lucky for ServiceTrade users, they don’t need to integrate with another solution, they can use what’s already built into the application.
James Jordan covered Service Link appointment reminders in the last Bearded Briefing. Here’s how it works.
Innovation is Part of a Digital Wrap
Innovation was a big message at the Digital Wrap Conference. Shawn Mims explained that innovations come at all sizes to fix small to large problems. It’s hard to imagine a more simple innovation than using an existing feature in a new way.
An appointment reminder is one of the MIPS (Marketing Impressions per Service (read post)) that are part of your Digital Wrap. This simple alert:
Is a branded marketing impression, so you look professional
Makes customer happy about working with you
Keeps you from wasting your limited skilled labor resources
ServiceTrade customers are innovators who use technology in unexpected ways. Those customers solved a problem by looking to the software they were already using. There’s a good lesson here that if you find yourself with a problem, take a look at what you already have in place for how it might be part of a solution.
And if you’re using ServiceTrade to solve a problem, let us know about it! Our customers constantly surprise us with their innovative problem solving.
James mentioned to me the other day that the VCR (for the kids, that stands for video cassette recorder) is no longer being produced. This brought on a wave of nostalgia. I remember my sister and I being so excited those times that our parents rented this new thing called a VCR and a stack of VHS movies to get us through another frigid Illinois winter weekend. We were staycationers long before it was cool.
But there’s another technology that I’m less sorry to see go – one in particular that just REFUSES TO DIE: The fax machine. The first time I remember saying it was 2013, it went something like this: “It’s 2013, I’m not faxing anything to anybody.”
Flash forward three years and I’m still getting instructions to fax paperwork to some companies and organizations. I wonder if those companies ever stop to think about the impact that relying on old, aggravating technology like a fax machine has on people’s perception of their brand?
What relics of the past could your service company be holding on to that are doing more harm than good? Is it the fax machine? Scheduling on a whiteboard? The telephone? Word template quotes? The dreaded triplicate invoice form?
5 Dated Technologies to Usher to Their Grave to Liberate (and Modernize) Your Service Business
1. Free yourself from the fax.
The replacement for your fax machine is a few rungs up on the new technology ladder. I use the Office Lens smartphone app to snap photos of each page of my document and compile them into a single PDF that can be emailed. The scanner feature on the office printer works for longer contracts. If your recipient insists on receiving your document through their fax machine (bless their heart), you can use the FaxFile app to send your digital files to their outdated hardware. Please kill your fax machine this year if it’s still hanging around.
2. Get off the phone for things that are better done online.
Shawn recently explained how he and other millennials tick. One of the things he mentioned is that they hate talking on the phone. I don’t think that’s exclusive to Millennials because this Gen-Xer feels the same. Telephone calls are seen more and more as an annoying interruption in people’s workdays. If you’ve caught the person at a bad time, they may not be paying attention to the information you’re sharing and not write down the appointment time you’ve just agreed to, or understood all the services you’ll be providing while you’re there. Online communication, whether through email, mobile apps or web tools are less disruptive, more informative, and create a better customer service experience. Phone calls won’t and shouldn’t go away, but they should fade away as one of the primary communication tools for your standard service operations.
3. Stop buying paper.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog and in The Digital Wrap about how companies should go digital with their customer service and send all of their service reports, quotes and invoices in digital formats. Have you gone paperless?
More than just replacing a paper version of a form or a file with a digital version, truly reap the benefits of going digital by streamlining each step of your processes that led to the point of the paper being produced. The paper is often the endpoint of a number of steps that can be done more efficiently and cost effectively by using digital solutions along the way.
4. Bust your scheduling system out of isolation.
Does a schedule change result in a ripple effect of using all the outdated technologies on this list? Phone calls to techs, printing new schedules, printing new work orders, faxing new quotes to the customer? If it takes that much effort to communicate schedule changes, then your schedule is living in isolation. Instead, it should be in an application that has a built-in megaphone that broadcasts updates to all interested parties (management, techs, and customers) when new jobs have been added to the schedule.
5. Retire that outdated website.
Take a quick look — is the copyright date in the footer of your website from the VCR era? An outdated website that obviously hasn’t been updated in years – or never completed in the first place – is a red flag to potential customers. It says that you don’t use your website as a customer service tool. That you don’t have a modern back-end to your website that your team can use. That maintaining your reputation isn’t a priority.
Creating a new WordPress site doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and maintaining a WordPress site is easy. I’ve taught both my sister and my best friend who have zero website experience how to log in and update their websites anytime they need. They would agree – if they can, you can!
If I am to believe what I’m reading, email will be the next tool to face extinction for its lousy signal-to-noise ratio, its time consumption, and its disruptiveness. Start thinking next about how you rely on email for your business operations and what web- or app-based replacements you can put in its place.
These tools and technologies are being replaced with better, online, mobile systems. Before they are completely dead, they rattle around hurting the reputation of brands that use these aging technologies to run their business. So make sure that when customers interact with your service company, it’s through efficient, helpful, branded, online mediums that show them that your company is of this century and one that is easy to do business with.
Southwest Airlines Figured Out How to Deploy 14,000 Devices So You Don’t Have To
I had not thought about how much our service contracting customers have in common with Southwest Airlines until I read an article about the airline issuing iPad Minis to flight attendants to streamline operations. Ok, so their territory is pretty big. And they have quite a fleet to manage. But they offer recurring services, and their scheduling is pretty important! I’m mostly joking here, but the article is definitely worth reading.
Southwest is deploying 14,000 iPad Minis for customer service and to trim costs. Their first change is going paperless with its 700-page flight attendant manual. They frequently print updated pages and distribute them to every flight attendant to update their manual. The FAA is regulating the process of going paperless, so they haven’t completely abandoned paper yet. This move will decrease their paper costs, ensure that the latest version of the manual is deployed to each device and employee, and save flight attendants from carrying around and replacing pages in a 700-page binder.
Customer service gains will come in the second part of the phased rollout, when they replace their current aging point-of-sale (POS) terminal for in-flight alcohol sales. The POS features aren’t expected until early 2017. Instead of maintaining a fleet of secondary devices for this specific purpose, iPads will become the POS device that’s centrally maintained by the airline.
How do you deploy 14,000 devices to people who are constantly in flight? Very carefully?? The article gives an interesting summary of the process they underwent with their partner Stratix to manage the deployment and ongoing device management.
What can service contractors take away from SWA’s deployment, even if they don’t have Southwest’s resources?
Find your ROI Mobile devices and applications enable a number of operational efficiencies and a great customer experience. If you find that going mobile or paperless solves one problem, look for others that you can tackle at the same time to improve your ROI. Southwest explains how this worked for them in the Field Technologies Online article.
Ensure adoption and sense of ownership Southwest had a modern, progressive, and I think the right attitude about sending 14,000 devices to its employees. They want flight attendants to feel like the device is theirs, and welcomes their personal use. Instead of requiring employees to have separate personal devices, this policy makes their work device a perk that they will appreciate it and care for.
Finally, acknowledge that a big change is a big change and accept that sometimes a rollout is best to happen in stages. I’m sure it’ll be frustrating for flight attendants to deal with carrying the iPad, binder, and a separate POS system for alcohol sales for a while, but it’s a first step that sets up future efficiencies and savings.
Team 360 Services was featured in a case study by the author of the Southwest Airlines article Brian Albright. Read “Dousing Field Service Inefficiency” from the March 2016 issue of Field Technologies Online to learn how Team 360 Services is using ServiceTrade to save time and lower costs across their service organization. A free account is required to read the full article.
Technology Separates You From the Liars and Thieves
We have several honest, high-quality air duct cleaning companies as customers, so it pains me to watch videos that have gone viral of unscrupulous contractors. The investigative TV programs Inside Edition and Dateline have both aired segments that show air duct cleaners ripping off their customers.
These two reports made me cringe and laugh:
Residential companies set the customer service expectation for all contractors, even those that work exclusively in commercial facilities. Regardless of your service specialty or your location, dishonest companies like these are a big problem, and I’m sure you know who they are in your area. So how do you stand out from the crooks?
Technology can help you show that you’re a reputable company when you:
Set the right expectations during the sale
Make it easy for the customer to see and understand the services you provide
Let your existing customers speak for you
Use Before and After Photos to Build Trust
Customers shouldn’t feel like they have to follow you around their home or facility to know that you’ve done what you said you would do. So take photos of what you see and do every step along the way, and review them with the customer as you go along (if it makes sense to do so), and at the end of the service call. This is especially important if your services are invisible (hidden in the walls) or you provide them outside of your customer’s business hours.
Our mobile application and Service Link feature make it easy to collect that evidence and share it in a useful, online report after the job.
Sell with Customer Service
Knowing how you’ll prove your trustworthiness and backup your services with evidence of a job well done are compelling during the sale. Consider using your technology as a sales tool with your customers so they will experience before the sale what they’ll experience once they’re your customer.
For example, we’ve heard from a few ServiceTrade customers that they set up a prospect’s location and assets in the application, and use that in the sales presentation to show them exactly what they can expect by choosing them as their service contractor. When you’re striving to build a long-term relationship, giving the customer an experience that shows how you’ll ensure that they’re getting a good value, and how you are a good steward of their facility places you far above the competition that doesn’t.
Own Your Online Reputation
How many positive online reviews do you think the companies in these stories had? Your online reputation tremendously impacts your sales win rate. Your online reputation consists of:
Your website content – make your brand promises and show how you back them up
Happy customer stories – a third party that praises your brand is more powerful than anything you say about yourself
Positive online reviews – ask as many happy customers as possible to review their experience working with you online. These reviews can go onto your website, and they also help with your local search ranking! (Check out our Service Review feature.)
And one bonus tip: Don’t lie. Just don’t lie.
Do business as though Chris Hansen is going to pop out of a dark corner at any moment. Ok, maybe he won’t, but it’s becoming increasingly true that cameras are everywhere.
A friend was recently at the ServiceTrade office to help with a project. He picked up his phone when it vibrated, then showed us a live stream of the contractors who were working at his house taking a smoke break on the front porch. We had a chuckle, and went back to work. But what if they’d been doing something less innocent?
We know that we do not need to tell our customers to be honest. The increasing affordability and accessibility of cameras and monitoring systems in businesses and homes is putting us all under a microscope that makes every minute of your customer engagement matter.
Technology Tip: Move Photos from your Devices to Google Photos
How many photos are stored on your smartphone right now? I have 1,438 photos that take up 4.8 GB of storage space — but this is pretty low compared to some of the folks around ServiceTrade.
Carrying around more than 1,400 images is pretty painless — until it isn’t. Have you ever hit the storage wall where your device refuses to take one more photo or download one more app until you free up storage space? When that happens, you’re faced with deleting photos until you have the free space you need.
Google Photos is a great free solution for automatically syncing your photos to the cloud where they can be easily viewed, organized, and shared so you don’t have to keep them all on your smartphone.
Take Lots of Pictures
Service photos are one of your best customer engagement tools. Before and after pictures show that you did what you said you were going to do. Sharing before and after photos help customers see the value that you bring to their business. They also C.Y.A. in case there’s ever a question about that service call.
Also ask techs to take pictures of issues or items that need to be repaired. Online eQuotes that include photos of the issue, that are provided within 24 hours of the service call, and have an online approve button are approved 3-times the rate of emailed PDF quotes. Encourage your techs to take lots of pictures through every step of the job — then use them!
Benefits of Cloud Photo Storage
Google Photos will help you manage all those pictures by storing them in the cloud, and making them available to your office staff in an online interface. The ServiceTrade application will take care of this for you by automatically storing photos on the job record, in the app, in the cloud where your customers and the rest of your company can use them. If you aren’t using ServiceTrade, Google Photos will help.
With centralized photo backup, service companies can:
Securely store photos, and give you a choice to keep or delete the originals from techs’ devices
Automatically share photos across the team, without requiring any extra work after initial Google Photos setup
Easily organize service pictures in the web-based interface
Free up storage space on your devices, but retain control of what is deleted, and what is kept locally
To use Google Photos:
Download the Google Photos mobile app for iOS or Android, and choose either the free storage option for compressed images, or a paid option that allows for higher image quality.
Allow the Google Photos app to begin uploading your images. This could take a while depending on the number of photos you have and your wifi speed. My upload of 1,438 photos took about 4 hours on a slow wifi network.
Login to Google Photos at photos.google.com to see your photos and manage them through the web interface.
Choose who you might want to share photos with, like your family for personal photos or your office admin for work photos. You can set up special albums for sharing and choose who sees what.
Delete photos and videos that you no longer need to store on your device.
Once setup, photos and videos will continue to automatically sync to Google Photos.
Why Google Photos?
They’ve built in some fun and time-saving features. This blog post from Google will give you more detail than I’ll share here. Some of my favorites:
Searchable facial recognition. When I search for photos of mom, there she is!
Automatic albums. Google Photos is smart enough to scan your photos and group those that were taken in the same span of time, or at the same location together in an album. It’s not perfect. It had a hard time telling the difference between dogs and sheep and has them all in one album labeled “dogs,” but at least I know where my farm animal photos are – and that’s an improvement from them being mixed in with everything else.
Photo management is easier when you can view them on a larger screen and make better choices about which images to keep and which blurry photos can be deleted.
Google Photos isn’t the only option. Apple devices will sync to iCloud. All device types can sync to Dropbox. The strength of Google Photos’ features at its free price makes it a winner.
If you are a ServiceTrade customer, photos technicians take in the ServiceTrade mobile application are automatically stored in the ServiceTrade platform as part of the service record. When you create an after-service Service Link to send to the customer, you can click a button next to each photo to decide if it’s shown to the customer or hidden. Those photos are stored permanently, in the cloud, and can be recalled any time you or the customer need them. But even ServiceTrade users need help managing and storing their non-job photos, and Google Photos is good for that.
Who hoards the most images?
I did a quick survey around the office and found that my 1,438 photos is pretty modest by comparison.
Are you as frustrated as George Costanza when it comes to hiring field service technicians?
Finding and hiring the best employees is one of the most difficult challenges any business will face. With that said, service contractors have it far worse than most industries due to the declining interest many young folks have in trade labor. From HVAC to fire protection contractors, this labor shortage results in an aging workforce making it difficult for companies to modernize, maintain competitive pricing, and meet customers’ evolving expectations.
As daunting as this challenge seems, there are a couple glimmers of hope in labor market trends and new recruiting strategies. As more and more young people find the value proposition of college to be in decline, they will shift to professions that will provide a career that doesn’t leave them in debt for the rest of their lives. Additionally, by applying, what we at ServiceTrade call, a “digital wrap” to your field service company, you can attract the best and brightest technicians with a strong online presence.
The Economic State of Higher Education
All contractors are aware of the stigmas that surround skilled trade labor. These stigmas are deep-rooted in our society and founded upon the belief that career success can only be achieved through years of collegiate education. This belief was established at a time when a secondary education was a rarity and relatively difficult to obtain compared to current times. This can be seen in US Census statistics that show college enrollment is around 9X what it was in 1950 compared to a population growth that only doubled over the same period of time. Enrollment in higher education is outpacing population growth for a multitude of reasons, and many point to easy access to financial aid as the primary factor followed by an overall increase in educational capacity to meet the well-funded demand.
High demand and easy money has resulted in steady cost increases for secondary education which has, ultimately, been followed by an increase in student loan debt. The Institute for College Access and Success found that average student loan debt tripled from 1993 to 2012 to around $30K. This increase in student loan debt is beginning to to impact the cost-benefit analysis young people make when considering their career. The story I heard from my parents about paying for school by picking up an evening job is no longer a possibility, and many of my close friends already recognize that a career in the field of their educational background will never enable them to pay off their outstanding student loans.
As a result, college graduates are considering career alternatives, and high school graduates are considering educational and career paths that have superior cost-benefit outcomes such as skilled trades. Additionally, the stigma of “getting dirty and working with your hands” is eroding and being replaced with a fear of sitting in front of a computer all day. For me, the economic argument described above is best exemplified by one of my closest friends who crumpled up his undergraduate degree to take a job as an HVAC technician to get out from behind a computer monitor and increase his income.
Hiring With the Digital Wrap
This economic forecast is great news for service contractors, but these changes will be slow and they don’t address your immediate need for great technicians. You can easily find a host of blogs and articles that will teach you the ins and outs of “outbound” recruiting with Craigslist, LinkedIn, online forums, and industry associations. So, instead, I wanted to help you with your “inbound” recruiting efforts via your digital wrap and online reputation.
Aside from job boards, Google is the first place skilled laborers go when hunting for a position at a new company. Just like your potential customers, they are using a keyword combination of industry and city that looks something like this:
“HVAC company Raleigh”
“Fire inspection company Durham”
“Hood cleaning company Cary”
And, much like your potential customers, your prospective employees will find, and initially judge, your company based on its Google search ranking. Afterall, Google tends to return relevant results for our other searches, right?
Once potential employees find your website, will they be impressed by your professionalism and reputation? A well-thought-out website is critical in convincing prospects of any type that you are a good fit based on multiple factors. Here is a quick checklist you can use to determine if your website is helping or hindering your hiring efforts:
Modern – Your website is mobile-friendly and is backed by a common content management system that is easy to use and update such as WordPress.
Location – Your office location(s) and coverage area are obvious.
Offerings – There is no question about what services you provide and who your customer is.
Expertise – It is obvious that you are an expert in your domain because you have a page on your website for every service you provide that accurately explains how you perform the service.
Customer Reviews – It is obvious that you can be trusted based on your high volume of great, real customer reviews.
Finally, after making your company easy to find and putting your best foot forward with a great website, ensure that your website has an obvious section for candidates to learn more about working at your company. This section should help future employees qualify themselves and make it easy for them to provide you with their information. As a general rule of thumb, keep the webform down to a minimum to prevent dropoff. Name, phone number, and email address should be more than enough to continue the conversation.
Don’t Worry, It’s Easy
If any of this website functionality or search engine optimization is beyond your skillset, never fear! ServiceTrade is here to help you out. By applying a digital wrap and turning your every-day service activities into digital artifacts that engage your customers and prospective employees, you will set yourself apart from the competition. ServiceTrade can help you create an online presence that attracts both new customers and future employees.
To Do: Start Using an Online Task and Project Management App
In some ways I miss the old way I kept track of my to do list. It was a piece of paper with an item on every line. I would draw a small box to the left of the item, then a description to the right. When the item was completed, I colored in the box. Seeing a full sheet of paper with all the boxes filled in was extremely satisfying.
But it was worth giving up that column of boxes to go digital. I like having access to my projects on my laptop and from my smartphone wherever I go. Instead of writing BUY MILK on my hand with a Sharpie, I have setup an alert for when I leave the office that will remind me to stop at the store. ServiceTrade uses a couple of applications to share project details across our teams and with our customers.
Service companies can use a project management application to prepare for major projects (taxes, renovations to the office, renewing benefits plans) and manage regular, recurring tasks (vehicle maintenance, financial analysis and reporting, adding new software, monthly snack shopping trip). Whether it’s a big project that will help evolve the company, or simply the work that has to get done, you’ll be more efficient with the information organized in one place.
Asana
ServiceTrade’s services team relies on Asana to manage all manner of large and small projects, from onboarding new customers, to internal company tasks.
A member of the services team sets up the new project, enters and assigns the tasks, and invites the customer to join, with tasks assigned to them, too. It keeps the project on time, and helps us review project status and next steps any time. Having discussions, relevant files, notes, and tasks all inside the application is what makes Asana stand out.
Asana has a generous feature set in its free version, and is a strong choice for a professional project and task management platform for any type of business. www.asana.com
Trello
ServiceTrade’s marketing team uses Trello to keep track of its daily and weekly tasks, and to prioritize long-term projects. One of the challenges we face in marketing is that new ideas and opportunities come up every day. Using Trello helps us prioritize those new opportunities against our established plans and upcoming deadlines. www.trello.com
Reminders
If nothing else, the Reminders app on iOS devices and many other note-taking applications are a quick and easy way to enter a task and set a reminder. I use these in my personal life to keep track of errands, shopping lists and tasks.
More than keeping your to do list in front of you, these applications will help you:
Be more productive, efficient and focused on the right things
Manage the day-to-day and remind you what to do between calls, fire drills, or when you need a nap at 3pm
Plan near-term priorities so you know what to do and when, and decide what needs to wait until later
Lay out long-term projects and store a list of future projects and ideas so they don’t get lost
Centralize information and collaborate with others in an affordable, accessible, cloud-based application
Companies who use ServiceTrade are used to having data at their fingertips about the status of their work. These applications will give your team the same type of visibility and control to your internal projects that you have in your customer engagement and service delivery.
Get Started
Since these applications are free, download each of them and try them out. You’ll find one is a better fit for your business, that you can adopt and share with the rest of your team.
Have you tried any other project or task managers that you like? Let us know in the comments below.
I had to chuckle every time that I walked by the Powerball signs last week that couldn’t display full $1,500,000,000 jackpot because the signs have just 3 digits to show the number in millions.
This past weekend, there was the opposite situation in Houghton Lake, Michigan where they didn’t need the dollar digit when the price of regular unleaded gasoline briefly fell to 47¢ per gallon. Wow.
Gas prices are the lowest across the US that they’ve been in some time — even outside this extreme example. It presents an interesting question to field service companies about how to forecast their 2016 fuel budget.
Each year, GasBuddy.com forecasts fuel prices for the year ahead. They predict that 2016 will be the fourth straight year of a declining national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded and diesel fuel.
GasBuddy is forecasting a national average of $2.28/gal of regular unleaded – down 12¢ from the 2015 average of $2.40.
Based on today’s situation, it seems conservative to carry your 2015 fuel expenses over as your 2016 budget (assuming the same number of trucks and general service area.)
The Potential Gotchas
It goes without staying that it is an extremely volatile time at home and abroad. The lower fuel prices that are good news for field service companies are leading to cutbacks in oil and gas companies and adding instability across some sectors of the US economy.
Instability around the globe could mean changes at any time that would put gas back at $4/gal. Be prepared for the possibility not just for your own fuel expenses taking a jarring jump upward, but for what it also means for your customers as they would have to invest more in automobile and heating fuel and spend less in proactive maintenance.
Control What you can Control
Besides keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that the 2016 forecast holds true, there are a few areas where you have more control over your fleet management budget.
1. Lower your total cost of fleet ownership (TCO).
Finding the balance point between replacing vehicles too quickly, but getting optimum resale value before you start to feel the pain from an increase in maintenance for an aging fleet is tricky. The acquisition cost is certainly the biggest factor in the TCO, and not a cost you want to incur any more often than necessary. But it is a one-time cost and just part of the lifetime TCO.
Calculate a simple TCO per mile per vehicle with this calculation:
(capital costs + operating costs) ÷ total miles traveled = TCO per mile
edmunds.com has a TCO tool for many vehicles. While it has more data for personal vehicles, there are some light commercial vans and pickups that many of you may use.
Identifying the vehicles in your fleet with the highest and lowest TCO will surely be helpful in making future purchasing decisions.
2. Get more miles per gallon and cover fewer miles.
You can’t control the cost of gas, but you can control how sensibly your crew uses it. This is where a good field service management solution will help you assign trucks to regions, and build fuel-efficient routes in those regions.
Also take a look at cutting your total vehicle weight. Heavy loads burn more fuel, so take a truck inventory, and unload the tools and materials that don’t need to be on the truck all day, every day.
3. Lower your opportunity costs.
Not only does common sense routing reduce your fuel consumption, it also cuts into your opportunity costs that grow when techs aren’t on the job site. Building optimized routes for each truck keep those costs as low as possible. Take a look at how customers set efficient routes with the ServiceTrade map-based scheduler.
GasBuddy.com and its mobile app are good tools for locating the lowest gas prices in your neighborhood. We wish you safe driving throughout the rest of the winter!
And about that jackpot…
We are happy to announce that the ServiceTrade crew won $8 in last week’s Powerball drawing! We immediately spent it on delicious, conciliatory donuts from Rise.
Don’t Let the Back-Office Tail Wag the Company Dog
All too often, as field service companies are considering new software, they base decisions on their historical software usage patterns and let the tail wag the dog. Since accounting software is the primary, and often only, business application in use, companies search for ways to extend back-office capabilities to the front office and beyond. This line of thinking is understandable, but flawed because it ignores the needs of the majority the organization including the:
Front Office – Your schedulers/dispatchers, service managers, etc.
Service Delivery – Your employees in the field who interact directly with your customers.
Customers & Prospects – I hope you know who they are…
Click the “Start Prezi” button below for a quick visual representation of the current mode of thinking about software I am referencing. Click the right arrow button to continue the Prezi.
If this Prezi does not load for you, click here to view the summary.
Notice that little to no consideration is made for customers and prospects; the source of revenue. In addition, less functionality is desired for the considerably larger divisions of the organization that drive this revenue. I propose a slightly different, proportional perspective on technology selection wherein a stronger consideration is made for the needs of customers and prospects while the needs of the back office are met through loosely coupled integrations with existing systems to reduce double data entry.
If this Prezi does not load for you, click here to view the summary.
From this customer-centric perspective of a service contracting organization, software purchases have the potential to bring more than efficiency to the table. Unlocked from the constraints imposed by the back office, applications can be used to generate inbound leads via brand evangelism, increase customer retention, and reduce customer price sensitivity. This software approach is what we call the Digital Wrap.
Much like your physical truck wraps, the Digital Wrap is a low-cost marketing approach that requires no extra work on behalf of your company other than normal daily service activities. By thoughtfully engaging your customers on the internet in educational and informative ways, you can gain the benefits mentioned above. For example, you can:
Create brand evangelism by delighting customers and soliciting online reviews that will drive traffic to your website.
Increase customer retention through trust built upon rich information such as pictures and videos of services performed.
Reduce price sensitivity through differentiation in quality of customer engagement and education of customer service needs with rich media.
Simply put, a digital wrap will lead to more inbound leads to the front office, and an overall increase in customer lifetime value through customer retention and the amount of work performed for each customer annually. See here:
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When considering technology for your field service company, think about the needs throughout your organization, including those of your customers and prospects. Ultimately, applications that benefit your customers will help your company grow. Check out our book The Digital Wrap: Get out of the truck and go online to own your customers to learn more about the Digital Wrap.
Modern Tools for Service Contractors, Part 1: Operational Efficiency
Over the last couple years, we’ve compiled a list of free to low cost, easy-to-use applications and products that we often recommend to service contractors. These products range in benefits from operational efficiency to lead generation and fit into a modern ecosystem of tools necessary for service contractors to adapt to the business challenges (and opportunities) presented by the evolving nature of the Internet.
Part 1 of this series will focus on simple products that will boost your company’s operational efficiency. Each one of the applications below will save time so you can focus on growing your business.
Fiverr – Task Outsourcing
Too busy to consider making any changes to your company processes? Buried under a pile of spreadsheet work and data entry? Fiverr is here to the rescue. Fiverr connects you with thousands of individuals all over the world who will perform any task you hand them for as low as $5. After your first gig, the Fiverr term for a transaction, you will be on a constant lookout for opportunities to outsource work to save time and money.
Slack – Chat Application for Teams
If you are still communicating with your coworkers via texts and one-sentence emails, consider the switch to Slack. Slack is a chat application that works on any desktop computer or mobile device. Slack makes it easy to chat directly with anyone on your team or communicate in predefined groups. We typically recommend that service contractors set up chat groups for every operational division so that schedulers and dispatchers can quickly communicate with techs in the field. This setup also makes it easy for technicians to communicate and lean on each other’s expertise.
Google Apps or Office 365 – Office Productivity and Collaboration Tools
Strong opinions about these solutions can be found all over the Internet. Microsoft diehards swear by Office 365 and Google fanboys and gals will forever be loyal to Google Apps. We’re here today to to tell you that both products are great! What really matters is that they are both cloud-based products that enable your company to easily collaborate on work and focus on service delivery instead of server IT.
TSheets – Employee Time Tracking
Time tracking for any hourly employee is difficult, but service contractors have the additional complexity associated with field technicians who are not present in the office. TSheets enables remote time tracking via their mobile app which connects back to the accounting system to summarize payroll and job costing. The application even provides overtime warnings to prevent excess payroll spend.
InvoiceSherpa – Accounts Receivable Automation
Once an invoice is sent to your customer, InvoiceSherpa not only provides them with a convenient payment workflow, but also reminds them when the invoice is due. Prebuilt reminder timelines ensure that your customer receives appropriate messaging according to the payment due date. For more information, read our previous blog post about InvoiceSherpa.
None of these applications are difficult to use and each of them requires little implementation. Take advantage of what the internet has to offer so that you can save the time you need to focus on engaging your customers in thoughtful, modern ways.
Coming up next:
Part 2: Web Marketing
Part 3: Direct Sales and Marketing
Note that we’ve purposefully excluded accounting applications on this list. Every company needs a back-office financial system that meets their needs, and there is no accounting system that is a perfect fit for every company. With that said, we do have strong opinions about what makes a good accounting application. Read our eBook, The Practical Guide to Buying Software for Service Contractors, to learn why every service contractor should use a web-based accounting platform that does NOT claim to be an all-in-one.
