Every business has it’s challenges. Some are big, and others are rather massive. Among these issues may lie the incredible task of field service management. Field service management is the coordination of a company in order to help solve issues spread out over a given area.

As you can imagine, coordinating multiple people and actually getting their efforts to work together cohesively can be a real pain in the neck. It is doable, however, but what are some of the daily challenges that you would face in the day to day life of field service management?

1. Scheduling

Schedules can be wonderful lifesavers that make things run as smoothly as silk. That is, when they are well thought out and work properly. They must work out well here, as your  customers will be expecting you to keep a certain level of consistency when it comes to serving them.

Any deviations from the plan will result in a messy scheduling conflict and at least one unhappy customer. In the world of service, one unhappy customer can be likened to the downfall of a good business, so it’s imperative that everyone sticks to their schedule.

2. Fix Rates

When an issue arises, it is up to the company to solve the problem quickly and as easily as possible. For the most part, that does work well and leaves most everyone happy. Yet, there will always be that percentage of customers who do not receive a proper solution on their first visit, prompting them to have to complain to the company once more about their issue. This does not look good on the company at all, but it is a factor that will happen and may just happen quite often, unfortunately.

3. Safety and Liability

Naturally, whenever you send a worker out into the field, there will be a certain element of danger associated with the task. The work, itself, may turn out to be quite hazardous, especially when traveling to not so safe locations. Plus, traveling can even be pretty dangerous in its own right. Luckily, there are a few ways to remedy this, primarily by using field service management software.

When using the software, the worker will have the ability to “check in” at certain locations. That way if something happens or goes sideways, you will be able to check and see where it was that they last checked in at and what their location was.

4. Customer Communication

When a truck is en route to an area of service, the customer that is being affected will typically like to stay in the know just in case any holdups happen. Keeping in contact with the customer can be a bit of a hassle, but luckily a quick solution to this is the use of field management software, as was mentioned in the previous entry. It will make staying in contact with all of your customers much easier and provide a clean, organized way of keeping up with who is due where and when they should arrive.

5. Performance Management

Let’s think about what field service management is doing for a moment. They are managing various people dealing with multiple problems at all times. As you can imagine, that would become really confusing to an unorganized manager, right? How can you keep track of so many factors, plus keep in mind whether or not they are doing a worthy job while they are out in the field?

Once again, field service management software can easily solve this by organizing all of this information in an easy to comprehend way. It really just makes the entire job easier at the end of the day!