By David Crary  

Running a small business in this economic climate can be tricky. You want to keep your employees busy without underbidding jobs. But with inflation, the cost of living rising, and the hits your company may or may not be taking over healthcare, it may be time to increase prices to maintain the quality work you pride your operation on. Here are a few tips for breaking the news to your customers and a few remedies to take some of the sting out.

On a recent visit with one of our customers that owns an irrigation business, I heard an interesting complaint they were getting from some of their clients. Their techs were texting while on the job! A serious concern for an owner, that someone may have been stealing his money. But he assured me his techs were actually using mobile field service softwa

Our last post centered on the role of the dispatcher, as discussed by Ruth King and David Crary on HVACChannel.tv.  Today’s post will focus on 4 tips to be a more efficient dispatcher.

Ruth King, founder and CEO of Business Ventures Corporation, and David Crary, President and Founder of HindSite Software, recently sat down on HVACChannel.tv  to discuss efficient dispatching within the field service industry.  Dispatching is one of the most important roles within your field service company.  The dispatcher is the first person to talk with customers, the one who schedules jobs, and the one who provides techs with all of the information they will need out in the field.

Since this is such an important role within your company, I want to use this week’s blog posts to discuss the dispatcher.  Today we will start off with the dispatcher’s role.

"Drivers in one-third of U.S. cities spend more than 40 hours a year (an entire work week) in traffic that is not moving."
(Source: Center for Transportation Excellence)

No, working from home is not an option for your service techs. But they shouldn't be coming into the office either!

You’re busy. No, that’s not accurate. You’re CRAZY busy. The phone is blowing up, your crews are working long days, the paperwork is piling up.

Productivity is the name of the game, right? As business people, we're always looking for ways to be more productive, more efficient, because being those means we have more opportunity to be more profitable.

Are you getting the most out of your service scheduling software? While we have a lot of industries using our software, the irrigation and landscaping guys in the northern climes are getting ready for their version of hell week right now: Spring Turn-Ons.

Recently we held a HindSite Training Day for our local customers, most of which are Green Industry companies (irrigation, landscaping, and lawn care). We brought them in, educated them on advanced uses of our field service management software, showcased new features, and spent a lot of time listening to their concerns.