No, working from home is not an option for your service techs. But they shouldn't be coming into the office either!
Think of how much it costs just to have your techs coming into your shop every morning and every evening. There's the fuel cost, lost productivity time, not to mention the gallons of coffee!
Consider what would happen if you could dispatch your service techs daily, right from their homes. According to our customers, you'll be able to:
- Conserve fuel costs, especially if you route appointments based on the geographic area around their home. I know, it's a best case scenario, but we have customers who do it, so don't knock it till you try it!
- Increase the number of jobs a technician can do each day. If they're not driving 20 minutes to the shop, and 20 minutes home, and spending an hour actually in the shop... that's a minimum of 1 extra job every day, if not more.
- Balance your labor cost with more productivity. Along with more jobs each day, a higher percentage of your techs' time is billable time (or directly productive, depending on how you charge for your services).
- Reduce distraction in the office, so the rest of your staff can be more productive too.
Now, that's not to say the techs should never come into the shop! Those Monday morning meetings are still vital to keeping your team on the same page, and maintaining the relationships with your people. That's what drives the business, after all. So you may find you want them in the office more than that, it's up to you and how your business operates.
And what enables all of this is "mobility"? It's using field service software that has this kind of functionality built-in. At HindSite, we designed our entire system around managing your field service business from good data, collected in the field. That means field technicians with mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, laptops/netbooks, or PDAs) can collect and share information remotely. It's an immensely powerful tool, and this "remote dispatch software" part of it is only the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to learn more, check out our 2min demo, or schedule your own.