By David Crary
Okay...don’t think I’m crazy. While your staff probably doesn't average 6’7”, nor are you an owner like Jay-Z (sorry to burst your bubble but you are no Jay-Z), your field service business truly is comparable to an NBA team. Follow along on my thought process and see how your field service management business could be the next Lakers of the field service industry.
Below are three ways your field service business should resemble the NBA to be a stronger and more efficient company.
- Make Your Shots – You can’t get very far in a typical NBA game without making a few (or 50) shots. Not only would the team never win, no one would come to watch.
Just like you need goals made in any sports league, you need goals to be made and met within your field service management business. Set goals up that you hope to achieve, and achieve them each year. Having goals allows your business to grow and develop as a whole. While not everyone on your team will have a direct impact to revenue (just like not every player on a team needs to score a basket for the entire team to win), they all need guidance from their coach (you) for ways they can contribute for the good of the whole company.
Goals are a great tool to keep people focused on tasks at hand, while also tracking how the company is doing as a whole. Assign goals to each part of your company that are both achievable and realistic. Just like you wouldn’t have your center shooting all of your three pointers, you also shouldn’t have your technicians attempting 20 jobs in a day. Set your goals and your company up for success by making achievable goals that will better the entire business. - Follow Through – Just like Ray Allen or Larry Bird couldn’t be the shooters they are without following through on their shots, your office team can't afford to not follow through. Make sure your office staff is following through with your customers.
Are they returning every missed call? Are they answering every customer’s question (or calling them back with an answer ASAP)? What about a potential customer calling in asking for pricing?
Be sure your office staff is following through with every call that comes in to your office. Customers appreciate fast responses or being checked in on after having a service performed. It shows you aren’t there to just do the job, but to make sure they are satisfied as well. Have your office staff give potential customers a call back asking if they had thought anymore about purchasing from you. You never know until you ask. - Defense – A team who isn’t defending is just as useless as a team who isn’t scoring. A strong defense is needed to stop competitors from passing you up in basketball and in your industry.
So what is the strongest defense you can have for your company? A field service software program. How, you ask? Because you have facts and data. Information is power. A field service software stores all of the information you could ever need for your company in one easy to access place. Things such as customer history, work orders, employees schedules, and invoices can all be stored and accessed in a field service software program.
So how does this give you a good defense? Have you ever had a customer complain about the work done at their site or an invoice they received? With the automation and data storage field service software provides, you have proof to back up your side of things.
I used to have customers call me all the time asking why their bill was so high or why the work on their property wasn’t completed that day. Before mobile field service software, I had no data to back up why things were the way they were. I usually had to negotiate with the customer so I could still get at least a portion of my payment from them.
I developed my field service software so I was no longer negotiating with customers. Techs are able to use our mobile field service software to enter in all of the data about a job from their device. This is then transmitted back to the office, where the information is stored under the customer. If there are extra charges on a bill or a tech couldn’t complete a job because they didn’t have a part, my customers now have an answer as to why. They have a defense to those customers who like to fight and argue over every nickel and dime.
Just like coaches need to get their teams in line, you, as a business owner, need to be sure your staff is on top of their game. Provide both great offense with excellent customer service, as well as great defense with knowledge of customers and you will watch your team, and your company, succeed.