An employee quitting is always a hard situation to be in as a field service business. You are short one man or woman and it can be hard to find a dedicated employee that is a good fit with your culture. And what do you do when an employee quits who was the only one in the company capable of doing their job?
We have seen this happen more than once within our field service software business. An owner will call in saying their office person just quit and they cannot get the program to work. Usually they will call in pretty angry, which can cause a lot of stress for everybody, but in the end we know it is just frustration with the situation.
So what do you do when your office person quits and no one in your business knows how to work your service scheduling software? There are a few steps to take:
Step 1: Before that employee walks out the door, get their login information and any passwords you may need to get access to the program. This will be important for the next step and for the future.
We had an employee leave our company about a year and half ago. Before he left, he wrote up an excel spreadsheet of every site and service we had ever used and the username, password, and for certain services, the person of contact. I cannot tell you how much of a lifesaver this has been since he left.
Get the log in information so that you are not stuck guessing passwords, or having to set up an entirely new account.
Step 2: Call the software provider immediately. If this person was running everything from scheduling, to producing work orders, and dealing with the information when it came back in to office for billing, you have a lot of learning to catch up on.
Your software provider wants you to succeed and any good company won’t charge you for support. Call them up and schedule an appointment as soon as possible. You are even allowed to call this situation an emergency and I can bet you will get an appointment that day or the next.
Step 3: Be better prepared for this in the future. It can always be hard to be prepared for every scenario but for each business there are little steps you can take to ensure you are not totally screwed when an employee leaves.
Have more than one person understand the system. When you first implement a system, have more than one person watch and learn how to operate it. This way, if one leaves, you will always have a backup.
You will also want a record of every login and password for employees. It’s a little bit of reassurance that if an employee happens to leave mad, you will not be screwed.
An employee quitting can cause a bit of a shift in the dynamics of your company. It can be surprising how much you all need each other to do certain parts of the job and especially when it comes to an office person. They handle a lot of the behind the scenes functions of a field service business and that is not always realized.
Once you get your office readjusted after the absence of an employee, you should take another look at your field employees. There are always little things that can be done to make your team stronger and better when it comes to servicing customers. Check out the 6 Rules for an Awesome Service Department.