3 Work Order Software Reports Guaranteed to Improve Your Business

By David Crary  

As business owners we strive for 100% customer satisfaction. You know that having satisfied customers leads to more business.

I have a very simple rule when doing business with anyone. If the person taking my money doesn’t say “Thank You” I don’t go back. Period. I have even gotten cranky about it. When I am handed that warm latte that cost me $5.43, I will wait until they look at me and say something. If nothing, I say “you are welcome” with a big smile. Just sending a message. The problem may be that the employee is not satisfied with his/her job and that is exhibited in their interactions with customers. Not only customer satisfaction but employee satisfaction and appreciation needs to be a goal for 2014.  Where do you start?

With data. These three work order software reports should help give you the insight you need to manage and improve your business: 

#1. Productivity Report

Before I installed HindSite's work order software in my irrigation business, I thought I knew who my best workers were. I thought they were my most senior guys. But after I installed work order software, I realized just how wrong I was. How? With a productivity report.

This report tracks every activity your service techs perform out in the field. You can see how much time they spend in the shop, driving and at the job site every single minute of every single day. Are they spending time at the location or on the road looking for the location? What is their down time? Are they spending an hour every morning drinking coffee at the shop? The key to successfully using this information is to have benchmarks for what you want your technician’s productivity percent to be. Before I install HindSite, I was experiencing only 50%. Using field service software, the new benchmark became 80% and was achieved by
most technicians. 

A huge benefit is being able to share this information with your employees. Full transparency keeps everyone on the same page and in line with your business objectives. And, if you want, you can give bonuses based on productive time.

#2 Customer Satisfaction Report

We recently installed new support software at HindSite. One of the things I love most about it is that it automatically sends an email after a ticket has been completed asking our customers to rate our support. It helps us figure out if we're meeting our high support standards.

You should do the same. A survey to your customers after each service will provide valuable feedback on your technicians and the quality of the work that is being done. The survey should be specific, simple to fill out and timely. You will be accumulating information to start and this becomes the benchmark. Where are your customers at today? On the satisfaction scale are you getting high marks across the board? Where can you improve? Is a certain technician taking short-cuts and customers are noticing? Talk to him/her and determine what needs to change. Again, this report provides the data for full transparency.  

Even better, we hope to be able to help you do that in the near future. We're currently developing the Pro tier of our new service business marketing add-in, HindSite Connect to include an automated customer satisfaction survey and a customer satisfaction report based on those surveys.

#3 Bid vs. Actual Report

When working with large property management companies you likely submitted a proposal with a bid to get the work. Once you have been working on this property you will be asking yourself “is this a profitable property for me?”

The “Bid vs. Actual” report will answer this question. By tracking the initial bid and comparing it to the number of hours spent at the property you, will see how your initial estimates are working out. You can incorporate the cost of labor and materials so you gain great insight into the profit margin on this particular job. This will be invaluable information for the next time this
contract is renewed as well as for bidding out other properties. It will also be used when you are getting customer satisfaction reports from these customers. If there is any issue with a high profit margin customer they need to be treated extra special. You don’t want to lose them at contract time.