Thinking About A Field Service And CRM Platform? Consider These Things First

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As a service business owner, you are probably always looking for ways to improve the services that you're offering to customers. Especially when this service business requires the use of field technicians, improving service means fully understanding the demands, schedule, and needs of your customers. One of the best ways to do this is with a comprehensive customer-relationship-management and field-service-monitoring system. If you've been thinking about upgrading your current platform to something all-encompassing, you may wonder if it is really time for that. Here are a few things to consider to help you decide.

Are You Successful With Your Current Field Service Platform?

If you are already running a platform that at least provides field technician management, you should be successful in its use and application before you consider upgrading to something that is all-encompassing. Make sure that you and your staff are successful with your current platform before you start thinking about working with something more elaborate.

This is important because if you struggle to use your existing platform with its minimal tools, you may have a much harder time adapting to something that manages your customer accounts and technician services all in one place. If the staff in your office don't use the platform, your technicians are unreliable about updating it, or there are other issues like this, those problems may be magnified with a platform that's more comprehensive.

Are You Transitioning From Just Repairs To Maintenance As Well?

Migrating from just a field service platform to a field service and CRM platform is a good option if you are looking to transition from just responding to breakdown calls into offering maintenance as well. When you offer maintenance services, you can increase your revenue and potentially improve customer satisfaction by reducing downtime.

A field service and CRM platform is best for this transition for a couple of reasons. When you have a platform that integrates all of your service calls as well as your customer account activity, it's easier to set up a predictive maintenance schedule. You can integrate those maintenance schedules with each new component that the customer purchases and keep track of all preventative maintenance that's been done. That way, your technicians don't waste time repeating something that someone else has already done.

Are Your Customers Tech Savvy?

If your traditional customer base is fairly tech savvy, incorporating a CRM and field service platform, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service, may actually be to your advantage. Platforms like these allow for customer logins so that they can see their own maintenance history and request or schedule service appointments right from the platform. This not only gives them greater control over their own maintenance needs and accounts, but it also provides them freedom from your traditional business hours.

Is Your Service Call Center Overwhelmed?

Do you find that customer hold times on your service call center have been getting progressively longer? Are your call center agents feeling overwhelmed with the volume of calls coming in? Sometimes incorporating a CRM and field service platform will solve this problem for you.

Call and hold times can be longer for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is due to time requirements for your call center agents trying to get information about the service history. With a CRM and field service platform integrated together, your call center technicians will have all of the information at their fingertips

In addition, since these platforms allow customers to schedule their own service appointments online, it reduces your inbound call volume. The customers that adopt the platform for scheduling won't have to call in for their appointments. Further, since preventative maintenance reduces the frequency of breakdowns, you may find that your emergency breakdown calls are reduced as well, easing the strain on your call center staff.


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