Intuitive Mobile Workforce Management Leads To Service Excellence

A recent survey of more than 200 enterprises in the United Kingdom found that 44 per cent of these service providers thought as many of 50 per cent of their employees had failed to make a commitment to excellence in customer service. Additionally, only 14 per cent of these businesses have the means to accurately measure their employees' performance on key customer service indicators. What is the key that many Australian businesses have found to motivate their mobile workforces to provide high quality customer service?

Real Time Communication and Access to Data Leads to Greater Customer Satisfaction

The leading cause of dissatisfaction amongst the customers of utilities and government service agencies is waiting for service technicians to arrive for appointments. Conversely, when a field technician has to travel long distances between job sites, he is likely to have issues with traffic or getting lost. This frustration is compounded when the technician gets to the site, only to find the customer is not at home or the job requires skill sets the technician does not have. The combination of customer dissatisfaction and field staff frustration can lead to disaster for a service dependent enterprise.

Mobile workforce management solutions, such as FieldTec's FOCUS, provide real-time communication and data that leads to greater customer satisfaction and less employee frustration in the following ways:

• Call centre staff have the location of field technicians, as well as their qualifications, so they can ensure the closest field worker who is qualified to do the job is dispatched to the job site.
• The field technician does not have to stop work to provide the staff and management updates about the progress of a job, since the GIS system partially automates this task.
• The field technician has access to the information located at the company's headquarters to facilitate problem solving on difficult projects. Additionally, the field worker can consult with supervisors and managers on difficult projects, thus reducing the need for repeated service calls.
• Integration with the company's CMS system allows automated reminder calls to reduce the likelihood of customers missing their service appointments.

Mobile Workforce Management Solutions Provide Manager Tools to Track Customer Satisfaction

Mobile workforce management solutions, like FieldTec's FOCUS, provide management with real time reports to monitor the performance of their field staff. This information allows management to address any issues proactively that might lead to customers' dissatisfaction. Some of the tools that can help managers monitor customer satisfaction and employee performance include:

• Real time reports of the amount of time a technician spends on a job site
• The ability to monitor customers' concerns by checking notes made by call centre personnel
• Flexible scheduling in the field allows management to cover the appointments of employees who are absent
• Since all data and reports located in headquarters are available on mobile devices, management are free to go out in the field to provide coaching and supervision on job sites.

The intuitive features of FieldTec's FOCUS will increase the satisfaction of both your enterprise's customers and its mobile workforce.

To learn more about how mobile workforce solutions can help your utility, visit www.fieldtec.com

Source: WhaTech