How to Cope with Increased Demands for Electrical Installation?

Demand for electrical installation and maintenance is at an all-time high. There is always a customary annual boom during the peak holiday season. This year, the pandemic has brought focus to ventilation and electrical installations.

But boom times need not make a business successful. Many companies cannot handle the increased load. They make many mistakes, such as

• Not executing the work order fast. Many providers cannot execute the work within the stipulated time or break their promises. They lack the staff or resources to handle the workload. 
• Degraded quality of work. Field executives become tired and stressed due to overwork and performing over time continuously.
• Not updating back-office tasks on time. Invoices get delayed, the CRM does not have the latest information, and technicians cannot access the information needed to do the job. Technicians waste time seeking information, further holding up work.
• Not facilitating customized requests in the quest to complete jobs quicker. This degrades the customer experience.

These instances annoy customers who go elsewhere and leave negative reviews. Deploying field service software such as ReachOut Suite streamlines operations. It enables service providers to scale-up operations. Here are five ways the suite allows electrical installation providers to remain in control of their day-to-day operations and execute workflows without a hitch.

1. Effective scheduling and dispatching

Service providers cannot handle spikes in demand without a well-oiled system to process work orders. It is not always possible to hire more staff when work increases. There is a shortage of skilled electrical technicians. In any case, enterprises cannot commit to the expenses of an additional staff until the spike in demand stabilizes. Until then, they have to optimize the resources on hand. 

Effective scheduling of technicians streamlines work. Automating the process through the field service software gets more work done with the workforce.

ReachOut field management suite offers advanced scheduling capabilities.

• An intuitive drag-and-drop option makes it easy to assign work to technicians. A skills depository that holds agent certification details shortlists the agents eligible for the job. The scheduler assigns jobs considering the proximity of the technician to the worksite. Automatic notifications keep the field technicians and other stakeholders informed. 
• Advanced options make explicit the status of each technician and their upcoming jobs. The scheduler may add multiple technicians to complete a hard job, configure individual tasks within a team, and more.
• Seamless integration with inventory management avoids a revisit for want of supplies.
• Integration with maps guides the technician to their worksites through the fastest routes.

With ReachOut, technicians spend less time on the road and more time at customer premises. As a result, their productivity increases, and they can focus on their tasks better. Streamlining work assignments allows committing to more jobs without sacrificing quality.

2. Live tracking

Managing workloads and scaling up seamlessly requires good supervisory control. This isn’t easy in field service, with operations spread out far from the office.

ReachOut field management suite enables live tracking of technicians. Integration with maps shows the location of the technician. Supervisors may intervene in cases of delays or hold-ups. For instance, if service at a customer’s location takes too long, the supervisor may dispatch additional technicians and close the job fast. If there is a delay en route, the dispatcher may divert the technician through another route. Providing an accurate ETA satisfies the customer, even if the ETA is beyond the normal standards. Customers value honesty and assurance more than anything else.

3. Seamless workflows

Managing heavy workloads requires a well-oiled system.

ReachOut field service management app comes with smartphone apps that boost agent productivity. An integrated dashboard offers a single view of upcoming jobs, changes, and alerts. A customer repository linked to the CRM offers customer details, including service history. Technicians easily access the work order, directions to the work location, and other relevant information. They execute the job with full focus, without distraction.

Read more: Field Crew Management Software 101: The What, Why, and How!

4. Paperless inspections and reports

Inspections and compliance reporting slow down work. Technicians often waste time on unproductive paperwork, such as filling up forms and filing reports. ReachOut automates the process.

Users may download readymade inspection or audit forms and reports. Or they may use the stylized form option to upload custom, branded forms, and reports. They may upload a replica of their existing paperwork, and leverage the benefits of going digital without going through the usual disruption. 

Creating customized smart forms guides electronic data collection through a smartphone. Digital forms allow annotated images and videos. Paperless workflows enable collecting the customer’s digital signature as proof of work done. The system auto-generates reports in the desired format and emails to the set addresses. Analysis of the data offers rich insights, such as specific areas of productivity blocks.

5. Automated invoicing

Enterprises facing heavy demand often push back-office tasks to the back burner. Beyond a point, such putting-off subverts the vitality of the enterprise. This manifests most in invoices. Harried field agents and support time will have no time to prepare invoices diligently, or follow up payments. They prioritize serving another customer, who would, in most cases, be already fuming because of the delay.

ReachOut field management suite automates and streamlines invoicing. Technicians who use the suite mark the work as complete through their smartphone apps. The suite taps into the phone’s geolocation capabilities to calculate the number of hours spent at the worksite. Integrators at APIs pull in details such as customer’s address from the CRM, tax details from the accounts suite, work order details, and more. The automated system includes all work done and adds the correct rate for each line item, with applicable and promised discounts.

Prompt and accurate invoices that leave no room for ambiguity encourage customers to pay up promptly. The field technicians collect the payment before leaving the worksite.

Read more: 7 Ways an Enterprise Service Management Software Boosts Service Business Growth

Automated back-end integrators update the accounts and CRM with the payment details. Real-time update of information leaves no room for confusion. It avoids bloopers like making payment reminders to customers who have already paid. Accounting and payroll also get automated, saving the enterprise lots of clerical work.

The holiday season will crank up electrical and installation demands. But without ReachOut suite to streamline operations, the odds are that the spike in demand will leave your business worse off than before!

Want to try out the ReachOut suite for your business? Connect with us today!