How to Improve Your First-Time Fix Rate
Nothing is more frustrating than arriving on-site without the necessary tools or skills to fix the problem.
This wastes valuable company resources like transportation costs and the technician's time. Though most importantly, it creates a poor customer experience as the fix time will take longer than anticipated, and the client may have wasted their valuable time to meet the technician.
So what can you do?
While it's not possible to control every situation, emerging technologies now make it easier to improve your first-time fix rate (FTFR) and improve customer satisfaction.
What is First-Time Fix Rate (FTFR)?
First-time fix rate means that the technician arrived on the client's site and succeeded in solving the problem before leaving the site. Therefore, the technicians arrived with all the resources necessary to complete the job without requiring a second visit.
FTFR is a key metric that all field service organizations should track to improve performance and profitability.
How to Calculate FTFR
Calculating your FTFR is relatively simple.
Just add the total number of jobs completed on the first visit and divide it by the total number of jobs completed.
FTFR Industry Standard
Research shows that top-performing companies have an FTFR of roughly 89 percent, while poorly performing companies have an FTFR of just 56 percent.
The industry average falls around 75 percent.
How to Improve Your FTFR
While it is possible to track technician skills, equipment inventory, and scheduling manually, it's only a matter of time before one person will eventually make a mistake in the documentation process, and your FTFR plummets.
Thankfully, you can now use field service management software to automate most of these tasks for you and prevent mistakes. IoT devices can also remotely monitor client sites to provide accurate information on the current state of the client's assets.
Proper Triage and Problem Identification
Having a remote triage solution can dramatically improve your FTFR as it can use AI and historical data to better identify the problem. Thus, technicians arrive on the site knowing what they will have to fix rather than guessing based on client descriptions.
Workforce Management
Having a workforce management solution can also improve your FTFR as it reduces manually matching technicians and tools with jobs. Therefore, your FTFR will improve as you will deploy the right resources and skills to get the job done right every time.
Scheduling & Optimization
Using a field service management solution with scheduling and optimization features ensures the right person with the right tools will arrive on-site with an appropriate amount of time to successfully complete the job. If an issue does arise, the software can automatically recalculate which technicians will go to which job and prevent errors that could harm your FTFR.
Mobile Technician Enablement
Empowering your technicians with mobile devices that already contain past client history will help improve your FTFR by ensuring that they (and the rest of the company) have access to:
- Asset/Work History
- Knowledge Management
- Process and Workflow documentation
This will ensure they bring the right tools to the job and enable accurate documentation to protect your future FTFR.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing your FTFR is a great way to ensure that you've achieved a balance of excellent customer service and organizational efficiency.
While checking your FTFR once a quarter is a good start, consider checking it monthly or even weekly to maximize growth. If you need a solution that helps improve your FTFR, contact us today to learn about our solutions.