The Waiting Game

Waiting for service personnel to arrive drives your customers nuts. Time to do something about it.

Time is a currency no one has enough of. Service businesses large and small know full well that wasting a customer's time leads to frustration, negative reviews and worst...lost customers. Obviously it's best to prevent late arrivals and overly long arrival windows entirely by getting a better handle on scheduling and dispatch, but what if a late arrival is unavoidable?

It comes down to simple communication. Simply letting customers know that you're running late and when you expect to arrive can drastically improve their overall experience. However many service companies fail to make this simple courtesy a standard part of their service operation.

Also keep in mind that you can better communicate with your customers by using a field service solution to take control of scheduling and dispatch. Solutions like FieldAware tell you where field personnel are and when they will arrive at the next job.  You or the field employee can then pass this information along to the customer and they will appreciate being kept in the loop.

To read more on this subject, including some nifty statistics on service performance (like the one below), check out this article from our friends at Software Advice, an advisory firm that offers dispatch software information to businesses “Improve Service Provider Efficiency with GPS-Enabled Dispatch Software.”