Efficiency Challenges of On-Site Power Generation Field Service Technicians

On-site power generation is becoming increasingly popular, given its benefits such as cost savings, increased reliability, and higher power quality.

Therefore, it's no surprise that on-site power generation service technicians are in higher demand than ever before.

However, many field service managers find satisfying clients and maintaining an extensive client portfolio increasingly challenging. Your clients demand that you not only provide top quality services, but you also do it in record time.

To maintain your brand's reputation for high-quality service, it's essential to work through the basic operational challenges that most brands face.

Here are the most common issues that cause churn and eat the profits of on-site power generation field service companies.

Inefficient Service Calls

If your technicians have to spend time closing out a work order, your company is leaving money on the table. In addition, your other customers will have to wait, which decreases customer satisfaction and rushes your field service technicians.

While it's essential to close out work orders properly, it's a time-consuming endeavor, and fortunately, there is a better solution to standing around for 45 minutes. In fact, Kevin Starkey of Generator Systems was able to slash their work order closeout time to just five minutes and increased their schedulable hours by 17 percent. The key was to implement field service management software. You can read about how they did it here.

Delayed Billing

If your clients don't pay on time, you'll be strapped for cash to keep the lights on. Nonetheless, it's inefficient to hire a large accounting team to track down clients and expedite billing processes as the field technicians are the ones driving your bottom line.

For example, Generator System's accounting team previously had to review each invoice against the work order and quote manually. About half of the invoices ultimately had to be adjusted, and the process took about 30 minutes per invoice.

However, with a quick NetSuite integration, they were able to double the number of transactions they could perform in the same amount of time.

Unorganized Reporting

Reporting is the heart and soul of any business, and it allows your company to discover new growth opportunities and identify inefficiencies within your team.

However, reporting is similar to accounting in that while it is a necessary task, it is not a direct revenue driver for the business. Therefore, it's essential to streamline this process. Fortunately, FSM software can reduce the time spent generating any report from hours to minutes.

Necessary Data is Inaccessible

Finally, field service technicians responding to on-site power generation service calls need information on the next job instantly. In fact, the top challenge among service technicians was a lack of access to a pre-visit review of service history. 

When field service technicians don't have access to essential information, it lowers the company's first-time fix rate and dramatically impacts your customer and employee satisfaction.

Finding a Solution

While these challenges have cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars, some companies like Generator Systems have found simple solutions. You can read more about their case study and dive deeper into solutions for common issues like IoT adoption, accurate job data capture and processing, and much more.