The 5 Secrets to Keeping your Field Teams Accountable

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Jonathan Kidd

Service organisations rely heavily on their field teams. On-field operations management for different roles like repairs, maintenance, and installation is critical.

Managing on-field teams can be overwhelming for a field manager. Beyond monitoring their teams’ daily jobs, they also need to handle their own tasks. And when there is no clear or structured process in place, it can easily become chaotic.

Tracking and monitoring team activities real-time and with a high degree of customer responsiveness hold the key to creating delightful experiences for your customers.

Most agile teams embrace field service management tools to positively adapt to changing customer behaviours and landscapes, and stay ahead of the competition.

So how do large service organisations keep their field operations team agile and responsive on the field?

Here’s how:

1. Create proper schedules

Lack of a clear workflow in field-driven processes is the biggest challenge for many companies. This often leads to scheduling overlaps which causes delays in customer service.

Using a proper workflow management system, like Boombirds, to manage on- and off-the-field operations leads to clear workflows in planning and executing services.

2. Take advantage of mobility

When teams are out on the field, work might not go as planned. Delayed schedules due to vehicle breakdowns, bad weather, etc. might happen. That is why most operations managers use GPS-based services to track their fields team.

Live reporting opens transparency between field staff and their managers. As the truth is available real-time, this leads to more accountability for field teams while managing staff can be more trusting.

3. Gain more visibility

Streamlined workflow, processes and mapping service fulfilment on a Kanban-based smart service board helps teams visualise and consolidate customer requests as they happen. It also helps to identify bottlenecks in processes and fix them on the go, so that the service does not stop or get delayed.

The To-Do, Doing, Done approach simplifies operations while improving team accountability (and reducing the teams’ dependency while allowing more autonomy).

4. Document a wealth of information

While agents are working on the field, ensure adherence to service procedures by setting straightforward steps and checklists. Agents can report task compliance by capturing images of the faulty machines, a plumbing defect, etc. throughout the process.

The office staff will then receive up-to-date documentation and keep vital information in a single location. Action reports and photo logs also keep track of what field agents have accomplished. With synced-up communication, office staff can get a live view to what and how agents perform on the field.

5. Enhance customer collaboration opportunities

Service management tools provide customers access to instant updates. With that access, they can also raise service requests, report incidents, and gain a real-time view of service agent visits.

Automatic creation of recurring service with Boombirds ensures scheduled maintenance and timely service completion for customers. It also leads to increased credibility, trust, and greater customer satisfaction.

Customer service is a two-way process. Most organisations have a feedback system to capture customer responses. Based on those, they will then improve customer experiences.

The success of service management stems from solid planning and process-driven execution. The adoption of a field operations management tool helps automate and implement processes based on an organisation’s SOPs.

A perfect combination of processes and tools that maximise visibility, accountability and two-way communication is the definite path to impeccable customer service.

Are you struggling to manage your on-field staff?

Reduce field management chaos with Boombirds. Monitor, live-track, and document your field operations. Streamline your field management business and delight your customers. Efficient field operations management starts now!