Job scheduling, or to be more technical, field service scheduling, is essentially the process of assigning the right job to the right technician/employee, at exactly the right time.
Job scheduling has been the backbone for any management efforts for decades, and while it might seem like a pretty simple process for smaller organizations, it will only grow to be more complex as the organization grows. If we don’t implement a standardized job scheduling process as the business scales, it can lead to a plethora of problems in the future, both for the technicians and the organization.
It’s very important for organizations to apply a consistent job scheduling framework that results in jobs being scheduled according to the organization’s objectives to achieve the best possible results, improving efficiency and productivity in the process. This is where implementing an automated job scheduling can help, and here is a list of important things you should consider when thinking of automating your scheduling process.
1. Improved Communication and Transparency
With an automated scheduling solution, one of the most important benefits is the reduced miscommunication between field staff, and also between field and back-office staff. By automating the scheduling and dispatching process, we can maintain more organized job schedules and when we need to implement any changes, we can easily make it in real-time.
2. Boost Staff Morale
Unsatisfied employees cost businesses over $500 billion every year. A transparent, accurate schedule made possible by the automated scheduling software can significantly help in improving your employees’ morale, which in turn can help improve their productivity.
When employees get confused about when and where they are supposed to be, it can lead to a major dissatisfaction and disconnect from your organization. The damages from schedule inconsistencies can be significant and long-term: suddenly you are dealing with a missing appointment, employees avoiding work, and even stealing from you and your clients.
3. Prevents Understaffing
One of the key issues in any field-service work is understaffing. Clients can be extremely disappointed, which can hurt your reputation and long-term revenue.
Implementing automated field service management software can be very effective in preventing understaffing issues. Fieldd, for example, offers a drag-and-drop scheduling dashboard that when paired with its AI-based automation, can easily identify and correct various understaffing issues.
When a technician or employee doesn’t show up on time, for example, you can know right away and FIeldd will immediately notify another technician to grab the call. This simple implementation of automated dispatching can be very effective in combating understaffing.
4. Instant, Real-Time Notification
In traditional scheduling, we often deal with various issues like payroll errors, scheduling inconsistencies, and missed appointments/deadlines that can significantly impact the bottom line of the organization. This is why 50% of the surveyed field survey companies admitted that implementing automation is their single reason for achieving positive ROI.
With automated scheduling and dispatching solution, we no longer have to rely on phone calls and unreliable messaging apps. We can easily change the schedule via the drag-and-drop schedule builder, and the technicians/employees affected by the change will be notified immediately via the mobile app.
5. AI Technology For More Sophisticated Automation
The implementations of AI technologies have now allowed automation scheduling solution to automatically assign jobs to the right technician based on:
- History: for example, the average time it takes for the technician to complete a specific task to ensure we can assign the most efficient worker on the task
- Service policies: rules implemented by the company, for example, technicians cannot be assigned any job on their days off.
- Objectives: for example prioritizing certain high-value customers and optimizing efficiencies as much as possible
- Capacity changes: the automated scheduling solution must be able to adjust the schedule when the organization receives certain requests or unexpected cancellations
- Unforeseen changes: the AI technology can implement rapid changes to scheduling to ensure optimal service delivery during unforeseen events
6. Improve Efficiency By Planning Your Routes strategically
The automated scheduling solution can help decide on the most optimal routes based on availability, accessibility, and efficiency, while also ensuring that the best possible technician is assigned to the job in question.
On the other hand, if necessary we can also prioritize customers with our routes, for example, we can prioritize customers with emergency requests or high-value customers with sudden requests.
7. Increase Billable Hours
By improving efficiency and decreasing miscommunications, we can improve all technicians’ productivity which in turn will help increase billable hours and revenue.
Field staff no longer need to call in to the office, and vice versa back-office staff won’t need to call each technician one by one during a schedule change or sudden requests. By implementing automation, we can get rid of manual and time-consuming scheduling and dispatching, streamlining the whole process so we can focus on the thing that actually matters: providing service to our clients.
Manual scheduling can often take a significant amount of time that could be spent on billable tasks, while administrative and office staff also can have more time to perform other tasks. Last but not least, with instantaneous scheduling provided by the automation software, the quicker we can actually start the job.
8. Meeting Customer Expectations
Last but not least, arguably the most important benefit of deploying an automation scheduling software is the inevitable increase in the level of customer satisfaction. By having a single dashboard listing all your technician’s schedules that are also easily accessible by all technicians and even clients, it can significantly improve accurate arrival and completion times to customers.
By making your schedules more transparent to everyone, this can also help in promoting accountability for all technicians and staff, which in turn can encourage everyone to be more productive and efficient. In turn, this can help improve your business’s reputation as a credible, trustworthy service.
Are You Ready to Implement Automated Scheduling?
Fieldd is an intuitive and easy-to-use field service scheduling solution that can help you implement automated scheduling smarter than ever.
