If you have a remote field service team, you are already familiar with the challenges of keeping them connected to HQ. While you may cobble together some individual solutions, I want to share a robust platform that may have everything you need in one place: Salesforce Field Service Lightning.
Built for businesses with a fleet of staff in the field (i.e., installers, repair technicians, delivery drivers, etc.), Field Service Lightning connects your team to your back office data from the convenience of their smartphones.
Recording On-Site Information
When your field service team interacts with your customers, there’s data to be captured. This information, which often includes signatures, contact info updates, depleted inventory, and more, must be reported to the primary office.
The Field Service Lightning mobile app allows for this data capture and transmission in real time. Features like the integrated barcode scanner prevent inaccurate information from permeating your database while increasing productivity for your employees on-site.
Digital signature capture makes accountability a breeze and, also, phones back home immediately.
Field Service Intelligence
While recording field data back to the home base is powerful, the sharing of knowledge is bi-directional. As technicians approach their next stop, they have access to the customer’s prior service history at their fingertips. This insight allows your boots on the ground to better understand the situation they’re walking into, allowing them to troubleshoot and service the customer more effectively.
Field Service Lightning can instantly apprise them of the changes if there is a shift in direction or protocol since the tech left the previous stop—another perk aiding productivity and customer service.
Your team also has access to a repository of knowledgebase articles at their disposal. These documents you have crafted for your in-office staff are now available to those on the road through the app—saving valuable support time.
Inventory Control
If your business involves field servicemembers carrying inventory on their person, it’s essential to account for items going in and out of stock. When Field Service Lightning integrates with your ERP platform, inventory levels can adjust in real time across your organization. This elegant solution can trigger automated stock replenishment procedures as well as deploy purchase orders or manufacturing requests.
You can service more customers with less downtime.
Tracking Progress
With Field Service Lightning, your mobile team can track the progress of their day or a specific stop—and so can you. This new level of transparency focuses less on “big brother” tactics and more on identifying process improvement areas. While you couldn’t ride shotgun with each of your drivers at the same time before, you can do so now virtually.
These trackable functions also add a level of security for those traveling alone.
Although GPS guidance has become ubiquitous as of late, the Field Service Lightning mobile app includes embedded mapping. This feature provides a level of convenience and insurance, ensuring the destination address gets plotted from the source. With any misstep leading to time wasted, this is another area for a boost in productivity.
Plus, it’s easier than ever for drivers to see their daily jobs at a glance.
Maximizing Performance
Customer demands are varied and unexpected. To best accommodate a request, you may find yourself shuffling the workforce and assigning a particular job to the best on your team. Pivoting has become a more straightforward task with the ability to update job queues on the fly.
Field service workers can see their assignments and routes updated within a moment’s notice. With birdseye view transparency of your team’s location, you can strategically move your pieces around the board to maximize performance.
Should there be a transportation issue—say, a flat tire or mechanical breakdown—other team members can be reassigned, picking up where the stranded left off. What’s more, SKUs are allocated to the replacement tech and updated in the ERP inventory management system in this scenario.
Your team is a team regardless of where they are working. Keeping your staff connected to process changes as they occur empowers your field service team and allows your business to grow.
The details of how to best implement Salesforce Field Service Lightning are specific to your organization. To understand how this can work for your business, Contact Us today—we’re here to help!
