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How we measure performance within our industry and our business is continually changing. Are you finding it challenging when trying to determine the best ways to evaluate your service technicians?
Using various methods of performance analysis, such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), has quite a few business owners wondering, “Are KPIs still relevant to field service technicians?”
The short answer to this question is, “Yes.” We hate to break it to you, but if your services manager isn’t using KPIs to measure business objectives, you might have the wrong supervisor in that position.
Before we brief you on the importance of KPIs, it’s essential to know what KPIs are in the first place. KPIs are a measurable value showing how effectively a company is fulfilling key business objectives. The implementation of KPIs supports any necessary improvement with a goal of better decision making processes so a business can focus on what matters the most.
But why are KPIs so important? Let us explain!
KPIs and Your Field Service Technicians: What’s The Importance?
If your business has a team that provides any sort of product or service to your customers, you’ll want to listen up. It’s critical that you have indicators to measure how your employees are performing and if changes need to be made.
KPIs can even improve productivity and business performance within your service department. Here’s how:
- Everyone needs to be challenged. Without strategic goals and benchmarks, how do you do that?
- Your employees become more invested.
- KPIs allow your employees to be rewarded if your company has a compensation program in place.
- KPIs establish benchmarks for you to evaluate your team against
- KPIs allow you to quickly analyze trends and make adjustments where needed, as well as adjusting your training to fit the needs of all employee skill levels.
What KPIs Should I Be Looking At?
Even if you have a great understanding of the importance of KPIs, sometimes the most challenging part is how to determine the types of KPIs you should be measuring.
For starters, most would probably say that a First Call Effectiveness (FCE) or your profitability is a great KPI to look at. However, even though these are important, if you don’t have a tool to measure customer satisfaction, how can these be relevant or helpful?
Speaking of customer satisfaction, you might be interested in reading our article, 7 Customer Service Best Practices for Any Business.
Whether it be an internal survey you’ve created or a survey through a third party, such as CEOJuice. These tools help gauge your customer’s confidence in your company—and should be at the top of your priority list.
Measuring Your Field Service Technicians
Once a survey is in place, and you’re receiving feedback, most other key performance indicators within the industry should fall into place. Some of these KPIs include:
- Responding to Your Customers: If you’re not responding to your customers promptly, how long will they stay your customer before reaching out to one of your competitors?
It’s critical to provide your customers with multiple ways of contacting you for any issues, such as phone, email, text, or a chat feature on your website.
A great way to stay on top of response times is to set standards for your employees to follow (which also holds them accountable), whether it be 30 minutes or 2 hours.
Make sure to follow up with your customers to make sure your service level agreements (SLAs) are being met by your employees. You can do so by making this part of you or the service manager’s monthly field inspections.
To learn more about finding a services provider with great response times, read our article, Choosing the Best Copier & Printer Service: 7 Must-Haves. - First Call Effectiveness (FCE):
We briefly mentioned FCE earlier, and we’re bringing it up again because it could be one of your highest labor costs. We can’t stress enough the importance of continually looking at your FCE numbers.
One of your main business goals should be for your service techs to resolve or perform repairs of the customer's issue on the first visit and not have to reschedule or come back for any reason.
There are a few things you can do to ensure this happens. First, review the field service tech’s car stock quarterly (at minimum) to make sure all inventory is accounted for. Next, set up territories and assign them to each of your service techs. You’ll have a better idea of what stock needs to go in which car based on specific territories.
It’s also helpful to review your techs territories quarterly to remove equipment that is no longer there while also adding any new equipment that may have been sold during the previous quarter.
Keep in mind; you may also need to readjust territory size if workload increases or decreases based on equipment review. This is when having a parts runner available to your service techs comes in handy.
Did you know a parts runner can even save your business money? WIth a parts runner, your service techs won’t have to reschedule another appointment with a customer if they don’t have the part needed to fix the problem. A second visit can be eliminated by simply placing a call to your parts runner to have them deliver the part.
By the way, a parts runner can do more than just running parts. They can also help out by delivering toner when an overflow occurs or other supplies, such as paper. - Preventing Callbacks: As you probably know, preventing callbacks from occurring could be a contract profitability killer. Here are some great ways to decrease the number of callbacks your business might be receiving:
- Provide weekly reports to your field service techs to review any callbacks they received
- Have managers review callbacks and determine why there was a recall
- Provide your service techs with a level of expectation for every call and hold them accountable through field inspections
- Reinforce to your service techs that it’s about quality, not quantity
- Have all the tools necessary for your employees to perform their tasks
- Have an in-house trainer that can provide ongoing training to your service techs
- Make sure your field managers are actually in the field working with and providing training daily
To learn more about the importance of KPIs, read an article published by Forbes, Key Performance Indicators 101 & Why They're Important.
As you can tell, KPIs are still very relevant, regardless of the industry your business is in. Some of the best ways to improve your operations or satisfaction from your customers are to analyze what’s working and what needs further development.
Dedicate some time to working with your service techs and the key performance indicators that are important to your business and customers. The more proactive you are in measuring performance, the better the service your customers will receive.One of our goals at AIS is to provide you with the best tools and resources so your business can continue on its path of growth and success. Staying informed on new or various business strategies encourages you and your employees to strive for more. To learn more about measuring KPIs or any of the products and services we sell, reach out to one of our business technology consultants, here. We’re here to give you peace of mind to help you win more business.
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