When the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread across the U.S., health officials advised many businesses and organizations to close their buildings to prevent people from spending time inside in close quarters. However, companies operating field services operations had a different problem: how to keep their employees and others safe as they provide service at those buildings or consumers’ homes. These companies, many considered essential workers throughout the pandemic, had to carefully evaluate their processes and – with the help of technology and field services payments solutions – make changes to limit contact and enable social distancing.
Now, many of these field services teams’ new processes are likely to become permanent due to the greater convenience, streamlined workflows, and health safety they provide.
4 New Field Services Processes Becoming Part of Busines As Usual
- Mobility
A 2020 survey by field service management software provider Fieldpoint found that nearly half of all field services organizations use mobile apps, field service management tools for scheduling and integrated accounting applications. The pandemic will likely drive even more companies to allocate budget to providing techs with access to data and applications in the field in 2021.
With a mobile solution, field techs can access their schedules and schedule changes, routes, work orders, and customer information, so they don’t spend time returning to the office for paperwork. Mobile solutions also enable social distancing among field techs and office employees.
- Route planning
Some field services companies faced increased demand during business shutdowns. With more people at home, consumers may have turned their attention to renovations or discovered needed repairs, and the demand for delivery services skyrocketed. At the same time, some field service companies may have been shorthanded due to illness or travel restrictions.
Route planning software empowered field services companies to maximize efficiency, optimize schedules, and help their teams be most productive.
- Omnichannel payments
Field services companies also faced the challenge of finding the best way to accept payments at the time of service while meeting customer demands for touchless experiences. An omnichannel payments solution enables the company to offer its customers payment options, including credit or debit cards, contactless cards or mobile wallets, online portal, and QR code or text-to-pay solutions. Moreover, advanced payment platforms enable many transactions to be supported by the mobile devices that field techs already use for other facets of their jobs.
Omnichannel payments integrated with mobile field service solutions aren’t only beneficial for customers. They also streamline processes for the company’s back office. Generating an invoice at the time of service, accepting payment and sending a receipt via email or text saves time, enhances cash flow, and minizines the time and resources spent on collections. A full-featured payments solution also gives field services operations the ability to set up automatic recurring payments for customers who receive periodic landscaping, snow removal, maintenance, or other regularly scheduled work.
- Reporting
The urgency to operate as safely and efficiently as possible taught field services organizations the value of using data from their digitized processes. Insights from that data gave field services business leaders deeper visibility into their sales, costs, labor and profits, as well as how they could improve their services and efficiency.
Now that they have experienced data’s value and understand its potential, they’ll likely continue to leverage it for insights that help them continue to make smart decisions to keep their operations on track.
Integrate Mobility, Management and Field Services Payments Solutions
ISVs developing solutions for field services companies may focus on different features depending on niches they serve – for example, a plumbing repair company will have very different needs than a landscaping firm. However, all field services software should have mobile capabilities and integrated payments for the greatest efficiency and optimal customer experiences. Doing business during the pandemic demonstrated that, and field services companies aren’t turning back.
