Facilitating Conversation Between Field Technicians and the Office: 6 Fool-Proof Techniques

Imagine you’re stuck on an island with no mode of transport or network, leaving no scope for you to contact others and ask for help. Even if you have locals around, the challenge is interacting with them if they speak a language different from yours. You feel desperate and helpless, everything all at once.

Similarly, field technicians go through the same feelings when they are stuck in the field without any contact or support from the backend team. Without properly understanding the customer’s concern, the technician may do more damage than resolve it. This is why communication and collaboration between field technicians and the office is the sine qua non.

How to streamline communication and collaboration?

With the best technology, you are motivating your field technicians to do their work to their best potential and engaging more office teams in work. Both groups are dependent on each other, and the following are a few ways through which you can improve their communication and collaboration.

Automating mobile collaborative workflows

Your workers on the field will need access to mobile devices to stay updated on the software. You can make them more collaborative by combining communication with existing workflows. Instead of having multiple chats with various people in the office, it is more efficient to create group chats. Each team can have a separate group chat so that no one loses track of the conversation and doesn’t miss the important ones. Your field workers won’t have to contact office members individually when needed; a simple ping on the group will ensure they receive a prompt response.

Promoting productivity with the best software

While traditional methods of field service management do get the job done, they take more time and aren’t free of errors. When you want to encourage all teams to work together as one unit, you must ensure that the best tools and services are provided. When you implement field service management software that boasts state-of-the-art features, you simplify working styles for field technicians and eventually boost productivity.

Maintaining transparency between the field team and office team

Whenever a field worker is out to resolve a complaint, they must be aware of the customers’ or equipment’s history. If you don’t let them access pre-work site data, you are making their job harder and lengthy in case of insufficient resources. When both parties know what is required for the task, the office team can prepare the material for the field technicians beforehand. They won’t waste time going back and forth because the office team has already provided them with the needed gear for the job.

Creating job schedules in advance

Job scheduling is challenging for many organizations as managing many field workers isn’t as easy as one may think. Fortunately, field service management software has an intelligent scheduling assistant and access to real-time data. Your team in the office can use these to create schedules based on location, time, vehicle type, traffic condition, availability, etc. This will ensure that communication is top-notch between the field workforce and in-house teams.

Providing remote virtual assistance

Communication breakdowns are stressful for both field workers and office teams. With remote virtual assistance, you can provide a better collaborative method for the parties involved. Project managers, on-site workers, tech support agents, and many more can merge video streams from any part of the world using the field service management software. Workers can work hands-on with the guidance of everyone else in augmented reality, thereby reducing chances of error and timely completing the work.

Improving the health and overall wellbeing

Field workers are exposed to unsafe work environments, which can endanger their health and safety. With the FSM software, they can mitigate the risks associated with the job and decide the safest method to undertake. In more serious cases, they can alert the team at the office. They can then communicate with the field manager and the main head to make informed decisions where workers can close a job without risking their lives. Furthermore, more features can be added to the software so that the workers can be safe while commuting between projects.

A collaborative future fueled by communication

It goes without saying that all teams in your company need to work together to meet business goals. Likewise, field technicians and office teams need to get along with the tasks at hand so that more customers are satisfied with the service. The company ultimately benefits when customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and positive outcomes are aligned.

 

Authored by Mohd Sohel Athar, smartsoftwaresolution.com