How to Use Custom Mobile App Development to Boost Field Service Productivity

by Emma W. Web Designer

Field service officers are the un-official flag-bearers of the organization. For most customers, these technicians are the only real contact they will have with the company. However, in order to measure and increase their productivity in the field, they must be equipped with the right tools. A custom mobile app development company can provide these tools.

Mobile apps can enable field service agents in performing field operations seamlessly thereby increasing productivity, after sales service quality and prompt delivery. All these parameters add up to a higher customer satisfaction score.

Here’s how field service agents can benefit from mobile apps:

Creating Work Orders Based on Real-Time Customer Needs

Using mobile enterprise apps, managers can create work orders depending on pre-emptive data from the service model, while ensuring adaptability based on priority. Real-time data creates room for better, more informed decision-making based on the inputs collected by the field agents. These inputs can incite an immediate response from the back office management and ensure more transparency and ownership of outcomes from the entire team in the process.

Scheduling the Workforce

One of the most critical managerial functions is dispatching a variety of field jobs among the workforce in the most efficient way possible. A custom mobile application development company can build systems that assign the right resource for the right job based on details such as skill, location, availability, et cetera. This involves minimizing the distance traveled by them. Mobile apps utilize geolocation to schedule resources and allocate them according to favorable routes while accounting for traffic delays, break-time, proximity and schedule.

Central Pooling of Related Information

Mobile apps have certain tools that give field officers access to the same centralized pool of data including customer service history, the time lapse between related tasks and any service notes explaining case history. To a large degree, this reduces human error and ensures that service will be standardized and delivered at a certain degree of precision, always.

HokuApps is one such custom mobile app development company that has a wide repository of pre-built technology components that go into building apps and workflows, like GPS tracking, maps, payments, QR Code scanning. These components will be beneficial in improving field service productivity as well as cost-effectiveness in the overall development process.

Maintaining Proof of Work

Field service accountability has traditionally been difficult to measure and verify. Mobile apps can fill important gaps in centralized inspections and resource tracking. Proof of work can be obtained from field technicians in the form of on-site photos, recorded audio clips of customer feedback, tagged geo-locations and digital signatures for deliveries. Over time, this improves the ROI of the field operations.

Formulating a Feedback loop with Customers

Mobile forms assist in capturing a customer review process that managers can use to monitor the real-time communication with field agents and measure the impact on troubleshooting. Mobile apps can provide field officers with access to past records of service history, product breakdown repair and maintenance details. This knowledge can help fields officers better service the clients more accurately.

Since mobile apps have visibility of current real-time data, they can identify any patterns arising in service breakdowns and solve issues faster. A custom mobile app development company can build a robust feedback loop that can channel customer feedback and even incentivize this practice.

Summary

The field officer is at the heart of the customer experience, very often bringing a human element to an otherwise financial transaction. Then, every interaction with the customer must be captured and turned into actionable outcomes. A custom mobile app development company can build systems to bridge any performance gaps and measure incremental changes in customer experience.

Mobile Apps dedicated to field service are the need of the hour for any enterprise looking to leverage exemplary service for building brand loyalty. This is essential for achieving an edge over peers thereby increasing recall and revenue.