When it comes to field service, the lifeblood of any service organization is its ability to successfully resolve its customers' problems. Performance on the day of service is critical. But just as critical is how the customer's problem is handled behind the scenes from the moment the call is received by a customer service representative. More than just knowing who the customer is, where he or she lives, and what kind of problem he or she has, effective service scheduling will take into consideration such things as which engineer has the skills to fix the specific problem, the distance that engineer will need to travel to get to the job, and what parts the engineer will need to have on hand.
Applications such as CRM and ERP systems, while necessary components in a service organization, are data processing mechanisms only. They cannot facilitate scheduling decisions that will ultimately be in the best interests of both the customer and the service organization. Companies need to take their service solutions one step further. Schedule optimization technology is able to simultaneously consider numerous strategic and operational constraints when scheduling an engineer in the field. As such, it can consistently ensure that the best technician with the right skills and the right tools gets to the customer at the right time to achieve a company's strategic goals.
ClickSoftware's ClickSchedule solution, by managing the service delivery process from start to finish, can ensure that a customer's problems are handled efficiently on the day of service. The end results are a more effective field force and a significant amount of data for use both in mobile workforce management and in the business analytics that serve as input for future forecasts.