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Keeping Customers and Employees Safe
Companies must continuously manage change in an effort to provide seamless operations. The technology landscape is shifting rapidly, along with ways of working and communicating. It is important for companies to streamline operations and provide a real-time connection between employees and customers.
Service and installation companies have many touch-points that occur between customers and employees throughout the course of business. Recent events have highlighted the critical need to ensure the safety of both customers and employees while still conducting business. One of the biggest pains faced by many service and installation companies is inadequate methods of communication. Traditional tools such as pen and paper and disconnected systems require a high-level physical contact between employees and often customers. Additionally, employees in the field performing service or installation work do not always have access to email, or the ability to check it regularly. Ensuring there are alternate methods of communication that allow employees to share and receive important information digitally is crucial.
Contactless mobile service provides companies with a way to ensure the job gets completed while ensuring the safety of all involved. Let’s look at how contactless mobile service impacts the common interactions that occur in a business providing service and installation, including those between office staff and technicians, technicians and customers, and customers and office staff.
Office staff and technicians
Situations like COVID-19 have shown how limiting the physical interactions between employees is important for health and safety. Technicians are at multiple job sites daily, exposing themselves to different environments. It is critical that companies ensure there are systems in place that allow them to communicate effectively, while minimizing in-person contact. ExpandIT’s Planning Board allows planners and dispatchers to easily schedule and allocate resources digitally. Technicians can view scheduled jobs on their mobile phone or tablet. Additionally, technicians can access other important information such as previous work orders and customer history from their device, ensuring they are prepared before starting a job and minimizing the number of trips they make between the job site and office.
Technicians and customers
Ensuring technicians have complete and correct data about their scheduled jobs at all times is important. Disconnected systems make communication between customers and technicians difficult. When technicians are in the field and an unexpected change regarding a job occurs, updating them is essential from a productivity point of view but also for their safety. Customers can use ExpandIT’s Service Portal to communicate with technicians. For instance, if there is an update to safety protocols that technicians should be aware of, customers can communicate this information to the technician via the service portal. Enabling contactless service minimizes the number of in-person interactions between customers and technicians.
Customers and office staff
Ensuring there is a way for customers to communicate digitally with staff is critical. ExpandIT enables companies to provide customers with a self-service portal which allows them to request service, see the status of a job, view past invoices, pay invoices online, and view past service orders and reports. Self-service portals that are available 24/7 allow customers and staff members to communicate effectively and virtually.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, NAV, F&O/AX, and GP are powerful ERP systems. When combined with a field service management system from ExpandIT, service and installation organizations can provide contactless service, while improving safety and optimizing business operations.
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