As a field service business owner, you know the challenges of assigning jobs to employees. Without dispatch software, you may be relying on email chains, phone calls, or texts. As your business grows, this becomes harder and harder to scale. Manual dispatching eats up time and keeps you from focusing on other operational tasks.
Dispatch software can be an easy solution to deploy to ensure the best customer experiences and less frustration for your techs. But what features do you need?
What is Dispatch Software?
This type of platform is a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. It places the benefits of technology at your fingers. From the system, you can schedule jobs and send dispatch notifications to your employees. You can ditch paper and other methods to assign jobs!
How Can You Use Dispatching Software?
Dispatching software makes your business more reliable and productive. Because schedules live in a cloud-based solution, it’s accessible at any time from any device.
Here’s how you can use it:
- Schedule technicians with accuracy in one spot so there’s no double booking.
- Keep field workers connected to the office.
- Enhance customer experiences with dynamic scheduling.
- Prep for jobs, as your tech has all the important information.
- Assign jobs to techs based on their skill level or familiarity with the customer.
The Must-Have Features for Dispatching
So, what field service features do you really need to dispatch like a boss? They need to be easy while also getting the job done.
- Ability to enter employees: It sounds simple, but it’s not always available.
- Role-based permissions: Make sure you can assign different permissions to employees so they have access to what they need.
- Job scheduling: You’ll need to be able to schedule a job to dispatch it to a tech.
- Drag-and-drop calendars: This function is scheduling is so valuable because it offers flexibility when you need to shuffle things around.
- Communicating with the office: Workers need to advise of when they finish a job and stay in touch to ensure they are on schedule.
- Mobility: Your techs need to be able to use the software from any device, as long as they have a connection.
- Start and stop: Within the dispatch tool, employees can press start when they arrive and stop when they are complete to document their time on the job.
- Customer visibility: Techs can see customer information, including contact details.
- Service description: This field explains the job details and associated costs.
- Tags: Tagging jobs is helpful for your team, as it gives them context. For example, you could tag a job as residential and an apartment. With this information, your tech is better prepared.
- Automation of dispatching: The most vital part is the work behind the scenes. When you schedule the job and assign the tech, they receive notifications. They’ll always be up to date on their day.
Additionally, dispatch software should also allow you to communicate with your customers. SMS alerts let them know when the pro will arrive. They receive real-time updates so they can stress less.
Ready to Manage Dispatching Better?
Technology is the friend of every field service business! With the right software features, you can dispatch efficiently with full visibility. See how it works today by starting your Service Raider free trial!
