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Beyond routing: scheduling and completing appointments

By 16/03/2020blog

For many industries, performing work in the field or at the customer’s location is an inseparable part of their business. Every day, there are new tasks – delivering services, installations, or check-ups.

One thing that never changes is that the work performed at the individual customer’s location influences your company’s reputation.

Fieldwork is an everyday routine for industries such as:

  • Telecommunications, cable TV providers – installing cable modems or routers in the subscribers’ households;
  • Insurance, real estate managers –claims settlement in the field, appointments of real estate appraisers;
  • Utilities, healthcare – collecting and marking samples in case of an epidemiological threat, safe transportation of samples to the laboratories;
  • Furniture, services – delivering and installing furniture or household appliances

The tasks mentioned above aren’t performed regularly. It’s impossible to predict their occurrence over longer periods. They all require scheduling the fieldwork appointment beforehand and arriving at the location on time. GeoTask helps in these situations. The application allows the dispatcher to easily manage a big number of tasks and schedule the fieldwork using GeoTask’s suggestions about available time slots.
Check out how GeoTask can walk you through the process of completing the fieldwork at a customer’s location.

How does it work?

Step 1: Scheduling the Appointment.

• The call center employee schedules the appointment during the conversation with the customer. Usually, they use a CRM system:
• The call center employee enters the customer’s data: address, task type, and appointment details.
• Based on the entered data, GeoTask suggests available time slots. It considers the required deadline, the address, region, and required skills of the technician. At this point, GeoTask certainly suggested the right dates for completing the appointment. Thanks to the planning of tasks using GeoTask, it is possible to offer the client a narrow time frame of the appointment without worrying about the availability of the technician at a given time.
• The fieldwork appointment is automatically entered into the technician’s schedule.
Additionally, GeoTask checks if the addresses are correct. Each address is geocoded – changed into geographical coordinates. This eliminates the risk of making a mistake and going astray while traveling to the customer’s location.

Step 2: Optimizing the Route with GeoTask

The dispatcher automatically or manually plans the tasks for each day. GeoTask prioritizes the scheduled appointments at the customer’s location considering deadlines. Planning optimal routes may require changing the assigned technician. Nevertheless, the new technician will meet the skill requirements necessary to complete the task.

Step 3 – Completing the Fieldwork at the Customer’s Location

Directly after a call, GeoTask may send a appointment confirmation e-mail to the customer. The e-mail includes a link that allows customers to check:
• The day of the appointment
• The hours of the appointment
• Which technician has been assigned to complete the task
• The technician’s phone number
• The current task status (“Please expect the technician at this time…”, “The technician is on his way…”, etc.)
GeoTask allows for contacting the customer on the day of the fieldwork appointment – the technician may inform him about potential delays or prolonged previous appointments.

What will you get?

  • Increased customer satisfaction
  • The most convenient time frames for the appointment
  • Proactive communication with the customer
  • Completing the scheduled appointments 100% of the time
  • Improved resource management – you can complete more tasks thanks to more efficient scheduling
  • Limited delays
  • Assured validity of a customer’s address

What will you avoid?

  • Annoyed customers – waiting is frustrating!
  • Unnecessary repetition of fieldwork appointments

Give it a try!

Sign up for a live showcase of GeoTask – our experts will show you how the field service management can support your business!