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As commercial service contractor, you must manage a perpetually fluctuating volume of work orders. A slow week is followed by a weekend full of repair requests. A big project lands on your plate, spreading your resources thin. A heat wave or polar blast initiates an early start to your busy season. 

Meeting the demands of busy spikes and seasons can put a strain on your techs—hurting retention and morale. But with labor shortages and margins in mind, growing your team to meet temporary demand is not realistic. 

What makes more sense is to expand your existing team’s capacity with a technology solution that automates and simplifies many of their tasks. Increasing the productivity of your current team not only allows room for more business, it also improves the quality of your service. 

In this article, we’ll focus on freeing your most valuable resource—your technicians—from the time traps of busy work so they have more time and energy to do the job they’re specially trained to do. 

Freeing Your Techs From Busy Work

By allowing techs more time for their primary responsibilities, you can improve overall efficiency and satisfaction for both techs and customers. Some benefits of improved technician efficiency include:

Increased Productivity

When technicians spend less time on administrative tasks, they have more time to focus on maintenance, installs, and repair work. This leads to faster completion of jobs, resulting in improved productivity for the business.

Improved Employee Satisfaction

Technicians often get into the field because they enjoy hands-on work and problem-solving. By reducing tedious admin work, techs are able to spend more time doing what they love and are trained to do. This equals improved employee satisfaction and reduced turnover rates. 

Enhanced Customer Experience

Removing the burden of busy work enables techs to perform maintenance, repairs, and inspections more quickly and effectively. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty, winning you repeat business and positive referrals.

Here are some key ways to give techs back their time.  

Less Time Behind the Wheel 

The busy work: Technicians are spending a large portion of their days sitting in traffic or driving long routes created by reactive and inefficient scheduling. 

Solution: Technology-assisted scheduling that prioritizes convenient routes and fewer miles can reduce windshield time and give techs back a significant chunk of their day. 

Fewer Phone Calls 

The busy work: Without access to real-time work order changes, location details, equipment history, and other customer data, your techs find themselves consistently dialing the office in search of the information they need. 

Solution: Mobile access to real-time customer data gives techs the information they need without disrupting their task list to call the office. Bonus: A software solution that centralizes real-time data ensures your office staff and technicians have the same, up-to-date information at all times. 

Fewer (and Easier) Administrative Tasks

The busy work: Technicians are spending too much time on administrative tasks, like creating invoices and quotes, that could be assigned to the office. Additionally, the manual processes of time tracking and keeping paper records are inefficient and burdensome. 

Solution: Two solutions here. One: Narrow you techs’ responsibilities to their incredibly valuable skilled work, assigning administrative tasks to your office. And two: use a commercial field service application that digitizes paperwork, automates time tracking, and allows techs to easily upload supporting media saves time and eliminates frustration in your tech’s day. These two things will give your techs more time to do their best work, find more repair opportunities, and service more facilities in the day. 

Less Time at the Office

The busy work: Dispatching from the office and returning there at the end of the day is wasting your tech’s time and reducing the number of jobs they can complete. 

Solution: Enabling your techs to dispatch from their homes and submit work order paperwork electronically eliminates the need for frequent office visits, improves routes, and gives your team back time to do more—and better—work. It also allows the office to close out work orders as soon as they’re completed rather than having to wait for techs to deliver paperwork to the office. 

Giving Busy Work the Boot With the Right Technology

The benefits of optimizing workflows for your technicians are many. Better employee satisfaction and retention; more efficiency in the field; better customer service; and smoother overall operations in your business. Finding the right tool(s) and leaning on technology for improved efficiency is essential. 

ServiceTrade is a premier platform built specifically for commercial service contractors. Learn how our platform can help you give techs (and your office staff) back their days by booking a demo.