Customers of equipment dealers expect top quality service and maintenance. To be able to meet these expectations, the entire process from service planning to invoicing must be perfectly organized. And that requires good automation. These are the key benefits of automating your service department.
Improved planning
Preventive maintenance, inspections, failures, recalls, breakdowns and emergency jobs. It is not easy to flawlessly schedule and organize maintenance, service and repairs to equipment. Every day, service planners are confronted with new surprises and challenges. But with the right automation tools, the service planning becomes a lot easier. For example, by scheduling preventive maintenance automatically. A graphical dispatch board to show your planning in one overview enabling you to assign work orders to technicians quickly. Intelligent planning that takes into account the skills and availability of the mechanics, and the distance/location. And a mobile application for the technicians where they can take their own decision on their planning and route.
Work more efficiently
Automation contributes to efficiency. It enables you to work much faster and more efficiently than manually or with pen and paper. This also applies to the service department. Think for instance about service planning, changing the planning, assigning work orders, making quotations and invoicing. But also, in executing service and maintenance work, automation provides a huge increase in productivity. Service technicians can focus on what they are good at and minimize their administrative work. From a management perspective, good automation of the service processes allows you to manage according to the principle "management by exception". This means no more need to check and control everything, but you can focus completely on cases that need special attention, deviating figures and urgent jobs.
"With the help of the right automation tools, you get a perfect insight into what is going on at the service department."
Higher revenues
The efficiency gains mentioned above also increase revenues. Less administration means spending more time on service, maintenance and repair work. Through optimized planning, smarter routes and by allowing (teams of) technicians to make their own planning decisions, productivity increases even more. Customers are served faster and better, making them more satisfied and wanting to use your services more often. Quotations and invoices can be sent to the customer faster, which increases the chance that they will accept them.
Better management
With the help of the right automation tools, you get a perfect insight into what is going on at the service department. Which spare parts do you often need? How much time do technicians spend on work orders? How productive are your employees? What are the costs and revenues per type, model or individual object? By collecting all this data and converting it into useful information, you can manage the department better. Monitor and adjust KPIs. You can see where your technicians are, which technician you can best use for a specific job, what the preferences of the customer are, what has happened in the past, what the outstanding invoices are, etc.
Most importantly, more satisfied customers
Ultimately, service is about customer satisfaction. For equipment dealers, the initial sale of a machine or device is only the beginning of a partnership with the customer. It is through great after-sales that you retain the customer and create a positive and profitable collaboration for both parties. With the help of the right service management automation, you can make clear agreements, respond quickly, deliver quickly, provide top quality service, solve problems better and thus make the customer happy.
