Salesforce Field Service: From pen and paper to digitally empowered service

Salesforce Field Service is a great way to take your business from pen and paper to digitally empowered service

When you hear “Salesforce” what comes to mind? Sales teams leveraging all the awesome capabilities of Sales Cloud to manage client relationships, stay on top of their pipeline, and close crucial deals? Maybe a distributed Customer Support team, able to answer customer questions via email, phone and chat, and text, no matter where they’re located, through the power of Service Cloud. You might flash to the dynamic marriage of Slack and Marketing cloud.

In fact, you might already be using some of these amazing tools to generate, support, and grow your business – but what about the actual day-to-day hands-on work that makes your company run?

If you are a small or medium business in the service sector, you might be surprised to learn that Salesforce Field Service is an excellent fit for you and your service team.

Salesforce Field Service (previously known as Field Service Lightning) empowers field technicians and dispatchers to seamlessly schedule service calls, calculate quotes on the spot, order and track inventory, and provide customers with comprehensive documentation of work completed. And if your Sales team is already using Sales Cloud, you can leverage the customer information they’ve already gathered, to make sure that your techs know everything they need about the customer they’re servicing.

Check out the power of Salesforce Field Service in this video!

It’s pretty common for service technicians to still be working off of pen and paper to complete a work order, track a PO, or get sign-off from a customer on-site about the work they’ve completed.

Not only does that make it nearly impossible to keep an accurate record of which techs have completed which service appointments, what parts they might have used, or whether they needed to request inventory from a vendor, your dispatchers have no way of verifying when a tech arrived on site or left for the next appointment!

Dispatchers

With Salesforce Field Service, dispatchers can create service appointments from work orders and have the option to leverage AI-powered recommendations to determine the best next steps – including which equipment to add, and the type of service needed.

Dispatchers can then schedule service techs by region, skill, and availability all in a single Gantt chart view.

If a service tech calls out sick, or a customer emergency that requires immediate attention comes up, dispatchers can quickly make needed adjustments for an optimized service schedule.

Field technicians and mobile employees

Service techs can use the mobile application to:
View all their appointments for that day on a map

Access Service Appointments

• Track inventory used
• Send and receive push notifications – like letting a customer know their ETA!
• Access guided instructions for completing a task, ensuring it’s done right the first time, every time
• Document the site and their work with photos and video – often a requirement for various warranties
• Get digital sign off from the customer their mobile device, that can then be sent right to the customer, without worrying about saving and keeping track of paper copies

Why Go Digital?

Has your team ever had this experience? One of your service techs is out on a job site, and discovers that the work requires a part they don’t have – they’re going to have to go back to the warehouse, pull the part, get back to the site and finish the repair. There’s no way they’ll get to their next appointment on time!

If your team is using a pen and paper set up, the service tech might have to call dispatch to update them, then dispatch has to call that tech’s next customer, let them know about the delay, and try to reschedule!

So much back and forth, and at the end of it a less-than-stellar customer experience.

With Salesforce Field Service, the tech in the above scenario could immediately alert the dispatch team about their delay. Dispatch could then use the power of the dispatcher’s console to see who is available, in the area, with the right skills, and re-route them to that second customer, who’s able to receive excellent service and not worry about delays.

Salesforce field service empowers you to help your service customers with the right solution, the first time, instead of repeated calls to finally resolve an issue – saving your business time and money, and getting your customers back up and running as soon as possible.

How can we help?

Making the transition from a pen and paper set up to Salesforce Field Service can be a big change. If your team is new to using a digital platform to complete their work, you want them to feel confident that their questions have been answered, and that they are in good hands as you move your business forward. That’s where Roycon comes in! With our experience and support, we can make sure that not only are all your technical needs met, but ensure that you have what you need to set your team up for success.