3 Business Headaches the Best Field Service Software Can Solve

To succeed in today’s ultra-competitive window cleaning market, you must have a great understanding of customers’ preferences and expectations, which have risen to new heights thanks to the “Uberization” of customer service. With consumers forming opinions about businesses faster than ever, service professionals must provide the “Grade A” experience consumers demand from the get-go.

To do that, window cleaning company owners must consider their current processes, business functions, toolsets and technology in order to set themselves and their teams up for success.

Many of the service professionals we’ve talked to outline these as some of the challenges they have on the job and with meeting customers’ rising demands:

• Ineffective customer and employee communication
• Disorganization of data and documents
• Low technician productivity and accountability
• Increased costs



Sound familiar? The end result of these problems is poor customer service and satisfaction, which can significantly impact cash flow. The best field service software can help overcome these daunting obstacles to form a window cleaning business that is efficient and highly profitable.

What is field service software? Simply stated, it is an online tool that service professionals use to organize their technicians in the field and the backend office activities, from managing leads, work orders, scheduling, dispatching, inventory, estimates and invoices.




Let’s hone in on three of the pain points above and how the best field service software can solve for it:

One of the biggest frustrations we hear from window cleaners who are operating by pen and paper, a clunky legacy system or a mix of disjointed systems is the manual effort and time it takes to manage their important business functions, including staying organized. Field service software makes managing, streamlining and scaling operations easy because all your data is stored in one place, like your leads and contacts and customer service history, and is within hands reach on a computer or mobile app. Essentially, you’ve got a mobile office manager that will automate or speed up your important day-to-day tasks, such a creating and sending electronic estimate or invoice on the fly, dispatching techs and optimizing and optimizing team schedules and routes.

Some field service programs put you in a “one-size-fits-all” or generic workflow, but the best programs acknowledges that every business works differently and allows you to customize workflows, including your automation. As examples, you can automatically assign jobs to techs based on rules in your workflow or auto-send email or push notifications or text messages to staff or customers when the status of a job changes.

Communication between window cleaners and customers can be frustrating and inefficient. Sending reminders, updates, and simple messages requires looking up the customer’s contact information, crafting the message, and typing it up--often while on the go. Communication between field service managers, office staff and field techs can be even more challenging.

The best field service software will come complete with an integrated messaging system that uses email, text and mobile push notifications to make communication between your entire team and with your customers seamless. Homeowners expect real-time communication from service pros, from estimates and invoices that are emailed or can be viewed on the job site to text messaging notifying them of appointment times and job updates (HomeAdvisor Homeowner Research Survey, Oct. 2016). Good field service programs also come with automated and innovative tools like a time estimate that calculates how far a tech is from a customer’s home, which make it easier for techs to keep customers informed.

Most field service software can schedule and dispatch, but they fall short in adding the ability to handle billing, invoicing and payment processing. The end result is a lot of double-data entry and paperwork when techs get back into the office. A world-class solution enables techs to record time on a job and select materials used through the mobile app to quickly draw up an invoice or convert an estimate into an invoice with a tap of a button. Integration with the #1 accounting program, QuickBooks, syncs data automatically, eliminates double-data entry and gives window cleaners a comprehensive look at their business. Another huge advantage comes with the ability to accept customer payments, including credit card payments, at the job site, which homeowners note as one of the primary reasons they hire one service pro over another. The best field service pros take customer payments without inflated processing fees or having to get a card swiper--the entire process is managed seamlessly with the mobile app.

mHelpDesk is a leading field service automation solution that helps small-to-mid-sized businesses address and solve their biggest pain points, including all those mentioned above, to streamline, improve and scale work orders, scheduling, field techs, invoicing, customer payments, operations and much more. Used by over 19,000 service professional customers from around the world, it is the #1 rated field service app in several third party review sites. To learn more or try a demo, visit mHelpDesk.com