Improving Duct Cleaning Efficiency with Digital Job Scheduling
It's important to keep your calendar organized if you want your business to be efficient. A traditional paper calendar is an outdated tool that doesn't offer enough flexibility to keep up with today's scheduling and dispatching demands. A digital calendar, on the other hand, simplifies every aspect of job scheduling so your scheduling staff can save time and stay organized.
Drag-and-Drop
A digital scheduler with a drag-and-drop feature makes it much faster to place work orders into available time slots on the calendar. All your scheduling staff will need to do is select an accepted work order request, view available spots on the calendar for individual field technicians or teams, and drop the work order into the time slot.
After a work order is placed in an available time slot, the cloud-based software will automatically sync the work order details to eliminate duplicated data entry. From there, your field technicians can access the detailed work order from their schedule to view the job request, add notes, and much more.
At-a-Glance
A calendar with an at-a-glance capacity is a great way to help your administrative staff stay organized. With an at-a-glance calendar, your schedulers can view the calendar for the entire month, week, or day to get a simplified visual of available time slots. Simplifying the layout of the calendar can save your administrative staff valuable time when scheduling urgent work order requests.
Dispatcher Mode
If your duct cleaning service accepts an urgent job request, then it's vital to get a field technician to the job site as quickly as possible. When your scheduling software has a built-in dispatcher mode, it's easy to locate available technicians and automatically dispatch work order details. Dispatcher mode leverages GPS information from your field technician's mobile devices to locate the closest available duct cleaner.
Once your admin staff has dropped the work order into the available time slot on the calendar, the field tech can instantly access the work request. The work order request will include all relevant information about the client, the job site location, the necessary materials, and other details.
Team Organization
A digital calendar can also be used to organize your team. If your business has several field employees, or if you have employees with certain specializations, your administrative staff can organize the digital calendar to show only certain teams or employees to schedule specific types of job requests. Organizing teams on the calendar can make it much easier for your managers to keep track of smaller teams.
Other Core Components of Job Management Software
In addition to a digital calendar, your duct cleaning business can benefit from using other job management software. Workflow management tools are the foundation of a successful and efficient business, so it's a good idea to implement as many useful service software features as you can to optimize daily management duties.
One of the most important components of effective workflow management software is cloud-based synchronization. When data is immediately synchronized across the entire system and all employees can access relevant data, it's much easier to foster fast and accurate communication between employees. Effective workflow management software allows your field technicians and admin staff to view notes on work orders and send immediate updates to and from the job site.
Recurring Appointments
Cleaning out HVAC ducts is a job that requires ongoing maintenance. Depending on the size and layout of the HVAC system, your clients may need to have their ducts cleaned multiple times a year. The best job management software allows you to personalize service for your clients by scheduling pre-program alerts for recurring maintenance appointments.
When your admin staff receives a notification to schedule a recurring maintenance appointment, they can quickly confirm the appointment with the client and add the appointment to the calendar. Cloud-based customer information management will allow your administrative staff to add relevant details from the client file to the recurring maintenance work order to tailor service for each customer.
Detailed Work Orders
Detailed work orders are crucial for providing personalized service to each client. Whether your field technicians are completing a job request for a new or long-standing client, being able to add notes, pictures, inventory, and other details to the work orders is important. The information from the detailed work order can help build a client profile so you can provide services tailored to the client's preferences for each appointment.
To-Do Checklists
Cleaning out HVAC ducts can be a process that involves multiple stages. To ensure every work order request is completed up to your business standards, your admins can add to-do checklists and safety checklists to work order requests. When checklists are added to a work order, these lists must be checked off before the work order can be marked as complete on the job site.
Easy Billing
Traditional invoicing with paper bills can be a time-consuming process that slows down how quickly your business can receive payments. Modern workflow management software that uses a one-touch billing program can significantly improve invoicing speed. This software works by automatically generating an invoice once a work order is marked as complete.
From there, the invoice can be emailed to the client with an online payment portal link, or the customer can pay your field technician directly with a credit card via a handpoint device on the job site. All invoice information will be synced with your existing accounting software to simplify the billing and payment tracking process.
Service software with key features such as a digital calendar can drastically improve your overall workflow management and organization. If you want to experience the ease of cloud-based service software, get in touch with ServiceBox to try a free demo today.
