Service Metrics – What’s your number?

The idea of field service seems so simple, customers have an issue, you send out a service technician to repair the device and send them a bill. Simple? Maybe, but not easy. There are many things that need to happen in order for your service calls to be successful. Is the technician qualified to diagnose and repair the device? Do they have the right part(s). Have you scheduled enough time for the technician to make the repair? Have you scheduled the right travel route if the technician is tasked with multiple calls per day? If managed properly, service calls can be a tremendous revenue and profit generator. They can however have the opposite effect on your business if the process becomes too manual. There are many field service performance indicators you can use to measure your business, lets start with one: your First Call Success Rate (FCSR).

The First call success rate is a leading indicator that your service business is functioning well. If technicians are competent, and they have the proper inventory of parts in their vehicles, you should have a high FCSR. It varies across industries but in the office products industry, if your FCSR is below 80%, you have a problem. Depending on your geography and service level agreements, return trips can kill profits. Most service providers view any need for an additional call as profit killer.

When you measure each technician with a FCSR rate, you can quickly start to see patterns develop. Over the time of one month, or perhaps 50 service calls, comparing the rate of one technician to another is an important exercise. Everything else being equal, technicians with FCSR are your top performers. It also helps isolate technicians that are having trouble in certain areas. Often times it helps you pinpoint some additional training a technician may need that can help them improve their FCSR.

Another helpful tip is to track subsequent service calls on the same devices. For example, a device that requires service within 30 days of a service tech’s visit is counted as the same event, and therefore it counts against that employees FCSR. This ensures technicians don’t close the call prematurely, and also look to make sure the machine is running smoothly in all areas of operation before they close the call.

There are many field service performance metrics you can track on your team that will allow you to implement a continuous improvement model. More efficiency means higher profits. Miracle Service goes one step further; we have these metrics built into the software so everything is tracked automatically. For those in the office equipment industry we have also partnered with BEI Pros. This exciting partnership gives dealers the option of sharing their service metrics into an industry database that can give you comparative information with similar service providers. Does it take your technicians too long to replace a fuser assembly on an HP M479? Are you paying more than the industry average for a Drum unit on a Canon ImageRunner?

In today’s business climate, growing your business is often a difficult task, but lowering your costs guarantees an increase in profits. The most important metric of all may just be your FCSR.

Contact your Miracle Service Rep today to find out how we can help you establish your benchmarks.