A few years ago, a home with handheld devices to control everything seemed like sci-fi. But today, it’s reality. Gone are the days when smart homes were seen as a luxury; now, they are well within reach for those that want them.
Though expensive, a recent survey shows that 81% of consumers prefer to buy a new home with smart technology installed.
Home automation products have experienced broad adoption as people have realized their flexibility can easily be adapted to their lifestyles and preferences. People have been attracted to the features of smart home devices, and the home automation system industry has experienced growth with no end in sight.
Smart home technologies have evolved, and the industry continues to grow, and the future of the wired and wireless smart home market looks attractive, with opportunities in home safety and security, lighting, healthcare, kitchen applications, and more.
No doubt, there is stiff competition between smart home installation businesses. To remain competitive, installation service providers must find ways to differentiate themselves in both the quality of their products and the customer service experience they offer.
As an installation service provider, it’s high time to prioritize assessing the performance of your field service operations; this is necessary to stay one step ahead of your competition.
Challenges in Smart Home Tech Business
Field service operations are critical in ensuring service quality and customer satisfaction. Assessing your existing field service operations is a recommended way to identify areas for improvement and implement changes so your smart home business can improve customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, and stay competitive in a rapidly growing industry.
Challenge 1: Time-Consuming Quote Cycles
In the smart home business, it is a common challenge that the quote cycle is time consuming. Some customers want voice-controlled devices. Others may want devices controlled from an app on their phone. Each customer has their own preferences, and budgetary constraints that may determine is most cost for them.
Customizing customer requirements may drag time for quoting and pricing an order. Service providers must streamline the quoting process and find efficient ways to accommodate quote change requests.They must find a system that works for them; by streamlining quoting process they can accommodate both the requirements of their customers.
Solution: Automated quote management
Field service management software automates the quote process, enabling your business to create and manage quotes quickly and accurately while helping to ensure that each customer’s unique preferences are met.
You can send quotes in real-time via email or SMS, notifying customers of any updates or changes to their quote. Customers can suggest service preferences in the quote and send it back to you, and you can quickly respond to it. It helps to reduce the need for multiple back-and-forth emails between your business and customers.
Challenge 2. Manual scheduling of multi-day work orders
In the smart home installation business, multiple visits are often required for assessment and installation jobs. From site assessment to post-installation demo, it requires a group of technicians who can be assigned based on their skills, expertise, and availability.
Manual field service operations rely on outdated spreadsheets and other low-cost tools incapable of offering end-to-end visibility of field service technicians’ availability and location. Without real-time information about technician availability and location; dispatchers jobs become much more difficult; proper allocation of jobs and technicians relies on accurate information.
Solution: Efficient management of multi-day work
Field service management software simplifies the multi-day work orders and enables your back office team to assign the right technician with the right skills and expertise to the relevant job. Your dispatchers can get real-time visibility over technicians’ availability and location, so they can easily assign available and nearby technicians to the customer’s location—reducing the likelihood of scheduling conflicts and double booking.
Technicians can update their job progress through their field service mobile app. The shared information by technicians will help dispatchers to share ETA alerts with customers. Your dispatchers can get real-time updates on job progress and act accordingly when they assign a new schedule.
When dispatchers have complete visibility and transparency about your technicians and jobs, they can efficiently allocate resources, reducing downtime and improving the overall delivery of service.
Challenge 3: No visibility on inventory utilization
Most customers demand customizations while buying smart home products. The business must manage a large inventory of products that can be tailored to meet their customers’ needs. Businesses often have to source products from different suppliers, making the supply chain complex.
Supply chain complexity aside, customizable products can fluctuate depending upon a number of factors. When they have a high degree of variability, it makes it difficult to track huge inventory levels accurately. Your employees may overwhelm when dealing with huge inventory leverls. Service delays may occur. Customers become frustrated if they wait for the products to be ordered and delivered.
Solution: Optimized inventory management
With automated inventory management, your business can avoid stock-out situations and delays. It can track historical inventory data and generates alerts when stock is low. You can stay alert on stock utilization anytime.
The field service inventory management software helps analyze the data, optimize inventory management processes, and identify high-performing products and slow-moving inventory. Your business can keep track of inventory levels, customized product availability, and their movements in real-time — enabling your business to anticipate inventory depletion and plan accordingly.
Challenge 4: Delayed payments/part payments
Smart home gadgets are known to be expensive, especially when customers demand advanced features. The installation service, technicians’ labor, and ongoing maintenance costs can add up.
Due to this pricey factor, some customers may withdraw the installation request or may end up with delayed payments. Delayed payments will limit the business’s cash flow. Such insufficient cash flow will overextend the financial exposure.
Solution: Integrated payment methods
With an integrated field service management payment module, your business can streamline payment processes easier. It allows you to securely create and send accurate invoices with a payment link to your customers. Using the integrated payment gateway, customers can make payments online using various payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, and electronic funds transfers.
The best part is that consumer financing options are available, in which customers can pay for services in installments. Offering such a financing option will give your customers the flexibility to work within their comfortable budget.
Challenge 5: Inefficient management of a hybrid workforce
Coordinating with scattered on-demand technicians and scheduling their work orders without a proper communication platform must be challenging for dispatchers. It is arduous to manually dispatch multi-day work orders for on-demand technicians based on their availability and skillset.
Due to the challenges, service delays occur and cause negative customer experiences. Without a proper tool to get the availability of on-demand technicians and their job progress, your business finds difficulties in monitoring the technicians in real-time.
Solution: Simplified on-demand hybrid workforce management
With the integrated field service management software, your business can overcome dispatching challenges with on-demand technicians during the service lifecycle. You can integrate the on-demand technicians’ marketplace like Field Nation with your field service management software for seamless managing the hybrid workforce.
Dispatchers can create and schedule service work orders while considering on-demand technicians’ availability and skill sets. The integration also helps your business to track job progress and gain insights into on-demand technicians’ performances.
On-demand technicians can also view their jobs, update the job status, and collect payments on-site within the mobile app. They can also add job notes, attachments and send messages via mobile app. All updates made in their mobile app are automatically reflected in the field service management software—avoiding unnecessary miscommunication.
Conclusion
Today’s customer demands pressure smart home installation service businesses to provide better service delivery and customer satisfaction. While streamlining your complex manual service operations into an automated one can significantly improve your efficiency of service operations and allow you to go beyond customer expectations.
Start adopting field service management software today to optimize your smart home installation service business operations. Contact us to learn how to transform and grow beyond your expectations.
