What is a Field Service Business?

Field services is an umbrella term commonly used to describe all the activities performed outside the office environment. These include everything from delivering products and services to installing equipment and maintenance at the customer’s location.

There are many types of field services provided by field service businesses like device installation and repair services to commercial buildings, industrial facilities, government agencies, schools, hospitals, and residential homes.

The most important thing about field service businesses is that it is a growing industry. There are over 2 million people employed in the field services sector across the United States. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts employment growth of 10% through 2024.

Let’s have a walkthrough of the field service business and field service activities.

What is Field Service Business?

A field service business is a broad term used to describe jobs performed outside of offices and mostly at customer locations. These include everything from HVAC professionals to construction workers.

Field service work involves installing, fixing, maintaining, and servicing things like computers, cell phones, cars, appliances, and more. These jobs typically require people with specialized training.

A field service provider or contractor runs a field service business. Field service is not a man’s business but teamwork. There are various job roles in a field service business ranging from field service provider to manager to field technician. 

Skilled field service technicians work outside the office to provide routine maintenance and repair to equipment and systems. They typically perform preventative maintenance and troubleshooting, installing upgrades, and performing minor repairs. In addition to working out of the office, field service technicians often travel to customers’ locations to fix equipment and make repairs.

Field service engineers design and develop solutions to solve problems related to technical issues. Their responsibilities include designing and developing new products, analyzing existing processes, and improving quality control procedures.

A field service manager oversees all the field service operations maintaining coordination between the field teams and office teams and scheduling tasks, monitoring job progress and maintaining reports. 

Types of Field Service Activities

1. Equipment Installation

Installation is the first and most important activity that usually occurs in field services. With the help of this activity, a field service technician or field service team visits the customer’s location and installs the equipment.

After installing the equipment, the technician provides a demonstration to the customers to show them how to operate it.

It becomes the sole responsibility of the service technician to ensure that the equipment is correctly installed and fully operational from the start.

2. Maintaining the Equipment

Fixing equipment in the case of breakdown is the foremost authority of the field service business. Field service technicians visit the customer site to repair the equipment once they receive a customer field service request.

The service technician identifies the faults and disruptions of the equipment. He/she quickly tries to resolve the issue at the customer’s location.

Field services maintenance activities are divided into three categories:

i) Corrective Maintenance:

Corrective maintenance is the process of repairing equipment that needs repair due to wear and tear. This includes things like fixing broken parts, cleaning filters, replacing worn tires, cleaning solar panels, etc.

ii) Preventive Maintenance:

Preventive maintenance refers to periodic inspections and repairs performed by field service workers to keep the equipment in good condition. These preventative measures include things like regularly cleaning solar panels every three to six months to prevent dirt buildup. Preventative maintenance measures ensure that equipment operates efficiently and safely, saving money and reducing downtime. By performing these checks regularly, technicians can identify issues before they cause serious damage to equipment, and repair them before they require costly replacements.

iii) Proactive Maintenance

Proactive maintenance involves taking action to fix problems before they occur based on real-time and historical data collected from the equipment. Predictive analytics looks at the historical performance of the equipment to determine whether something is likely to fail soon. Then you, the field service provider can plan ahead to address the problem before it happens. It uses Artificial intelligence-based systems to trigger corrective action on equipment.

Though preventive and proactive maintenance seems a bit similar, you cannot compromise one for the other. Both maintenance procedures are necessary to ensure the long life of the equipment.

Preventive and proactive maintenance can increase customer satisfaction. By providing customers with regular information about the health of their equipment, you’re able to give them peace of mind. They won’t worry about whether or not their equipment is working properly, and they’ll feel confident knowing that you’re doing everything possible to keep it running smoothly.

3. Guidance on Equipment Handling

Here, by considering safety and other measures, the field technicians provide the best advice to the customer about equipment usage. The field teams help customers to generate more service revenue based on the purchased product by the customers. They educate the customers on how to regularly clean and maintain the equipment in good condition.

4. Customer Service

The primary aim of any field employee is to provide the best customer service by delivering exceptional customer experiences. When a customer calls a field service provider with a complaint, the field manager tries to solve the issue on the call with self-help. If the issue is a bit bigger and needs a technician visit to the customer’s location, the field service manager schedules a technician visit and informs the customer about it.

5. Field Service Management

Field service management is an essential component of a field service business strategy. FSM is about managing field operations to ensure customer satisfaction and profitability. It includes everything from scheduling technicians to monitoring service jobs to ensure that the equipment is working properly.  

What do successful field service operations look like?

Field service managers must ensure that their teams are well-trained and capable of performing complex tasks effectively. This requires flexibility and adaptability.

In today’s fast-paced environment, it is important that field service organizations (FSOs) are able to react quickly to changing situations. In addition, they must be able to perform multiple jobs simultaneously, including those requiring different skill sets. For example, a field employee might need to repair a machine, install a new part, and make sure the equipment is operating properly.

Your employees should stay prepared for unexpected events and emergencies, especially during peak times. When you hire people who know how to troubleshoot problems, resolve issues, and handle emergency repairs, you gain a competitive advantage over competitors.

Customers will appreciate your ability to meet deadlines, even under difficult conditions. If you are unable to complete a job within the promised timeframe, you risk losing clients. However, if you are able to finish projects ahead of schedule, you can build goodwill among your clients and increase repeat business.

Why Should You Adopt Mobile-First Field operations?

Field service companies are increasingly relying on smartphones with modern field service management mobile apps to perform tasks like data entry, inventory management, real-time communication and scheduling. This shift away from desktop computers toward mobile devices has many benefits — including increased efficiency, improved accuracy, increase first-time fix rate and better overall customer experience. 

A mobile-first modern field service management approach will improve productivity and increase employee satisfaction. Companies that adopt a field service mobile app will take advantage of the following features:

Benefits of Field Service Mobile App

• Data collection: Employees can collect information about customers’ needs and problems directly from customer touchpoints, saving time and money. All the data gets saved in a centralized database, cloud-based CRM.
• Inventory tracking: Field workers can quickly enter inventory into the system, making it easy to track inventory levels and costs.
• Scheduling: Field service manager can schedule appointments and instantly dispatch field technicians via mobile notifications.
• Service Reminders: Field service providers can send automated reminders via text messages, email, and even push notifications to customers for preventive maintenance of their equipment.
• Technician tracking: GPS integrated within the field service applications track the live location of the field workers and records their travel history.
• Customer support: Clients can contact the assigned field workers directly, without having to call the office to know about the ETA.
• Customer Query: A customer service representative might ask you how much something costs. You could look up the price online, but there are many reasons why doing so takes too long. For example, you don’t know the exact item number or you’re looking for a specific size. Integrating your CRM into your field service software allows you to provide better support for your customers. This way, you can answer questions quickly and accurately without having to go outside your system.
• Capturing Service Data: Field service management software captures all relevant data about customers, employees, and equipment. The mobile workers can document job status updates from the site on the field service app. They can also upload job documents and on-site photos on the app for documentation without travelling to the office, saving travel time and fuel costs. FSM software tracks all the information in real time, so you know exactly what happened during the job.
• Generate Invoices: The field service mobile app can generate automated invoices based on the entered job data. This helps field workers to instantly collect payments and close the job.

Unoservice field service management software comes with a mobile app for field technicians to keep up with job assignments, document job progress and generate invoices on-site. Unoservice software integrated with CRM, a free GPS-based technician tracking software, free automated service reminder software and many other features that make field service management easier than ever. Try the Unoservice app for free and explore its functionality.  

Frequently Asked Questions about Field Service Business