Salesforce Field Service Explained

• May Yakub
• • Salesforce

Is your field service solution helping you grow, or holding you back?

Many organisations successfully design, build and use their own systems for Field Service Management. However, they often outgrow these solutions.

Welcome to Salesforce Field Service Explained. In this article, we’ll explore:

1. What is Salesforce Field Service?
2. The Importance of Field Service Management
3. How Salesforce Field Service Can Benefit You
4. Salesforce Field Service Features and Benefits
5. Our Experience with Field Service Implementations

So let’s get into it…

What is Salesforce Field Service?

If you’re asking, what is Salesforce Field Service, then let’s break it down – whenever you have an internet technician at your house, fixing or installing your connection, that’s field service in action.

It’s the engineers and technicians who are out and about, on the road, fixing things for customers – across both b2b and b2c.
Salesforce Field Service is a smart module, built natively on the Salesforce platform. It enables organisations to manage and optimise the process of sending out team members to various locations.

The solution offers tools and dashboards that effectively manage jobs, scheduling and the mobile workforce.

According to Salesforce research, 83% of mobile workers from organisations who use this kind of automation see the technology as a moderate to major benefit, enabling them to focus on their customers, rather than faffing with paperwork.

What can you do with Salesforce Field Service?

01 – Resource Planning

Create resources to represent your technicians, dispatchers and contractors. Add their skills, working hours, timesheets and location details, Salesforce does the rest.

02 – Service Territories

If your organisation works locally, nationally or globally, you can set up territories to represent the regions where your mobile workers provide services.

03 – Tracking

Track the location and status of your people, inventory, warehouses, service vehicles, customer sites and assets.

04 – Create Work Orders

Schedule one-time or recurring work orders (or, “jobs”) for customers. Add details about service preferences, required skills and parts.

05 – Planning & Templates

Create maintenance plans and work plan templates that you can reuse to ensure a standardised service for each field service task.

06 – Service Reports

Generate and share service reports with customers so they are kept in the loop about their service progress, and completed work is documented.

The Importance of Field Service Management

When you’ve got a team of technicians and engineers heading out on the road every day, Field Service Management becomes an important part of your business operations and finances.

Participants in a 2022 success metrics study reported the following after implementing Salesforce Field Service:

• 30% decrease in operations cost
• 32% increase in mobile worker productivity
• 31% increase in cross-sell and upsell revenue opportunities

From our experience with customers over the years, it’s safe to say we’re also pretty on board with the benefits of this solution.

When scheduling routes and appointments for your team, there are many factors to consider:

• Customer location
• Service and expertise required
• Parts needed
• Team schedule

Initially, this scheduling can be done manually, with spreadsheets and meeting invites; however, as companies grow, the task becomes more complex.

Without specialist software and automations, allocating and scheduling an efficient route with the right expert and tools for the job is difficult. It takes up a lot of time and doesn’t guarantee timely customer service.

Field Service helps the entire team be more efficient, with automations, mobile apps and a full 360-degree view of the customer.

Here’s how each team member can benefit the solution:

Service Agents

When a customer gets in touch, they speak to a Service Agent first. They can either offer a resolution for the customer’s issue or arrange a call-out.

In the Lightning Service Console, the agents will set up a customer “case”, and when a call-out is required, they create the “work order” which is what the dispatchers work with.

Dispatcher

They respond to the “work order”. It’s their job to send the right person for the task based on skills, availability and proximity to the customer.

The “Dispatcher Console” offers access to all the different pieces of information required to fulfil the work order.

Field Technicians

The team on the road. They are specialists who carry out the service, maintenance or installations for customers in each work order.

The Field Service Mobile app enables the team to follow clear workflow steps, update the work order status and provide details and job images on the go – live.

Service Managers

This team has an overview of what’s going on – they review the volume of call-outs, the efficiency of service and customer satisfaction.

They can achieve all this through the reports, views and analytics available within the Salesforce platform.

How Salesforce Field Service Can Benefit You

If you’re on the fence about moving over to a sophisticated system such as Salesforce Field Service, read through these common challenges and how the solution can help solve them.

Do any of these sound like you?

Salesforce Field Service Features and Benefits

The features of Salesforce Field Service offer many of these benefits. And those who use it will say it’s a no-brainer.

Let’s dive into the features of Salesforce Field Service and the benefits it offers to you…

Benefit from: Efficient and stress-free job management

Thanks to a centralised digital dashboard.

All job-related information is centralised in one digital dashboard, which shows scheduling, job details, customer history, photos of completed work and timestamps.

Having everything in one place empowers your field engineers, as they have immediate access to the information they need to work efficiently.

Benefit from: Enhanced customer experience

Thanks to a 360-degree view of customer information.

With this customer overview, your team can provide a personalised service.

Customer satisfaction improves when a field engineer has informed them of their progress en route and arrives on-site with all their history and the job requirements. Simple, yet effective.

Benefit from: Saved time

Thanks to a mobile-first solution.

Field engineers are always on the go, yet are expected to complete reports and share updates after each appointment.

Accessing information and providing updates for each customer via a mobile device that syncs to the system saves a lot of headaches, messed up paperwork, and, in general, a lot of time.

Benefit from: Continuous Improvement

Thanks to data-driven insights and reporting.

With all the data gathered during service appointments, you can access simple and accurate reporting.

This enables you to:

• Track the efficiency of different job types
• Measure individual performance
• Identify areas for improvement

Use this data to optimise your process and drive efficiency in the areas that really make a difference for your customers.

Benefit from: Reduced Costs

Thanks to process automations and AI.

Field service enables you to automate many previously manual processes, which helps to minimise errors and reduce costs.

• Route optimisation helps reduce travel time and fuel costs
• Scheduling automation helps to minimise team downtime and maximise the productivity of field workers on the road
• Efficient inventory management ensures that technicians have what they need when they need it, reducing the need for return visits, excess inventory and emergency orders

Salesforce Field Service features are always being improved and updated, and AgentForce offers smart automations and more.

Our Experience with Field Service Implementations

Whether you’ve outgrown your field service spreadsheets or are looking for a solution that will scale with your business, Salesforce Field Service is ideal.

Implementing new technologies can feel overwhelming, and changing processes is hard for the team, but investing in them is worthwhile. Read more about preparing for change in this detailed article by David, our Head of Delivery.

Our Field Service consultants have over 10 years of experience with field service implementations and know exactly how to get the most out of the platform, and importantly, your team.

Here are some of our success stories…

Field Service Implementations: More than 50% cut in service response time

One of our most successful Field Service implementations is with Power Saving Solutions (PSS), a commercial battery rental company offering clients a flexible, hybrid generator. Engineers are always out on the road doing maintenance and repairs where required.

With exciting and rapid growth, PSS wanted to formalise the sales process and field service operations, as the legacy, manual processes were inefficient.

Since the implementation and working with our field service consultants, the PSS team has benefited from:

• Optimised scheduling and routing, giving engineers time back in their day
• Reduced the response time for service requests by more than 50%
• Increased maintenance coverage to 98% of the asset base
• 4 Month ROI for the entire project and licence costs

Field Service Implementations: From spreadsheets to sophistication

Knight Protection is a high-end security installation and maintenance business offering CCTV/security systems for high-net-worth individuals across South East England.

Having outgrown their manual process using Excel and Outlook, the team sought a scalable and more efficient solution. With such high-end clients, quality customer service and a flexible approach to appointments are essential.

Since the Salesforce Field Service implementation, the team have benefited from its easy automations. They can quickly create maintenance appointments and notify customers when a technician is available. Now, using spreadsheets seems unthinkable for the team at Knight Protection!

Field Service Implementations: Taking the business to the next level

Paulsons is a traffic management company with a fleet of in-house and contractor engineers who install temporary traffic lights and traffic management systems. They support construction, communication, and utility companies.

Previously, the team had manual systems set up to manage quotes, field teams and projects. However, thanks to some new, larger customers, they wanted a robust system that would support further growth and offer quality customer service.

With Field Service, Paulsons now have an optimised engineer schedule that ensures the right, qualified engineers are on site. They benefit from reduced crossover and unnecessary travel between projects and engineers across the UK.

Plus they can quickly provide project proof and validate that processes have been followed — essential documentation for customers.

” I can’t thank you and your team enough for the time you have given us and for helping us build a system that will be the foundation that allows us to take our company to the next level” — Lewis Birch, Director

Get in touch

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That’s why we focus on your core requirements, taking into account all the different moving parts, and get you realising those benefits as soon as possible.

We run an open way of working during projects, keeping you up to date and always holding ourselves accountable.

So get in touch! We can’t wait to work with you.

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