HVAC Scheduling in the Field with Mobile HVAC Software
By My Service Depot on Wednesday, December 30, 2020Giving technicians the ability to create jobs in the field will open up new doors for your HVAC business.
Whether you need to fill out mountains of paperwork or relay information back to the office, your HVAC company needs to find the most efficient method of documenting work in the field. At Smart Service, we’ve recently introduced a feature that gives technicians the ability to create and schedule jobs directly from their mobile device in the field. Our latest major update simplifies this process and reduces the time and work required to get service calls scheduled.
In this article, we’ll establish the importance of scheduling jobs in the field and go over how you can implement this feature into your company’s workflow.
Mobile Scheduling for HVAC Companies
Mobile scheduling often proves the most effective way for your HVAC company to schedule emergency calls and quick appointments while out in the field. Sometimes office staff can experience a high volume of calls for last minute appointments, and can get overwhelmed. With mobile scheduling, technicians can relieve the stress by setting up appointments when it makes sense to do so. (Of course, some companies may prefer to only give certain users the ability to create jobs in the field, and some may not want anyone to utilize this ability at all. In Smart Service, both options are available. You can set these privileges on a tech-by-tech basis.)
How to Schedule a Job in the Field
Let’s take a look at the field job creation process in the Smart Service mobile app. In the home screen, users will simply open the main menu and scroll down until they see the “New Job” button with the plus icon. Here, users can create a job with an existing customer (or create a new customer if needed). With a customer selected, users can then fill out the required fields for the job, like job type, tax codes, address, contact information, etc.
All of this information gets sent back to the office. If the staff there needs to make changes, they can. With the required fields filled out, the new job will appear on your “Jobs to do” list in the Smart Service mobile app. From here, you can work on and complete the job as you normally would with any job created in the office.
When the job is finalized, the history record and all information associated with the job will go back to Smart Service for the office to document. From there, the office staff can add the job to QuickBooks. Once the job gets added to QuickBooks, it will look and function the same as a job created in the office.
Mobile Scheduling: The Future of HVAC
In summary, the ability to create appointments directly from a mobile device will help your business stay on top of service calls. This capability represents the future of HVAC service scheduling; it gives companies the ability to set up an appointment from anywhere, at any time. More often than not, a customer may call in at the last moment or want additional work after an existing job gets completed. Instead of relaying customer and job information back to the office so the staff there can schedule it, creating the job directly from the field greatly reduces the time needed to get an appointment set. In turn, this improves customer satisfaction and communication, as the technician can let the customer know exactly when their appointment will take place.