2016's Top Field Service KPIs How To Help Service Managers Meet Them
2016’s Top Field Service KPIs How To Help Service Managers Meet Them
Determining how to measure and achieve service success can be tricky. Follow these important KPIs for service managers to guide your field service teams in 2016.
Joanna Rotter, content marketing manager, MSI Data
Key indicators of a successful service organization haven’t changed much in the last few years, but the tools and strategies service managers use to meet them are changing all the time. When it comes to setting and measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) each year, service managers see better results when they focus on the process of delivering service, rather than the results. For example, rather than measuring profitability or number of service calls per day, analyze the success of the processes involved in delivering service. When the process goals are being met, the desired results will follow.
The list below highlights some of the most important KPIs service organizations are measuring today. Service managers should analyze their business and start with only four or five KPIs that will be most helpful instead of trying to implement all of them at once. Determine which are most important to your organization by evaluating problem areas, and then, only after reaching your original goals, add to the list.
10 Service Process KPIs Every Service Manager Should Know
- Average Travel
- Average travel time: track the average time to get from site to site.
- Average travel distance: track average miles techs spend driving.
- Average travel costs: track fuel costs, wear and tear on vehicles, and overall cost of getting from place to place.
By reducing the amount of travel and identifying where routing can be more efficient, service teams are able to spend more time on billable tasks and tackle more work orders, not to mention the customer satisfaction that comes from getting to a jobsite and resolving an issue faster.
Pro Tip: Service scheduling software with GPS allows schedulers to see where techs are on a map and assign the closest available qualified technician to an incoming work order to reduce travel time, distance, and costs.
- Response Time
The faster techs respond to problems, the more work they’ll be able to do in a day and the quicker the customer’s problem is resolved the happier the customer will be.
Pro Tip: With instant status updates through mobile, schedulers know when each tech is available so they can schedule someone quicker and speed response times.
- Average Repair Times
Average repair time is a potential indicator of training needs; for example, if one tech is taking much more time to repair the same type of equipment as his peers, then that tech might need additional training. Or it could highlight product serviceability difficulties, which manufacturing might be able to correct with an engineering change order.
Pro Tip: Repair times vary based on equipment, type of customer, industry, usage the equipment gets, etc. So, before you start tracking, segment your customers and assets appropriately so you’re not measuring apples to asparagus.
- Average SLA Compliance Rate
Measuring service level agreement compliance is nothing new, but it’s still very important. If you’re missing the SLAs, that has implications for customer satisfaction and downstream revenue.
Pro Tip: Equip techs with a mobile service app that shows SLAs for each customer they’re working with so there’s never any confusion about what’s expected of them.
- Technician Utilization
To track technician utilization and productivity, divide the amount of time the tech is working on things that are part of the job description vs time filling out time sheets, attending meetings, other activities unrelated to productive work.
Pro Tip: Improve productivity significantly by eliminating paper and duplicate data-entry with an all-in-one FSM system. When workers don’t have to worry about reentering data, their time is freed up to work on more important tasks.
- Measure Technician Billable Time
After you’ve figured out technician productive time, service managers can determine what percentage of that was billable.
Pro Tip: To even out this ratio, make selling more service contracts a deliberate strategy in your service organization. Maintenance agreements are the true path to profitability and consistency.
- Percentage Of Expiring Warranties That Are Converted To Maintenance Contracts
Ideally, service departments prove their value during the warranty period, so customers will be eager to purchase a maintenance contract.
Pro Tip: Set alerts to remind you when warranties are expiring and designate someone on your team to be in charge of converting those to maintenance contracts.
- Percentage Of Expiring Maintenance Contracts That Have Been Renewed
If you have a sales person in charge of selling service contracts, make sure they’re also renewing expiring ones. Set up alerts so there’s never any ambiguity as to whose contracts are expiring when.
Pro Tip: Make it a priority to build a relationship with your customers, and always do a thorough job during PM visits. This is your opportunity to prove your service team’s worth and make sure customers renew their contracts on time.
- Percentage Of Ordered Parts That Are Returned Unused
If technicians are consistently ordering the wrong parts for their jobs, that has a direct impact on productivity and customer satisfaction.
Pro Tip: Give technicians full-access to customer history and inventory so they can see what’s been done on the equipment in the past, what tools have been used, and what skills were needed, so they show up on site prepared with the right parts and guidance to resolve issues the first time.
- Emergency Parts Order Costs
Track how often techs are rushing out to the store to purchase last minute parts, or how frequently parts must be flown in from another location on an emergency basis. These costs add up and also cut into worker productivity.
Pro Tip: To analyze accurately, filter emergency parts order costs by technician, territory, work order, etc. so it’s easier to point to trends like an education issue or a local stock issue.
New Technologies Make It Easier To Track And Measure Smart Service KPIs
Technology has made it easier to identify what to measure and retrieve accurate information quickly. So while the KPIs themselves have remained relatively stable over the last decade, service managers’ ability to set smart goals, track performance, and make informed changes has made it more important than ever to exceed customer expectations.
Joanna Rotter is the content marketing manager at MSI Data, a field service management software provider and creator of enterprise field service app, Service Pro.