Many field service companies make the mistake of creating discrete appointment windows and booking only one call to each window. In a world where each appointment takes the full window of time and never varies, that’s a great plan...do you live in that world?
The challenge is that when an appointment finishes early, you’re then waiting for the next customer to be available. This creates no incentive to work efficiently and productivity stagnates.
If you create overlapping appointment windows for arrival time, then the tech that finishes call 1 early, can move immediately to call 2. Similarly, if call 1 runs long, then you can still arrive on time for call 2 and make up the time.
To get started, study the variation in call completion times overall and by call type. Try overlapping appointment windows by 1 standard deviation. This means that the more your appointment durations vary, the more you want the appointment windows to overlap.
You can always test the approach with one or two technicians and measure the results. If you’re seeing improvements in productivity and you’re continuing to meet customer expectations, you’re on the right track.
Are you overlapping appointment windows and always testing for improvement?
Share your experiences in the comments below and learn more about field service transformation with Chapman Management Solutions at www.chrischapman.ca.
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