Blog > Field service

4 reasons to use software for your service reports

23 February 2023 | 7 min read

As the manager of a team of technicians or mobile agents, your main objective is to improve the quality and speed of their field services. This concerns both preventive or curative maintenance, troubleshooting, installation or control operations, as well as equipment transmission/recovery rounds. You need quick access to the data of each field service so that your teams can process them efficiently.

A powerful solution is to use a mobile app to automatically edit your service report.

By opting for service report editing software, you will be able to:

• Produce professional service reports.
• More easily collect information from the field.
• Improve traceability and communication between your departments.
• Save time, optimise schedules, monitor and management of field service.
• Analyse data from service reports and increase the quality of service.

To help you take the plunge or convince your hierarchy to opt for dedicated service report software, we have listed out the 4 main advantages of these mobile applications.

1. Create readable and ergonomic service reports with a customisable mobile app

Save time for both your technicians and the administrative team

In addition to being time-consuming to complete, paper service reports are often illegible or difficult to use.
Your maintenance technicians and field agents have been recruited for their business expertise, not for their writing skills.
They would like to be able to focus on their job as technicians, being quick and efficient, without having to spend long hours documenting all of their work.
Your internal teams and customers nevertheless need traceability. They require clear and understandable documents. Your service reports must allow them to visualise and control, in real-time, the operations being carried out and to organise the follow-up field services.

By forgoing paper forms and opting for a dedicated mobile app, you will make your technicians daily routing much easier and increase their motivation tenfold. They will be able to quickly enter relevant data and move on to the next visit.

This in turn will help you improve technician retention, thus allowing a gain in productivity.

By allowing them to enter customer data directly into pre-configured online software:

• You will help them gain a lot of time back from typing up reports.
• You will save them from travelling pointless miles to send the paper service reports.
• Your customers will have access to understandable and ergonomic documents, in much shorter delays.
• Your administrative teams will waste less time following up or deciphering the reports of your agents.

Customisable service report management software

On some mobile applications, it is possible to configure and customise all or part of the available fields, to adapt to your activity. Discover our tips for writing an effective service report.

For example, with Antsroute’s software, the data entered by your agents are automatically integrated into the report pre-edited by you on a dedicated dashboard.
You have the possibility to insert mandatory fields and additional customisable fields, such as:

• Company information, field agent and customer contact information.
• Date, time, duration and place of the field service.
• Reason for the field service or visit, with references and documentation.
• The material used, product consumed.
• Comments on the field service, problems encountered, and advice given.
• Client’s signature.
• Date of the next field service.

A service report sent with AntsRoute.

This allows all useful information to be reported directly from a laptop or tablet. No need to complete the report later or follow up with customers.

If a technician realises after his field service, that they must plan a new visit to the customer, or replace another part, for example, they can schedule the appointment directly from the mobile application.

It is very easy to configure personalised information so that it corresponds to the specificities of your business:

• Types of field service;
• Additional services provided;
• Progress reports on projects;
• Expertise and certifications of mandated agents (CACES, authorizations etc.);
• Price, weight, and dimensions of the material;
• Other attachments on the corresponding installation.

2. Collect on-field information and improve customer communication

Reports sent 30 minutes after the field service

A dedicated mobile application will also allow you to automatically generate and send these service reports to customers and internal teams.
No more double entries and tedious checks. This will save your teams from having to rewrite and verify the information provided by your agents and save them valuable time.

With AntsRoute’s mobile application, as soon as a technician has completed a service field or a stage of his shift, a complete report will be automatically published online, with all the information that will have been deemed of relevance:

• Date and time of visit;
• Pictures;
• Signature;
• Bar codes;
• Parts used;
• Comments.

The sending of proof of service using the AntsRoute mobile application.

Following their field service, your agents can thus directly enter the photos and comments on the mobile application and include all the necessary evidence for their visit (proof of delivery, repairs, material recovery, etc.).
No more need to send information to the administrative department at the end of the day, so that your agent can re-enter it and edit customer reports. Instead, service reports can be transformed directly into a PDF file and sent to customers 30 minutes after the technician’s visit by email with confirmation text.

The system to create service reports provided by AntsRoute.

Remember that the service report is a strategic document, which also strongly contributes to customer satisfaction.

Complete and updated customer information directly from your technicians

It is also possible for your agents to send the new customer contact details directly to the database (change of address, contact number, etc.).
With the AntsRoute software, for example, your mobile technicians can access your customers’ files and correct their contact details online – useful in case customers report errors or changes to them.

On the other hand, your technicians will have easy access to all the information necessary for their field service, thanks to the pre-filled reports. They can add any information they deem useful, such as photos, parts used, etc.

Your administrative teams will thus have all the documents readily available to quickly follow up on field services: modification of the schedule, ordering of additional parts, invoicing, etc.

By centralising the data of the field services on an application and by dematerializing the service reports, you:

• Maximize the efficiency of your technicians and allow them to focus on their job.
• Standardize the information to be provided and save considerable time in processing it.

The automatic generation of service reports adds autonomy and frees up time for your technicians and the administrative department. It also allows for greater transparency and simplifies communication with your customers and within your teams.

3. Efficiently manage field service data and optimise routes

Once these reports have been completed and sent, it also becomes easier to manage the rest of the field services.
You will be able to follow the status of the field service in real-time (completed, postponed, cancelled, to be completed) and adjust the schedule accordingly, whether they are recurring or one-off field services.

The live route tracking module of AntsRoute.

With just a few clicks, you will also have access to the numerous field service data:

• Spare parts used;
• Duration of the field service;
• Complementary planning;
• Customer feedback.

You can thus more easily follow the parts still in stock, any encounter difficulties during the field service, and time spent on each piece of equipment or in each location.
This gives you a better overview of the management and needs of your service.

This will also allow you to better plan and price your field services, by distributing them fairly between your different agents.

There’s an undeniable advantage for technicians in being able to centralise this data with field service management software. It allows them to access all the information necessary for future field services, resulting in an increase in their efficiency.

4. Increase the quality of service of your maintenance and troubleshooting field services

If there is one point to remember, it would be the gain in competitiveness and performance offered by these automatic service reports.

They allow you to:

• Better manage the field service schedule;
• Save your teams a lot of time;
• Avoid unnecessary printing of documents;
• Optimise field services, by having a better knowledge of on-field information;
• Collect useful data to improve customer satisfaction and manage stock;
• Make more informed decisions.

Opting for software that automatically generates service reports is therefore not just a nice-to-have; it is in fact essential to improve the productivity and competitiveness of companies that travel frequently to customers.
The AntsRoute team won’t just stop there. Our mobile application allows you to easily set up and generate customisable service reports. It is also coupled with additional features that allow you to schedule and optimise your routes and dematerialise your roadmaps. Check out this page if you want to learn more.