Blog > Field service

Writing an effective service report: what are the best practices to follow?

20 September 2021 | 5 min read

For most technicians and field workers, the writing of service reports is a tiresome and time-consuming task. But in most companies, these reports have become essential. Highly appreciated by customers, these reports also allow a reinforced follow-up of field operations and an accelerated invoicing process.
To help you create effective service reports, we’ve identified what to include and the best practices.

List the useful information to be included in your service report

First of all, the manager in charge of the field services must establish a list of useful data for the follow-up of the operation. To save you time, we have summarized the most common information in our customers’ service reports. There is obviously nothing to prevent you from reviewing this list with your customers and other departments of the company. In fact, it is highly recommended!

The essential information in every service report

The first objective of a service sheet is to quickly answer the essential questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? Every report must therefore include at least the following data:

• Identity of the company: logo, corporate name, registered capital, company identification system, address, contact details, etc.
• Identify of the technician or the dispatcher in charge of the task: name, first name or number.
• Details of the client for whom the field service is planned and the name of the contact for this file.
• Purpose of the field service: repairing a dishwasher, checking fire extinguishers, assembly of a furniture, etc.
• Precise geographical location of the work site.
• Date, start and end time or duration of the service.
• Customer’s request : references of the purchase order, date of the email or phone call, scheduled monthly maintenance, etc.
• Signature or stamp of the end customer.

By providing such required fields, you limit the risk of oversight and encourage the creation of accurate and really usable service reports.

Link enabling the customer to download the service report.

Data to be customized according to the activity of the company

The operations manager can also include optional custom fields in the service form template:

• Internal reference.
• License number and mileage.
• Type of equipment or tools used.
• Quantity of products used; level of a stock to be monitored.
• Comments on the field service or description of the issues encountered.
• Advice on putting into service or use.
• Date and type of the next recommended maintenance operation.
• Type of test or sample collected for a laboratory analysis, etc.

This additional data can take the form of lists, checkboxes or text fields to be completed. These data are specific to a trade or an industry and prove the effectiveness of your teams and that your work is carried out in accordance with standard practice.

Dematerialize service reports

In fact, there is no rule or standard that requires a specific template for a service form to be considered correct. The choice is up to you. You can give field service reports on paper, edit them in Word, Excel, use a CRM or use a mobile application. But in practice, the digitization of service reports has many advantages.

The automated editing of service reports: real productivity improvements

By asking your field workers to fill in their reports via a mobile application, you save a significant amount of time on the management of service sheets. This way, there is no need to understand sometimes unreadable entries or to look for misplaced documents! A delivery management software like AntsRoute allows you to generate your service reports in a few clicks. When generating the document in PDF format, the information collected by the technicians is automatically integrated, without any input from you.

The system to create service reports provided by AntsRoute.

Adding photos to the service form

Most delivery management software also offers the possibility of completing your report with a photo as an attachment. To prove the absence of a customer during the technician’s visit or the good condition of the merchandise, nothing is more effective than photos! Taken on the site by the agent directly in the mobile application, these are then very useful to prevent litigation and discourage claims.

Include the electronic signature

With the digitization of service reports, you also benefit from the advantages of the electronic signature. Thanks to the digital signature, which is very practical in remote locations, you can prove that an operation has been carried out properly even before the agent is back. Now, there’s no need to dig through piles of documents to find the missing proof of completion, before scanning it and sending it to the customer. Archiving, retaining and sorting digital service reports is indeed much easier.

Use data from service reports in real-time

Thanks to the automated editing of the service reports, you can send them to your customers without wasting time or making mistakes. However, customers are not the only ones interested in the data contained in the service sheets. Many other departments of the company are concerned!

Sending the service report to the final client

Now, with just a few clicks, the information entered by the agent is converted into a PDF document that can be sent to the customer immediately. This near real-time communication increases customer confidence and secures the transmission of service reports, eliminating any risk of lost or stolen documents.

The AntsRoute system for sending service reports to customers.

Improving after-sales service

The electronic reports are also very useful to facilitate the work of the after-sales service, in case of multiple visits to a customer in particular. All the information relating to the operations are grouped together in the same software, to quickly retrace the history of a customer, a dispatcher or a maintenance agent. In a few clicks, the after-sales service can visualize :

• The type of field service or deliveries completed.
• The names of the technicians who worked on the site.
• The problems encountered in the field and the solutions implemented.
• The comments about field service, etc.

The use of data from service reports by other services

The AntsRoute software offers concrete tools to unlock the information gathered by the agents in the field and encourage its use by other departments of the company.

A system such as Zapier, which connects more than 2,000 applications, makes it possible, for example, to directly connect AntsRoute and the accounting software Quickbooks.
The users can set up an automated communication of customer information between the two software. They can also set up the software so that each time a new invoice is issued, the related task is added in real time to the basket in AntsRoute.

In the same way, customers using Odoo software can make their activity management setting direct communication between Odoo and AntsRoute. For example, each time a purchase order is edited in Odoo, a new task is automatically created in AntsRoute. By implementing this type of solution, you avoid your teams to increase the number of data entries, for an optimal productivity and efficiency!

Does the management of service reports take you too much time? To allow you to discover our maintenance or delivery route optimization software in the best conditions, we offer you a free 7-day trial, without commitment or credit card number. Go to this page to register!