Difficult? Totally!
Picture yourself as the owner of a company that has multiple clients. Your company is taking in orders from them and there are deadlines to be met. Missing deadlines would put the credibility of your company at stake and you do not want that to happen. On top of that, having multiple clients would mean various agreements where you have assigned strategists of your company to make the best plan for your clients. But the problem is that there are too many. Once you provide them your service, you realize they have asked for something completely different.
Perhaps somewhere down the line, they have asked you to change your strategy for them and you have agreed to it but the number of clients was too many for you to handle. Is that normal? Yes. Is that acceptable? No. So what can be done to keep your customers satisfied amidst the immense responsibilities? One sure-fire way is to make an SLA (Service Level Agreement) where your services and products are as transparent to your clients as clear glass. To make that possible, you need a system that can tackle the problem that you may face.
Is There a Solution?
SLA (Service Level Agreement) is the expected level of service that a customer expects from the service provider and the metrics that are given in order to measure the level of success or failure of the service. When dealing with multiple clients, things can get tricky as you need to facilitate all their requirements in your service. If you fail to reach the benchmark, there will be no excuses and you would be penalized for your shortcomings. So what can be done? Let’s get to know the experience of one company that has completed almost 600 tasks in a span of one month. This is what one of its key personnel had to say:
“When dealing with clients, it is imperative that we cater to their requirements by hook or by crook! But sometimes the demand of our clientele changes and we have to adjust accordingly. We have a massive client base and for a company like ours, we need to be more vigilant than the newcomers in the industry. We were quick to respond to the SLAs that we could not follow through and keep our customers satisfied. But that didn’t seem like a sustainable plan for the long term. Our planners were having a hard time strategizing the best course of action until we started using a field service software and mobile applications.
Keeping track of SLA became a piece of cake. If any of our field service agents are running late on a particular project, they get notified about it accordingly. Planners are also now better informed & equipped to reschedule or reassign field reps to minimize delays be it response or resolution times. Moreover, the entire agreement is more transparent than ever - the clients are always notified about any changes in the plan or demands that they make so that leaves no room for miscommunication.”
Time to be Smart!
Although this organization has been in the business for some time, it has faced hindrances due to not having a proper way of tracking and managing its service level agreement with its clients. However, with a field service software, that has been solved. What we understand from this key personnel’s experience is that there are specific issues that a smart application will be able to solve for your business:
Transparency for both parties: When making a contract, a service level agreement is established that will not only include the type of services that will be provided but also the metrics by which their quality will be judged. Furthermore, the SLA will have conditions for the customers too - if a customer is unable to provide relevant and crucial information to the service provider, the provider would not be held liable for the shortcomings. With a field service application, such complications can easily be avoided as all the relevant information will be visible within the system UI. Therefore, you can always backtrack to your service level agreement and review any claims made by your clients or the field service agents carrying out the tasks with simple push notifications to the users.
Notifications for proactivity: As mentioned before, having too many things to do can generally result in slip-ups in your service. For instance, having to cater to 100 or even 15 clients within a month with a rather small team would be a tedious task. Your field service agents would have to write everything down to be reminded of what to do next while keeping the deadlines in mind. But a smart software like Custella can make life easier for everyone. For example, the service level agreement would be recorded within the software and so the deadlines for the assignments will be notified beforehand. Moreover, any necessary information that is crucial to the company will be visible in the UI so that the company can simply contact the clients and notify them about the matter.
If They've Done It, You Can Too!
The key personnel further stated, “We have around 130 tasks in progress and even though it may seem like a daunting thing, it’s really not. Our field service software, Custella, made it easy for us to set up service level agreements and as a result, we are able to keep our customers satisfied and remind them of a credible company. I wouldn’t want my competitors to know about all this but I can’t deny that any company would benefit from such a software.”
Just like this company, there are thousands of companies that are facing struggles keeping up with the service level agreements with their clientele. But as you know by now, there is more than one way you can ease the process and keep your customers satisfied. With such freedom in setting up SLAs, do you think it is time to start picturing how to craft yours for a perfect game plan?
Need a field service management application like Custella? If you’re in Malaysia, Indonesia, or the ASEAN region, drop us an email to schedule your demo: ask@custella.com.
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