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E very year, heating, cooling and air-conditioning companies face seasonal peaks in orders and service skills that require an extraordinary effort. Field service managers who prepare wisely during the quieter times of the year can face hot and cold phases in a more relaxed and productive manner.

FIELD PLANNING FOR A SEASONAL BUSINESS

Work on air conditioning systems should be done by the beginning of summer at the latest, while the maintenance, upgrading and installation of heating systems must take place by the start of the heating season in autumn. But even with careful planning, reactive work orders are difficult to gauge, making these times particularly demanding and exhausting for businesses in the AC and HVAC sector.

The result of these seasonal peaks in orders (versus SLAs and KPIs) can create a mass of overtime. Any rush can threaten both the quality of the work and the job satisfaction of your employees.

Many companies compensate for seasonal fluctuations with the help of temporary contractor staff. This also brings problems with it: since temporary capacity operatives first must get used to the company and its working methods. This time hurts efficiency; precisely the problem your organisation must solve.

PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS AMPLIFY THE PROBLEM

A large number of jobs is actually a blessing. However, various productivity killers become a curse:

Paperwork: Many companies still use paper forms for job planning, time recording, and documentation. This not only takes up a lot of valuable time in everyday work, but is also prone to errors.

Ineffective communication: In addition, analogue processes require good communication. Often however, the interaction between order acceptance, scheduling and execution on site gets complicated.

Intransparent processes: Not infrequently, there is also little transparency in planning and order processing. What is the current status of the order? Who is currently working where? Who has the information I need right now?

Poor planning: If the field service planners calculate imprecisely, the field operatives cannot work efficiently. Strong scheduling and route planning is therefore essential in order to be able to process a large number of orders.

CAPACITY BOTTLENECKS AND FIELD SHIFT PLANNING

Especially in times of peak demand, scheduling through capacity peaks feels to many dispatchers as if they had to extinguish 20 fires at once. And no matter how much effort they put in, they will never find the most effective scheduling - always simply a more or less good compromise. This depresses the working atmosphere and hurts the balance sheet.

Besides, an emergency reactive order in-shift throws every schedule into a loss-making process. Then you either have to leave the customer waiting, or reschedule the team you can most easily spare - including travel time to the new job site. No less bad: If there is no central scheduling and the operatives must plan their own job lists, instead of being able to take care of their actual work and spend time with their customers.