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HOMESERVE: FIVE FULL YEARS OF SUCCESSFUL SCHEDULING WITH FLS VISITOUR

5 min. reading time

26 June 2023 · Jeremy Squire

H omeServe is one of the UK's most recognised and highly-rated boiler companies. For over five years, it has leveraged market-leading heights of operational efficiency with the FLS VISITOUR dynamic scheduling solution from FLS – FAST LEAN SMART.

The true test for any relationship is how it fairs over the long term. Reaching their milestone, Richard Shepherd, Managing Director at HomeServe Installations and HomeServe Repairs, comments, "FLS VISITOUR achieves our scheduling efficiency objectives and FLS has proven an exceptional partner for HomeServe over the past five years. Their consultants are always on hand to offer expert advice and keen to ensure we are gaining the most efficiency for our operations. The technology has proven flexible to changing needs and they have listened and delivered on our suggestions for product development. We have regularly scored FLS 10/10 in their annual survey and I expect that to continue long into the future."

HIGHLIGHTS

Consistent, positive field service management outcomes since 2018.
25% faster time to respond.
Rapid deployment of dynamic appointment and embedded route scheduling solution with integrated mobile solution.
Implementation and go-live within weeks.
Critical linked-appointment functionality across complex operative skills.
Greater planning visibility and increased back-office efficiency.
Improved customer experience with 24/7 self-service and automated ETA messaging capability.

HomeServe is the UK's second largest boiler installer and the operation has two distinct components. First, a sales surveyor will conduct a video, telephone or in-home survey to assess the type of boiler a customer needs. They make a recommendation and produce a quote. Secondly, field engineers will attend the customer's property to install the boiler once the quote is accepted.

This presents a complex mix of sales surveyors who attend many jobs in one day, and field engineers with one job that could require one day or several days for installations. When searching for new scheduling and route optimisation software, HomeServe required a tool that could do both.

MORE THAN WHITE-SPACE FILLING

Sparking the search for a new scheduling solution was HomeServe's desire to 'work smarter, not harder'. In particular it sought to bring greater efficiency to the way it scheduled its workforce and remove pressure from its back-office staff.

The solution was first deployed in 2018. Richard Wilson, then IT Director for HomeServe boiler installations, explained, "Previously we had always relied on the personal knowledge of our planning team to know which sales surveyors and engineers would be best suited for a job in terms of geography, availability, and skills. We wanted software that could make smarter, faster decisions than our planners were equipped to."

It was on speaking with other field service and scheduling solution providers that HomeServe first heard of FLS. Richard says, "A lot of the scheduling tools we looked at were just about filling white space. In other words, finding gaps in diaries to fit in appointments. We wanted a more dynamic tool, one that could continuously optimise, looking at every appointment and every field operative collectively, and scheduling everything in the most optimal way. The providers we talked to said, 'We can't really do that, but we know a solution that can: the one offered by FLS - FAST LEAN SMART'."

LINKED APPOINTMENTS OPTIMISED IN REAL TIME

Richard and his project team investigated FLS and discovered that its real-time scheduler and embedded route optimiser FLS VISITOUR, was the solution it was looking for. An intelligent tool that evaluates a company's entire resource pool and effectively 'thinks on its feet', FLS VISITOUR makes smarter, quicker, and more efficient decisions than humans and other scheduling technologies. It works in conjunction with FLS' platform-independent mobility solution, FLS MOBILE, to ensure that field-based staff get to where they need to be and have the information they need when they get there. Together they cut the administrative burden considerably, and automate processes.

The company proceeded with the proof-of-concept pilot project that FLS offers all new customers. This demonstrates the value of FLS VISITOUR in terms of functionality and versatility, in particular its ability to integrate with existing back-end systems.

Richard explains, "Integration was a key requirement for us. We needed to know that FLS VISITOUR could integrate with our service management software. This is why FLS' pilot projects are so helpful. They're not just demos where you have to guess and imagine how it's going to work in the context of your unique business. With an FLS pilot, they wire it all in and prove it to you. We saw immediately that FLS lends itself to integration. We were also able to see first-hand how feature-rich and multi-faceted FLS VISITOUR really is."

Richard goes on to refer to a feature that has proved particularly useful for HomeServe: the ability to link jobs. When HomeServe installs a boiler, it must schedule a field engineer to do the installation and an electrician to do the wiring and potentially another to remove the old boiler. FLS will link the jobs, even if they take place on different days. This means that if the installation appointment must be changed, FLS will move the electrician appointment simultaneously.

"Most software will do about 80% of what you need or really want it to do," says Richard. "The ability to link jobs is a great example of the fact that FLS VISITOUR will do a lot more."

FASTER-THAN-USUAL IMPLEMENTATION

Winter is the busiest and most challenging time of year for HomeServe boiler installations. The company needed to go from concept to pilot to live very quickly, so that everything could be in place before the temperature dropped and the calls for new boilers begun flooding in.

Implementation happened in a much shorter timescale than normal. Thanks to strong teamwork between FLS and HomeServe's in-house developers and back-office teams, FLS VISITOUR was live, integrated and scheduling hundreds of multi-disciplined field resources within just weeks. "We're so pleased by how well everyone worked to get FLS VISITOUR in place for autumn" says Richard. "It was a big team effort and FLS really helped us get it in the air. Our back-office staff deserve a lot of credit too; they worked very hard and very quickly."

Richard points out one reason why FLS is generally a quicker-to-implement programme than many other scheduling software packages: "FLS is very good on configuration without the need for customisation. We didn't have the appetite, time or the resources to develop our own boutique functionality. We needed a solution that was already fully functional, which we could tweak to fit our requirements without writing code. That solution was FLS VISITOUR."

A GROWTH FACILITATOR

HomeServe went live with FLS VISITOUR in September 2018. Since then, the company has been scheduling its people more optimally and cost-effectively—and automatically planning better, smarter routes to each appointment. This has enabled HomeServe to get to customers faster.

"FLS saves us time in the office, gives us total visibility of who is doing what, and has consistently enabled us to get to our appointments 25% quicker than we were," says Richard. "It's really highlighted how efficient your scheduling can be when intelligent software does it for you. We see FLS as a growth facilitator. The efficiency gains are such that we're now in a position to scale up."

The use of FLS VISITOUR went on to enable self-service online appointment booking via the HomeServe website and this has proven invaluable in a competitive market. Customers want to interact with the company 24x7, and 'how soon the surveyor can attend' has a marked impact on sales.

"We're a customer-centric company," says Richard. "That’s ultimately why we did this. We wanted an easy, smart and efficient way of reshuffling appointments so that the customer gets a survey or installation appointment at a time that's convenient for them. Now that we've enabled this, the automated emails and texts keep customers in the loop at all times. We're all about improving the customer experience and we're grateful to FLS for helping us do that."

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