Communication Skills
As the escalation intermediary between customer inquiries and the service teams and other departments, Field Service Managers must communicate efficiently and accurately. It is in everyone's interest to avoid mistakes and unnecessary waiting times due to misunderstandings between different parties.
They also need outstanding interpersonal skills. An instinct for exemplary customer service is required every now and then when costly errors create reputational risk. Therefore, a high level of solution orientation is also an advantage.
The abaility to step back, and produce a precise analysis of tasks and the ability to quickly penetrate problems are also a great advantage.
Stress Tolerance
Working in
Field Service Management can be very stressful at times. If more customer requests appear than there are currently available resources, the field manager must allocate make decisions with certainty.
It is their job to prioritise requests. In areas of business continuity (B2B), for example if customers must stop their production due to a defective machine - there is additional pressure.
Flexibility
In many industries, field service managers must reckon with on-call times. These are usually shared by several employees, and in many cases it is fully remunerated. Despite this, working hours at night or at weekends are widespread. In critical circumstances, a willingness to travel is also a requirement.
SALARY: WHAT DOES A FIELD SERVICE MANAGER EARN?
The monthly or yearly salary of a Field Service Manager varies greatly depending on their industry and the associated area of responsibility. The size of the company and the team also plays an important role: in large organisations where the bulk of the business is field service, they tend to earn more. It's usual that the greater the responsibility, the better they are paid. According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for a Field Service Manager is £44,387 pa.
WHICH INDUSTRIES NEED A FIELD SERVICE MANAGER?
Field Service Managers are active in numerous industries that require the deployment of service teams directly to the customer. The most important divisions include:
- Automation service provider (vending industry)
- Coffee & Food Services
- Power supply
- Facilities Management
- Healthcare & Medical Devices
- Refrigeration, air conditioning and heating technology
- Communication and Office Technologies
- Consumer goods (merchandising)
- Mechanical and plant engineering
- Technical reporting & testing
- Insurance
Here you will find a detailed
sector overview.
Each area places slightly different demands on the qualities of Field Service Managers and presents them with different problems and areas of focus. In any case, the work in field service management is never boring and offers a lot of variety - either within a company, within a specific industries, or even seasonally.
DEDICATED SOFTWARE FOR FIELD SERVICE MANAGERS
While field service managers used to coordinate their teams (before the job title was even common) on the phone or at best via e-mail, SMS and messenger, there is specialist software for this. The scheduling of resources in the field service plays a central role, i.e. the
appointment scheduling and route planning.
Video - How software supports your service and your customers:
Corresponding programmes are tailored to the tasks and requirements in field service management and support daily processes. Among the diverse features of software for field service managers:
- The optimal planning of orders or appointments and routes and tours, taking into account all parameters/restrictions
- Ongoing planning optimisation over the course of the day (real-time optimisation)
- Clear display of available field employees and materials/spare parts
- Automatically assign jobs to qualified field service rngineers with availabilty
- Automatic recognition of order conflicts and corresponding escalation management
- Delivery of data evaluations and reports for management
The heart of real-time field service scheduling software is the
scheduling algorithm. Its quality, together with the setting of the company and industry-specific parameters, determines how high the efficiency gains and productivity increases can be.
Read more:
8 ways to increase the productivity of the field service with FSM software
FIELD SERVICE APPS
Another solution that many Field Service Managers take advantage of is a connected mobile application, i.e. a
field service app. With their help (and the appropriate hardware (smartphones and tablets), office and field staff are directly networked, which improves paperless communication and live optimisation.
Field service employees always have the necessary order data and service history at their fingertips via the field service app. They may also document completed orders directly and have the customer provide a digital signature.
Delays and new appointments can be recorded and published immediately, without going through the dispatchers or only when returning to the office. This allows the algorithm to dynamically optimise appointments and routes and tours again (no batch or overnight processing).
A ROLE WITH A STRONG FUTURE
Modern Field Service Managers have an interesting role. Together with their team, they are at the forefront of the company. Their strategic efforts directly link to profitability. Designing an
excellent customer experience is critical and the effort to match new customer expectations has increased. High quality field service management, supported by
intelligent software will continue to grow into the future.