Fixing the Dysfunctional Service Team - Part 1

• Frustrated staff
• A high number of service orders clogging the system
• Cash flow problems
• Inaccurate stock levels
• Multiple paper trays
• Gross loss or break-even at best
• Ineffective technology

The first step is to take a good hard look at your processes.

Let's start at the beginning.

Initial Inquiry

Have a well-trained team member taking the initial inquiry. They don't have to be a skilled technician; however they do need to follow a well-rehearsed script to gather all required information and adhere to all internal procedures.

Capture job information with a simple process that can be entered once into a single form directly into a central database system. This could bedone via a workstation located at the drop-off bench, a mobile device such as a tablet or Reception utilising a phone headset at a computer station.

Electronic forms should allow for the creation of new customers and new equipment (Customer Assets). For existing customers, the form should provide a lookup to serviced equipment already linked to the customer and or ability to scan or search on serial number, asset number or other descriptive field.

Have a Service StandardsPolicy and communicate it to the customer. Realistic job turnaround time frames should also be discussed openly.

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Staff Training & Resources

All technicians need to specialise; however it is important to set aside time periodically to teach diagnostic techniques within a service team. In larger service teams you can have specialist diagnostic technicians; however using this approach in smaller service teams creates risk as typically there is only one person with these skills.

Use software tools such as document management systems to manage your technical knowledge base. This allows technicians to effectively search for symptoms and review solutions previously applied. Many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have document management systems as core functionality. Document management provides a mechanism for saving images and documents such as user manuals, photos and QA Sheets within the ERP system. This then allows for integration between the ERP database and web sites for displaying images, allowing technicians to search within the ERP system for product manuals or product support articles etc.

Inventory Management

Inventory control is the key to a successful service team. If spare parts are not available then a job cannot be completed. Assess high turnover parts regularly to ensure that reorder level , reorder quantity, order multiple and lead time are accurate. This will allow automated replenishment routines work effectively to ensure you never run out of spare parts and, more importantly, you don't order more than you require.

An effective inventory management system will also take into account multiple demand sources and just as the service team places demand on spare parts, so does the sales team selling spare parts over the counter. Apply an inventory forecast from either item level or sales history days to assist in predicting future demand where long lead times are involved.

Have a strict policy around the allocation of spare parts (stock) to your various jobs,sales and marketing teams to ensure stock does not go missing and is there when you need it. The key lesson here is that it's not about stopping the various teams taking parts as required; it's about accounting for all stock movements so you can rely on the stock's quantity on-hand value.

When parts are not available, jobs are usually put down and then picked back up again. This is inefficient as each time a job has to be put down and picked up again more time is added to the job as the technician reacquaints themselves with it.

Use of a multi-location inventory system, usually found in enterprise level accounting systems and ERP systems, makes it much easier for stores people to locate parts quickly for service technicians.

The capture of additional information against the inventory item such as category, sub category, manufacturer, brand, model and the ability to capture further information against additional fields provides technicians and service coordinatorswith powerful searching capabilities. More advanced systems hold supplier catalogues in separate tables to allow more in-depth searching or direct links to supplier websites.