Managing a business that provides mobile services can be difficult. And it’s a task that’s only going to get tougher as the pace of business life accelerates.
Customers and clients have ever increasing expectations - they don’t care about the complexities of managing a team of fieldworkers, they just want items and services delivered on time and with minimal hassle.
So for a business to succeed in this environment, it takes a special set of management attributes and behaviours. Here are the top tips for mobile business management
1) Take a step back
One of the pitfalls of managing a business providing mobile services is an a sense of ongoing paranoia. It’s constantly worrying about the day-to-day tasks - things not being done properly or tasks not completed.
If you’re not careful, it leads to a situation where you’re too busy firefighting and micromanaging that you lose sight of long term objectives and goals.
2) Be obsessed with safety
The risks posed to mobile workers are serious and any lapse in safety processes can have devastating consequences - not just for employees but for the future of a business.
An effective safety policy has to be monitored and managed relentlessly. The most effective way to do this is by building compliance processes into employee workflows so that it becomes a part of the company culture.
3) Good communications are key
It’s really hard to keep employees ‘in the loop’ and feeling connected when they spend so much of their time out on the road. It means that ensuring good communications for mobile teams requires extra special effort.
Making people feel part of a cohesive group can be encouraged through scheduled face-to-face meetings, smart use of digital communications and company social events and activities.
4) Become a master of metrics
How can you tell if your mobile business management decisions are successful if you have no easy way to gauge the impact they have? This is the information gap that business metrics helps to fill.
As more companies begin to use digital work processes, it has unlocked access to a wealth of detailed data on the internal health of an organisation. It provides a detailed picture of what’s going on within a company.
5) Remember your marketing
It’s not enough to be running a great business, you also need to have the ability to show and tell others about it. Marketing is particularly important for mobile services where clients are looking for ‘safe’ and reputable brands.
It’s not something that requires a grand strategy or eye-watering budgets. With digital communications all companies now have the ability to engage with anyone who has an online connection.
Here's a look at how to market your field service business successfully.
6) Schedule for success
While it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, the further forward you can plan and schedule, the better prepared you’re going to be.
It allows you to identify potential issues - spikes in workload or under staffing issues - and rectify them before they become resource hogging problems.
7) Appreciate the value of feedback
It’s never pleasant to receive complaints but when criticisms are fair, they should be regarded as a valuable commodity. They help to highlight problems and weaknesses which may otherwise have remained hidden.
It’s the kind of critical feedback that companies pay large sums of money to receive, paying for the services of consultants and analysts. And dealing with complaints in a positive way is a great way to ensure customer loyalty.
Here's why customer reviews can be good for your business... Even the bad ones.
8) Adopt the 80/20 approach
This is the idea that, each week, 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your time. So you need to work out what you’re doing during that 20 percent - and do more of it.
Once you start reviewing each week, and identifying the most productive areas, you can start stripping away those tasks that aren’t achieving results in order to improve mobile workforce productivity.
9) Make the most of technology
The emergence of digital technology has been a game changer for businesses providing mobile services. Keeping track of your mobile workforce is essential and this is something you can now do using mobile workforce management software.
It provides managers with real-time information on where each fieldworker is, what they’re doing and how well they’re doing it. It’s a tool that allows for a better mobile business management and for managers of mobile workers to finally start managing.
10) Consistency is key
The success of a burger chain such as McDonald's is built on consistency - people know exactly what they’re going to get. It’s exactly the same with mobile services with consistency and reliability often outranking cost for customers.
It’s something that’s achieved with robust and flexible management systems that can handle any of the problems that are thrown at it.
A mobile business management solution
MyMobileWorkers is a digital workforce management system which provides a better way to manage field workers.
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