For field service
The technician sees the step, not the manual
Field work goes wrong in the gap between the office and the van. The technician did not know about the access requirement, the photo was never taken, and the customer was never told anyone was coming.
One step at a time
The technician sees the current stage, what it needs and how to do it. Nothing else.
Proof required
Photos, readings and serials required on the stage they belong to, not chased later.
Customers told automatically
A message on a stage sends itself, and replies land back on the job.
Running late, visible
Target days per stage, flagged on the job and emailed to whoever owns it.
The job on the phone, one step at a time
A technician opens the job and sees the stage they are on, what that stage needs, and the written instructions for it. Not the whole process, and not a manual. The step in front of them.
They fill it in and save, and saving is what moves the job on. If something the stage requires is missing, it says which field, and the job stays where it is until it is there.
Stages they are not meant to touch are read-only, and stages holding pricing or internal notes can be hidden from them entirely.
Proof from site
Require the photograph, the meter reading, the serial number or the customer's name on the stage where they exist. The job cannot be completed without them, which is a better control than asking people to remember.
Photograph a compliance certificate or a parts docket and the text is read off it onto the job. That scanning runs on our own service in Sydney, so site photographs do not leave the country.
The customer hears from you automatically
Send an email, a text or a WhatsApp message from the job itself. Put it on a stage and it goes automatically when the job reaches it: booked, on the way, completed.
When the customer replies, the reply comes back onto the job rather than into one person's phone, with any photos they sent saved against it. Whoever the job is assigned to is emailed that a reply arrived.
You can also require that the customer has actually been told before a job is allowed to close, so 'I meant to call them' stops being a failure mode.
The office sees the day
Every job's stage, who it is assigned to and how long it has been sitting there, in one view across every stream. Targets per stage flag anything running late, and the person it belongs to is emailed the morning after it goes over.
Planned dates plot onto a timeline, so next week is visible rather than reconstructed from a calendar and a whiteboard.
See it happen
Tick one box and a record cannot leave a step until the work behind it is actually done: the quote sent, the invoice raised, the customer told. Excel lets you type Done. Trello lets you drag the card. Neither of them knows nobody was ever billed.
A starting point: the Repair Jobs template
Track repair jobs from drop-off through quote, approval, repair, and customer pickup. 7 stages and 12 fields, with written instructions on every stage. Change any of it, because it is your process.
Questions
- Does it work on a phone?
- Yes. It runs in the browser on a phone, so there is nothing for technicians to install and nothing to keep updated. They open the job and see the stage they are on.
- Can I stop a job being completed without a photo?
- Yes. Make the photo a required field on the stage where it is taken. The job will not move on without it, and the technician is told which fields are outstanding.
- Can customers be texted automatically when a job reaches a stage?
- Yes for email. Put an automation on the stage and a templated email sends itself when a job arrives there. Text and WhatsApp are sent from the job by a person today, and you can require that the customer has been contacted before the job closes.
- Can technicians see other technicians' jobs?
- Only if you want them to. A stream can be set so members see only records they created, and access is granted per stream, so a technician sees the work you have given them and nothing else.
Other trades doing the same thing
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