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Key performance indicators
Just wondering what kind of key performance indicators others use to track there technicians' effectiveness. We track callbacks (service and install), collection at time of service and gross margin per hour. Are there any more good ones out there and what are some of the reports that other users find useful?
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Chance,
Out of curiosity, how are you tracking collection at time of service? I've tried different ways to track this info and haven't found a process that I really feel good about. Thanks, in advance, for your input.
Some KPI's would be, first and foremost, First Call Completes. Recalls, walk rates, etc.
Wendy,
My process is by no means perfect and that is why I was asking for some advice here first. But here it is. Every Monday I run an open invoice report. I cross off property management companies, commercial buildings and anyone that is OK to be billed. Any invoices left over I open and identify the technician, the amount and possible reason for non collection. I enter these onto a spreadsheet that I post monthly. My reasoning is that if the technician did not collect, chances are the customer hasn't paid within a week. Hope this helps!
Thanks Chance!
Chance...we use quite a few performance indicators each week, after payroll is completed, for our service department, as follows:
It may seem like overkill but when put in graph form (yes, I do graphs as well) for the cumulative year you'll see trends. Additionally, when compared to the prior week you (i.e. the Service Manager) can assess what happened the prior week and try to qualify the numbers a little more.
We hold our technicians accountable for their days and force them to think of their own efficiencies.
I hope this helped aside from showing OCD.
Thanks.
Drew
Drew,
This was an incredibly awesome comment. Thank you so much, I am certain this information will help anyone that sees this thread. You rock!
Hey Scott ol buddy! Do you think we can maybe have a report that does all that except maybe GPS? Just one button press?
What's a good way that you use to track first call completes? It seems easy on the surface, but I'm yet to come up with a way to do it after the fact.
What if you created a Dispatch Type called First, or something like that.
Then you could run Dispatch Lists on "First" calls.
Alternatively, same concept but with Invoices. Create a Form Type called First Call and create any Invoice for a First Call Dispatch using that Form type.
This would allow you to run Sales report to track your First Calls, I think that might be better.
What's the definition of 'first call complete'? I've created a 'dispatch view' that, every morning, I can reconcile the dispatches from the prior day. I've attached the parameters of such (hope it comes through). And, of course, you can monitor during the day if you've changed the date to the current days date.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Hmm that's an interesting jumping off point Scott. You could use 1st(2nd etc) as the type, and if a follow up is necessary, assuming you don't carry over the same dispatch(we do on some customers and create new ones for others depending on their billing) you could change the type to follow up needed. And if you do carry that dispatch, you just change it to the new one.
That way if you run a list of type 1st, you don't have false positives in there. I'd been trying using service request codes, but it hasn't been as fluid as I would have liked.
Exactly, you're on the right track with what I was suggesting. Glad to hear that made sense, lol.
And you hit the nail on the head, you can always change the Types in any of your Dispatches if you need to - assuming something carries over like the follow up.
Your can also do this as a service request code so it doesn't interfere with the whole billable / non billable function of the dispatch type.
Our dispatch has also been using one of the Service Request Codes for source of a call. So: referral, yellow pages, recurring, etc.
Do you use crystal reports to process the service request codes?
That's what we've done in the past(the request codes), but the only way I could find to get the information of which dispatch had a 1st request code was to use crystal reports.
We don't. Checking out the demo on Crystal reports to evaluate for purchase is on my TTD list. But I'm wearing so many hats that I haven't had a chance.
How do you get information as far as which calls are a 1st or 2nd etc? I hadn't been able to come up with another way than Crystal reports...and believe me it's definitely power and infinitely complex haha. I've been trying to teach it to myself and it's slow going. I'm in the same boat you are I'm usually doing too many things at once.
Wouldn't the Dispatch Type concept manage this easier than having to do Crystal Reports?
However, if you're getting into the Revenue side of things, then I think my earlier suggestion with Invoice From Types with Names: Callback, 1st Visit, 2nd Visit, might be far more powerful without having to go the Crystal Report way.
I wish I knew more about Crystal Reports though, and the SQL Database structure =X. I've seen some concepts that people have pulled together and it blew my mind, lol.
The dispatch type is something I'm thinking on, and honestly, it would prevent another headache of the tech seeing two billing statuses. I'm crafting an AutoHotkey script in my head for a follow-up. I wrote one that creates a new dispatch and copies data back and forth between the two dispatches, but it's mapped by location. I think this would work in the same manner.
I was looking at your suggestion in another forum post(I've been going back and reading these I wish I'd have gotten into them sooner when you mentioned them to me!) about the tech creating a quote with follow-up information. I like the theory behind it, but would it junk up your quote list? We average 60-100 calls a day so a bottleneck tends to compound pretty quickly.
Ok, did some checking and spoke to tech support.
Unfortunately, the dispatch list won't let you add Service Request Codes (SRC) as a sort or filter. Don't know why, neither does support. Scott, feel free to kick that one to the dev team for the stuff that probably ought to be there list.
You can use the Service Request Analysis report with the "Detail" type and you can get a list of the SRC and the dispatches that it appears on , in a date range, etc. However, that report is broken in that it's not interactive, so you can't click on the dispatch number to bring up the dispatch.
So, glimmers, but no real solution.
Do you use the Priority field in the customer record or dispatches for anything? If not, that is another option, and more readily filtered for that the SRCs.
Yea I think I sent that one in as a future request a while back. The report may be a good start I'll take a look at it, I knew it would give the count but didn't know it gave the dispatches in the details. Might add a step to type them in for info but not a bad one.
Yea we use priority to note where the call is in the process(parts ordered, in stock on the truck, etc) we put the follow-up dispatches on the tech's themselves so this lets both the techs and us know the status of their parts. We have one for a possible callback but that's more a trigger for dispatch to follow up.
I'm going to look at the report vs type. We always have a headache with type because they get confused with two billing statuses on their dispatch. That's a holdover from when I first set the system up, though.
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