Field service technicians want to spend less time on menial administrative tasks and instead focus on delivering meaningful work that fulfills customer needs. Customers want their requests addressed quickly and without errors. Organizations want to deliver exceptional and trusted field service that grows the business, increasing revenue while keeping costs down.
The latest Field Service Management (FSM) enhancements in the Yokohama Family and Store releases will position organizations to empower their teams so they can focus on high value work, responding to service requests faster and addressing customer needs comprehensively.
Here are the top innovations we will discuss:
- Smart Assessment for Field Service Questionnaire
- Capacity console
- Dispatcher enhanced territory filter
- Advanced task dependencies
- Appointment booking slot recommendations
Smart Assessment for Field Service Questionnaire
Field service technicians need to capture input from customers on the job site that will enable them to assess and complete work quickly. But collecting information via mobile forms with clunky layouts and numerous click-throughs makes for a time-intensive undertaking that increases the risk of data loss. In the Yokohama Store release, Smart Assessment for Field Service Questionnaire introduces capabilities to simplify and improve the recording of customer information.
Smart Assessment for Field Service Questionnaire provides visualized instructional guidance along with question-specific conditional dependencies that structure the collection of relevant information. This feature also delivers the ability to group inputs, add comments, and upload attachments to surveys. Technicians who are required to complete various forms, such as pre-visit assessments, inspection reports, and job completion verifications will benefit from an enhanced user experience and improved data quality, leading to better customer service and timely follow-up.
Capacity console
Manually allocating jobs and adjusting schedules for field technicians can be tedious, time-consuming, and error prone. In the Yokohama Family release, the capacity console, a new intra-day scheduling tool, empowers planners and dispatchers to more effectively forecast and manage resourcing demands. By providing a clear visualization of allocated versus used capacity, this feature supports the assignment of work to available field technicians based on configurable booking thresholds.
The capacity console improves demand forecasting accuracy, enabling dispatchers to proactively identify scenarios within selected date ranges and across territories where technicians are either under- or overbooked. They can then act from a calendar view to assign technicians to or remove them from jobs based on capacity and skillset, minimizing service delays in a dynamic business environment.
Dispatcher enhanced territory filter
Managing operations across large territories remains complex and dispatchers need a comprehensive view into the areas they service to make informed resourcing decisions. It’s difficult to forecast demand and respond to staffing shifts when visibility is limited.
The dispatcher enhanced territory filter, an innovation in the Yokohama Store release, improves the navigation and selection of resources over extensive territorial divisions. The feature enables dispatchers to view field technicians through up to seven regional hierarchy layers, making it easier to understand workforce allocation. For large-scale organizations providing field service across multiple geographies, the dispatcher enhanced territory filter is especially critical to improving response times and restoring service during emergencies.
Advanced task dependencies
Field service technicians may face challenges when prioritizing tasks depending on the size and scope of a job, which can cause service delays, mistakes, and costly rework. Advanced task dependencies, a new feature in the Yokohama Family release, visualizes tasks and their relationships, enabling technicians to structure and complete work sequentially while meeting prerequisites.
With advanced task dependencies, administrators can configure various dependency types, including finish to start, start to start, and start after while setting buffers between tasks. Defining and visualizing task relationships allows dispatchers to better support technicians when completing both routine or complex work and identify bottlenecks in the process.
Appointment booking slot recommendations
Appointment booking slot recommendations simplifies the appointment scheduling process by allowing customers and agents to select from recommended time slots. This feature, new in the Yokohama Family release, uses customizable and configurable rules to dynamically suggest times based on technician availability and locational proximity.
Field service organizations may find it difficult to schedule and service emergent customer requests in areas where a technician is dispatched nearby. This leads to unnecessary truck rolls, increased driving time, and heightened fuel costs for organizations already under pressure to do more with less. By recommending appointment slots that minimize travel between jobs, appointment booking slot recommendations improves response times for urgent service needs and contributes to more sustainable field service operations.
These are just the highlights of the many Yokohama Family and Store release features for FSM. From simplifying customer data collection for technicians to optimizing scheduling for dispatchers, these innovations will enhance productivity for field service teams by allowing them to focus on what matters most: delivering great customer experiences that fuel long-term organizational growth.
