What is field service management (FSM)?

Field service describes situations in which authorized technicians perform essential tasks at specific locations. Often, these technicians visit customer-owned properties to install, repair, maintain, or remove systems or equipment.

Your field service personnel must be able to provide skilled, specialized, and often-proprietary services to a range of clients.

While field service is an umbrella term that includes any and all work performed by trained agents at various locations, most field service responsibilities fall into one of the following categories.

• Installation
  Vital field equipment often demands expert installation from trained technicians, capable of making sure that the equipment is set up correctly, and functioning properly. Installation may also include onboarding, answering questions, and training customers on how to properly interact with the equipment.
• Maintenance
  To ensure the longest-possible operational life of all offsite equipment, technicians often perform maintenance tasks while in the field. Maintenance responsibilities consist of corrective maintenance (repairing equipment), preventive maintenance (routine inspections and recalibrations), and proactive maintenance (comparing current functionality to established baselines to identify and resolve potential problems). Maintenance tasks are scheduled proactively.
• Repair
  In the event that equipment experiences unexpected failure, field-service personnel may be dispatched to perform emergency repair work. Also called break fix, repairs occur when a customer has an issue and contacts customer service, or books an appointment.
• Removal
  Equipment that is no longer functioning properly, is being replaced by an upgraded model, or that the customer no longer wants or needs must be removed. Field technicians are responsible for safely disassembling said equipment, and transporting it away from the customer’s property.
• Scheduled work
  Not all field service is equipment-centric. Some work simply involves sending a person with the right skills to a location to complete a task. For example, home healthcare visits require sending a practitioner with the right skills and equipment to visit a patient at a specific location and time.
  

At any given time, there are millions of field service technicians performing tasks. In fact, many businesses employ hundreds of field technicians to handle growing demand. However, there are certain challenges that may stand in the way of organizations being able to offer satisfying and effective field services. These may include the following:

• Poor first-time fix rate
  Technicians failing to address issues in a single visit, or having to return multiple times to address the same problem.
• Customer dissatisfaction
  Customers having negative experiences, either with the field agent, the field service process, or any other related interaction.
• Workforce changes
  Experienced technicians retiring and organizations being unable to replace them with equally talented recruits. This also includes concerns related to employee retention and the increased use of outside contractors.
• Asset visibility
  When assets are owned by the customer, field service organizations struggle to have enough information to provide effective maintenance, which can lead to unplanned downtime.
• Dispatching field technicians
  Effectively managing, directing, supporting, tracking, and evaluating field service agents.
  

Employees who don’t have a desk or workstation must be able to accomplish their tasks without any unnecessary hoops. Field service software should be accessible and compatible with tools used in the field, including personal mobile devices.

Your FSM solution should be able to integrate with your organization’s other systems. Ensure that you can easily collaborate with other departments, including customer service, operations, IT, and finance.

Modern FSM solutions allow mobile workers to share data back and forth, in real-time, with an office that has the equipment to receive the information instantly.