What is a technician hired to do? It used to be, they were paid to fix things, install things, or diagnose issues. In today’s world of “Big Data”, half the job of a technician is now about entering data, filling in fields, signing paperwork, recording items, materials, hours, etc… How many hours a day do you think your service technicians spend entering data?
It should be pretty obvious, but if your technicians are entering data, they aren’t fixing things, they aren’t traveling to the next client, and they sure as hell aren’t doing what they do best. So what’s with all the data? can they just skip it? haven’t someone else enter in all the info? The answer is no… Only the technician knows what they did. Any every minute after they did it, makes the data less accurate. Let’s say you have the option of having your employees enter in their hours daily, or weekly. If go opt for the weekly option, you know expect a technician to remember what jobs they worked on and for how long. And they need to remember it for up to 5 days. Do you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday? what about 5 days ago? Do you really think anyone remembers things perfectly accurately after 2, 3, or 5 days? If you really to know how much time is spent on each job, you need to enter it in daily… or better yet, as soon as work is done on that job for the day.
So what can you do about it? You need to be entering in data, and in fact the organization is asking for more details every week. They want accounting indicators, they want what tasks you performed… if they weren’t originally scheduled, you need to add them. They want codes, and tasks, and who knows what else. You already burn 15 minutes a day, maybe more, just entering data. This is each technician. Four technicians means you lost an hour of repair time a day. Most shops I’ve ever visited can’t afford to lose an hour a day (most likely, it’s a lot more than that).
How many hours are willing to lose a day entering data?
Thanks for reading,
Mike