Improve Technician Efficiency and Productivity with Service Parts Management
When a part breaks or wears down, providing a quick and efficient replacement is crucial for keeping customers’ operations running smoothly. Offering reliable repairs improves the buying experience, leading to repeat part sales and happy long-term customer relationships. It’s a win-win for everyone—but it’s almost impossible to achieve without an effective service parts management process.
On the surface, service parts management seems like a relatively straightforward process; a part breaks, and a technician is deployed to fix or repair it. But in order for that process to run efficiently, technicians need to be able to solve the problem on their first attempt, meaning technicians need to have access to the appropriate parts, knowledge, and other resources they need to get the job done right.
Manually managing service parts is unrealistic. With so many different part variations, unique repair processes, and inventory to keep an eye on, service parts management cannot be done efficiently without the help of an integrated platform.
How to enhance customer uptime with an integrated service parts management platform
When service parts aren’t managed properly, a frustrating chain of events can start for both the customer and the technician. Parts may not be readily available (and may take weeks to be delivered), the technician may not be experienced in the repair they’re deployed to complete, or the technician may get to the repair site only to realize additional work needs to be done that they don’t have the appropriate tools for—just to name a few.
In any of these situations, the technician must leave the job site without completing the work and come back another day. The customer is frustrated, the technician’s time was wasted, and the lack of productivity ends up impacting the company’s bottom line.
To improve productivity and ensure a positive customer experience, technicians need to be able to gather insights about the repair before they’re sent to the job site. This is where an integrated service parts management platform can make the job exponentially easier.
A platform provides your team and technicians with an opportunity to store and share all parts and product data in one up-to-date location. They can access parts catalogs, videos, descriptions, and even 3D renderings of part repairs on the go; automate the parts ordering process to prevent stock from getting low; and manage intricate bills of materials (BOM) that reflect the growing complexity of parts and products. Technicians can even use analytics to identify patterns in previous fixes that required repairs beyond the initial scope, allowing them to stock their truck with tools and parts they might need before heading to the job site.
An integrated service parts management platform prevents technicians from showing up unprepared for the job they’re tasked to do by ensuring they have crucial insights and information they need to be productive.