Roll out 24/7 customer service faster with Simply C2

Posted on November 16, 2023June 12, 2024

Providing 24/7 customer service across a large geography is challenging from even an operational point of view. It gets tougher when your customers speak many different languages.

The first contact our customers normally have with our customer support is with the call centre.

However, a call centre has significant disadvantages. Especially in a country like ours or a geography like Europe which speaks many languages. So running a call centre is expensive, across time zones and languages.

We understand; we are in India with more than 25 recognized languages. This is probably more varied than Europe! So, if your customers require 24/7 customer service, then you need to also plan for manpower that can handle all those languages your customers speak.

We introduced Simply C2 to ensure that you can roll out 24/7 customer service without worrying about accessibility. It is an app that helps your customers log complaints any time of the day or night in their language of choice.

Simply C2 is available in 18 languages and in 55 countries around the world.

Using a mobile app like Simply 2 to provide access to 24/7 customer service can significantly streamline the process and improve efficiency. Here are some key advantages and considerations when implementing Simply C2 app for logging repair service requests:

Advantages of app-based 24/7 customer service:

Accessibility: Simply C2 provides users with the flexibility to log service requests from anywhere, anytime. This is especially valuable for customers who may need urgent repairs or encounter issues outside of regular business hours.
Real-time Communication: Simply C2 enables real-time communication between customers and service providers. Users can receive updates on the status of their repair requests and communicate with service personnel directly through the app.
Photo and Video Uploads: Simply C2 can allow users to attach photos or videos of the issues they’re experiencing. This visual information can help service providers better understand the problem, potentially leading to faster and more accurate resolutions.
GPS Location Tracking: Integration with GPS features can automatically provide the service provider with the customer’s location. This is particularly useful for field service technicians who need to reach the site for repairs.
Push Notifications: Users can receive instant notifications about the status of their service request, appointment confirmations, or any updates from the service provider. This enhances communication and keeps customers informed.
Integration with Calendar and Scheduling: Mobile apps can integrate with users’ calendars, allowing them to schedule repair appointments at convenient times. Service providers can also use scheduling features to optimize their workflow.
Digital approvals: Customers can digitally sign off on repairs quotations or services through the Simply C2 app, providing a paperless and efficient way to close out service requests.

Our design considerations:

User-Friendly Interface: Ensure that the app has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Customers and service technicians should be able to navigate the app easily to log or manage service requests.
Security and Privacy: Given the sensitive nature of repair requests, prioritize security features to protect customer data. Implement secure login procedures and encryption to safeguard user information. We ensured that we strictly adhere to the letter and spirit of the DPDP Act and GDPR.
Integration with Saleswah CRM in the backend: The app should seamlessly integrate with the Saleswah CRM at the backend- ensuring that any customer service request is seamlessly logged into the Saleswah CRM account of your- the service provider.

Watch the video to see how Simply C2 mobile app for logging repair service requests can enhance customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and improve overall efficiency in the repair service process.

Set up 24/7 customer service channel for your business – in 18 languages.

4 uses of location tracking application in field service

Posted on February 22, 2022April 29, 2024

Today we see many uses for GPS tracking mobile app around us. Location tracking applications are widely used in field service. GPS-enabled field service management software allows you to effectively track and direct your technicians. Saleswah Service CRM is a GPS tracking mobile app that helps streamline operations and improve efficiency.

What is a location tracking application?

In field service, it is important to keep track of your service personnel who are out in the field attending to customers. This is done using a mobile app that depends on GPS coordinates and Google Maps.
A location tracking application is a functionality built into field sales or field service apps- to let the user and others in the organization know his whereabouts.

4 uses of phone location tracking app

Tracking movement of field people in field service
Helping navigation for field service poeple
Allocating work to nearby resource in field service
Accurately locating the customer location and area.

While there are other uses- most notably in the area of vehicle tracking and asset management, let’s limit our scope here to field technician tracking using a GPS tracking mobile app.

How does a GPS tracking mobile app work?

A location tracking app is on your mobile phone using GPS navigation and Google maps to help you find your way, know where you are, and let others know your location.

What is GPS?

GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) systems are basically using a global system of satellites in space to uniquely determine your position on earth accurately to a few meters. They constantly send signals so that we know where they are. All modern smartphones have hardware that listens to these signals coming in. After calculating the distance between four or more GPS satellites, the receiver can figure out where you are.

Latitudes and longitudes

We all know that in order to locate any place on earth, we use a system of horizontal (latitudes) and vertical lines that criss-cross the globe. The intersection of any of these vertical and horizontal lines gives the unique position of the place on earth. So, every person, every postal address, every object on earth can be given an address: which is defined by the number pair called latitude-longitude (or lat-long for short). When you move from one place to another, your lat-long constantly change.

Saleswah CRM for field service: the phone location tracking app

Field service management software systems integrated with GPS technology allow employees to track the location of technicians and also help the technicians in navigation while on the job. By tracking the location of technicians, GPS tracking mobile app helps field service companies optimize the use of technician time and improve the customer experience.

Tangible benefits of phone location tracking app

In addition to providing technicians with customer data and monitoring available equipment, on-site management software can help technicians move and work throughout the day. Field service software increases technician time with customers, reduces the number of technicians traveling between site and office, and speeds up delivery and billing times.

Location tracking application in the hands of the technician

Any technician who shows up at a customer’s site will be carrying the GPS-enabled Saleswah CRM field service management app. Field technicians can access scheduled jobs from any mobile device, and GPS tracking mobile app provides accurate, real-time location data. With a phone location tracker app, field management software can both suggest nearby technicians and estimate the arrival time of a new technician, alerting the customer to any service delays.

Allocate job to nearby technician using the location tracking application

Location tracking applications can easily help locate the technician who is closest to the site of defective equipment. So, the task can be assigned to re-assigned to him.

This improves customer satisfaction by reducing the time it takes to complete a work order and prevents costly service delays. This achieves exceptional on-site service through workforce management, request tracking, and full visibility into the service delivery cycle.

Helping technician navigation

With the help of the GPS tracking mobile app, the technicians can navigate to the site faster and resolve issues quicker leading to better customer satisfaction.

All sites located and stored in Saleswah database using lat-long

Saleswah CRM gives the option to tag each installation site with its GPS coordinates. This helps locate them faster and reduces dependence on postal addresses, especially for remote sites.

Streamlining clerical processes both in the field and in the home office enables technicians to deliver fast and helpful services with minimal delays and greater customer satisfaction. This not only eliminates friction from the technician’s day, but also reduces costly truck trips, improves service efficiency, and increases first access, delivering double-digit improvements in customer satisfaction and profitability.

This allows companies to manage all data, scheduling, monitoring, updating, and scheduling in one place. Saleswah CRM tracks field inventory at selected locations and has modules for work order management, scheduling, tool tracking, and maintenance. Geolocation helps you quickly identify, plan, and track locations, and services.

Using location tracking application creatively: in customer self service

Your customers can use Grahak Setu to profile themselves. Their task is made easier by letting them use GPS and Google to fill in their postal address. This reduces errors in site location.

Please also see this post where a client creatively used GPS data to plan service centre locations.

A few other uses

Cloud-based field service software enables technicians and employees to intelligently plan and track moving parts, from end-to-end service teams to equipment and spare parts or “backbone inventory.” The software automates processes, reduces multitasking, and gives technicians access to the vital information they need about service dates, service history, and ownership records.

With the field service app, team leaders can ensure that technicians are the right fit for the job that matches their skills, that the team is making the most of their time moving between jobs, and that each team member follows safety and corporate protocols.

When you connect customers with their field service technicians on the day of service and provide the ability to view and track technician locations on a map, you can get a return on investment from a streamlined communication workflow. Improve customer service while tracking all issues that occur in the field. Labor costs are reduced as fewer field personnel are required to perform the same amount of work. Performance improvements may result in fewer help desk calls. GPS-enabled field service management software makes it easy to define job entry and exit times, both mitigating the problem of technicians forgetting to record hours worked and preventing fraudulent time-stamped schedules from being passed to the system.

Saleswah CRM innovations in using GPS tracking mobile app

We can track employees in the field, automatically timestamp, and track company properties. Using this mobile app, your team members can view their schedules, communicate with other team members and dispatchers, and send messages.

No location spoofing allowed

We have ensured the location reported by the app is the actual location the phone is rather than being corrupted by some other location spoofing app.

How to use location tracking map to make clear decisions

Posted on January 30, 2022April 29, 2024

And, why Sales and Service CRM on the same platform make so much sense

This is a real story. On how a service location tracking map helped a customer do better resource planning.

Our customer runs an all-India sales and service network for machine components. And we help them run that using Saleswah CRM.

Till 2 years back, he had many service centers, all over India. Then they dwindled in numbers- as business took a hit. It’s roaring back, thankfully and they are adding them back. With one difference.

Earlier it was gut-feel. Now he can use data. Here’s what we did.

A brief background: how our location tracking mobile app works

Field service operations let their technicians use a location tracking mobile app. That is not new. Saleswah CRM mobile app has been using location tracking for the better part of the past decade. The Saleswah CRM location tracking mobile app has been used to help technicians navigate, comply with client requirements of proof of physical presence, and so on.

A year back, we introduced what was quite unique.

Grahak Setu: location tracking mobile app that lets your customer have control

We introduced Grahak Setu (Grahak- customer; Setu- bridge)- which was an app for the customers to log and track their repair requests (and do many other things, besides – read more, here). Grahak Setu works with a Saleswah CRM engine at the back.

This means that the user of Grahak Setu is a customer who needs service. And the users of Saleswah are companies and their employees who are providing post-sales service. The user of Grahak Setu does not know, about Saleswah.

Path-breaking innovations:

How to use location tracking map to make clear decisions 1

A simplied but secure mobile based registration and logging experience for the customers.
We allowed the customer to take control of his data- he could register, login, create his profile, add his equipment under his care to the “installed base”.
While creating his profile, using the location tracking mobile app- we made it easier for him to create his profile by querying Google Maps using his GPS co-ordinates. And, when he shared his profile with the service provider (the relevant one using a Saleswah CRM account), he shared his location- GPS co-ordinates and postal address with the company as well.
This made it easy for the service provider company to
- send technicians to his site to attend to complaints
- ship equipment back to him after repairs- if the repair was done at the service centre.

Over the last many months, a tremendous amount of data has come into the system, rich customer data: his installed base of equipment, warranty vs out of warranty status of his installed base. And, we have now extremely authentic service location tracking map data.

Location tracking map

The customer ran a report with the “live cases”- the open tickets and the sites.

Downloaded the .csv file which had columns like Customer Account Name, Site name, GPS location, postal address, Ticket nos, aging, and so on. Pushed the data to Google Sheets and then onto Google Maps. This is what he found.

It is clear where the installed base clusters are. So, he has important pointers about where to locate his service centers. And, since in his business installed sites are a good proxy for sales as well, he can decide on where to re-double his sales efforts.

The above is just an example of the decision-making that is going on the basis of location data. Great data, simple querying but very rich analysis, and tremendous actionable insights.

location tracking map — Clusters of sites of open service tickets

Sales and service on the same platform

This is another instance where having the Sales and Service CRM being part of the same tool is useful.

Revealed: easy way to perform algorithmic scheduling preventive maintenance

Posted on January 1, 2022April 29, 2024

Scheduling preventive maintenance of equipment in regular intervals is required to ensure the trouble-free operation of equipment. This is especially applicable to mechanical equipment- even more so to those with an engine inside.

Moving parts means wear and tear. So, periodically one may need to replace worn-out parts, replace consumables, and so on. We all take our car to the garage for servicing at least once a year- and are familiar with the replacement of lube oil, air filters, fuel filter, and so on.

Of course, there is some equipment which needs maintenance even without there being a moving part in them. A lead-acid battery needs frequent topping up, sometimes once every 3 months.

There are 2 types of scheduling preventive maintenance of equipment- largely governed by the type of equipment.

Fixed interval scheduling preventive maintenance

this happens when the equipment is required to be maintained at a fixed interval of, say, a year or 3 months or some such interval. This typically is for equipment without moving parts or where an assumption regarding wear and tear is made over a timeframe.

Variable interval scheduling preventive maintenance

This happens when the scheduling needs to happen at a variable interval. Here the scheduling accounts for the wear and tear that may happen. Basically, the principle is- if the machine is running daily for a long time, then the maintenance needs to happen sooner than if the machine was hardly being used. Think of the automobile again. Typically, we get our cars serviced once a year. But a rental car – which runs a thousand kilometers per week- will be due for service in a couple of months.

Why do we need to depend on computers?

Let’s say you are managing service operations for equipment spread over a large geography and they are not easily accessible or their readings can not be noted regularly. In that case, there is no option but to rely on past data to make predictions about the future. Let us say, a machine requires preventive maintenance after 1000 hours of running, and let’s say it has run 500 hours to date since the last service, we must look at the data and check how many hours it is running on an average every day and extrapolate it from there to schedule the next service due to date.

How do we decide the variable interval in scheduling preventive maintenance?

Luckily we don’t. Computers do. But we do write the algorithm. In algorithmic scheduling preventive maintenance, the past is the determinant of the future.

Algorithmic scheduling of maintenance is an area of research. Some of the algorithmic scheduling is quite complex. Here’s a research paper that deals with modeling this activity at some length.

We have used a simple algorithm based on moving averages for scheduling preventive maintenance for equipment that are installed in remote locations.

How does algorithmic scheduling preventive maintenance really work?

Step 1: we need to note the run hours the machine has logged since the last visit. This we do on every visit. And this gives us the average run hours. And we calculate this over the last three or five visits.

Step 2: Then we extrapolate. Let us say a machine is due for maintenance after running for 800 hours. Now let us say that we have found that a machine is running on an average for 10 hours a day (as calculated). We say that if the machine has been running on an average for 10 hours a day, and it was due for maintenance in 800 hours, then it is going to be due for maintenance in 80 days from the last maintenance. Makes sense, does it not?

Why this works

The beauty of this is, because we are working with moving averages, we are able to achieve very good results with scheduling preventive maintenance. This technique is used especially when we have equipment under maintenance which are in far flung areas and we are not able to access the actual run hours data on a daily basis.

For an example of where we have used this, read the DG set case study.

Easily create maintenance equipment checklist for your field team

Posted on December 30, 2021January 3, 2022

Checklist for preventive maintenance on the fly

Every field service technician is familiar with maintenance equipment checklists. Let’s see why.

Every equipment under your care has a different maintenance plan. Not just schedule. Let’s take a battery, for instance.

An industrial battery requires preventative maintenance at periodic intervals. If in heavy use, then as frequently as every month. Preventive maintenance (PM) is done to ensure one does not need to come back for ad hoc maintenance/ repair for damaged batteries- basically the same principle behind PM that is followed for all equipment.

Now, every equipment that needs maintenance requires a checklist for preventive maintenance for the technicians to follow. Be it an automobile or a fuel pump or a battery. This is common sense as well as common practice. These maintenance equipment checklists can run to 5/ 6 items for simpler items like a battery vs hundred or more for an automobile.

As an example, take a look at the maintenance equipment checklist published by Alpine Power Systems.

Representational: maintenance equipment checklist for battery

Till recently the technicians went around with printed maintenance equipment checklists and noted their finding there.

The problem with maintenance equipment checklist so far

Committing your checklist for preventive maintenance to a paper based strategy has obviously 2 problems.

Paper is tough to track, and audit. End of the day, someone needs to (or should) sit down with the sheaf of papers documenting all the PM activities that have happened that day and check if the right procedure was followed. Were the right observations made, corrective actions taken and customer feedback monitored?

In comes software. Mobile and web based. For capturing records for every maintenance activity performed. And being able to draw appropriate lessons from the past activities. So, obviously, maintenance equipment checklist should be the first to be computerized.

2. And, keeping history, maintaining records and learning from experience is near impossible unless you have a process for transcribing (error free) all the filled up maintenance equipment checklists. Regularly. And, have a software for analysing the historical records for trends to be wary about.

Challenge with computerizing maintenance equipment checklist

Then comes the challenge: do you have to have different software for maintaining, say a laptop than for maintaining a washing machine? Or for a diesel generator set? Because the preventive maintenance checklist to be used for capturing the details regarding each type of equipment is very different, as you can understand.

Or, should you custom develop- with the help of your software vendor, a checklist for preventive maintenance for the equipment that you maintain? And, look for him again when the firm needs even a minor tweak?

Not easy huh?

That’s where Saleswah CRM comes in.

Checklist for preventive maintenance: Mobile app driven totally customizable

We provide you the ability to custom design, not one, but scores of product category maintenance equipment checklist – one for each type of products you have under maintenance. Not just that; you can create custom forms for visits – as well. These checklist for preventive maintenance are available instantly to all users once designed by the admin.

But, hold on. When you have scores of forms with you on your mobile app, that’s just the same as carrying around multiple paper forms for different product types, right? Ah, no. Saleswah CRM is smarter than that. When you are attending to a an equipment under maintenance, the software will show ONLY the relevant form to you. Without your intervention. In fact, you can’t pull up a wrong form even if you tried.

All this works- without a single line of code, any need for “implementation consultants” getting involved and any spend on time and money.

If you would like to have a demo of how to create maintenance equipment checklists – contact us for a demo.

Not just sales! Saleswah for field service management

Posted on October 9, 2020January 1, 2022

Saleswah CRM announces the most comprehensive field service management product

Why does a comprehensive service management product need to ride on a sales management platform? To illustrate, let me tell you a story.

Two insurance companies (A and B) went to war over customer mindshare. To beat the rather staid promise of A to take care of your lifelong needs, the company B came up with the lot more colourful “cradle to grave” promise.

That worked well, so well, that the company A’s ad agency was driven to desperation to come up with a suitable reply. At long last, they did! Their new slogan, was: “From inception to resurrection”!!!

Okay, so I made it up- or relayed an old joke. But, there are many reasons, why “inception to resurrection” might just be the better description of what the actual customer lifecycle is.

When the product is just a need, nebulous in the customer’s mind, it is at the inception stage. We work with the customer to give it shape, focus him on the solution we are offering and then sale happens! In an enterprise, you get a PO which you send to your order processing who make the shipment.

So far, as you can tell, this is the phase Saleswah helped you manage.

Pre-sales management in Saleswah

In enterprise sales, won business- does not necessarily lead to another one immediately. So, you may have installed bases which appear active but there may be others which are not.

They might wake up months or even years later, or they might not.

Worse, your sales and aftersales may not talk. So, service may not know all the commitments that sales made to get the business. On the other hand, sales may allow competition to come in during the long hibernation period.

Sales operations and service management on the same platform

For true CRM, the whole organization needs to be involved in managing the customer expectations and relationship. CRM is not just a sales management tool, it is a tool for managing customer relationship as related to the product and service that you are selling.

Sales helps get you in; but service keep you there.

Comprehensive service management: from where sales ends

We did toy with the thought of having a standalone service management product. To be honest, you can use the Saleswah CRM only for Sales or even only as a service CRM. But, the real power of the software comes through in managing your entire sales to support continuum.

Because, you see, many customer relations could do with a rebirth. And, rather than cradle to grave- which implies a closure, resurrection is what you aim for. Having your sales and service in the same platform helps you do that.

Sign-up for a free trial and turbo-charge your customer satisfaction.

Why is spare parts management for maintenance important

Posted on April 30, 2020January 9, 2022

We went live with one of the most comprehensive implementations of spare parts management in a service CRM recently.

In this post, I will explain the standard workflows that exist in the system. This will help you understand not only how versatile the system is but also, what it does not currently do. Please leave your comments below if you see any opportunities for us to improve. As you know, you can always register for a free trial and check out – not just the spares management module but the entire sales and service CRM.

Guidelines for releasing spare parts, movement and use:

Part number and serial number

Spare parts management for maintenance is really important in any service organization. All equipment may require spare parts during maintenance. All spare items have a part no. They would also have a description. The same part might be used to repair different equipment. Thus, you can optionally map the same part to one or many pieces of equipment. Needless to say, a single piece of equipment may require multiple spare parts.

Parts may or may not have a serial no. Normally you would have serial numbers for high value components or modules used as spares. But, Saleswah handles both the scenarios equally well. Where parts have serial numbers and where parts do not have serial numbers. It is admin configurable so you can define a category of parts as needing serial numbers and Saleswah would handle it.

Who does this tagging help? Obviously, it makes the job of the frontline technician a lot easier.

Who plays an important role in spare parts management ?

An important role is played in spare parts management for maintenance by all front line executives and managers. They can indent for spares and use them to solve service tickets. Other than them, there are 2 roles in the system who can “load the system” with spare stock.
1. Admin
2. Spares warehouse in-charge
Admin/ Warehouse IC also needs to create the spare models and link them to one or more equipment models.

Any “line executive or manager” in a service role (technician, service exec, or service manager) can indent for spares. Any supervisor can approve parts and ship them. Approvals and shipments can be partial or full. All shipments are made directly to the indenter.

Activities related to spares

There are 2 kinds of indents: those specifically for closing a ticket and those for stocking. Any line executive or manager in the service role can indent for spares and any of his direct managers can approve.

The ticket related indents are treated as urgent by the system and are auto-escalated all the way up if needed to the person who has stock.

spare parts management

The non-ticket related indents- those which are created to stock up locally on frequently used spares- go through the entire approval hierarchy. The idea is that:

every ticket requires at least one level of approval; so at least your immediate manager must approve.
if your manager does not approve- it can be that he does not have stock- he can “escalate” the indent to his manager.
Whoever approved an indent- for part or full items, must ship.
All indents are visible to everyone up the hierarchy; so, a higher manager has the choice to cut through the layers and directly approve an indent.

Ship and receive: anyone who approves, must ship. It of course may be that while approving the indent you do not have parts; so, you can ship only when you get the parts. You of course need to indent for parts to get them.

If you do not have parts to ship in response to an indent, you can escalate the indent to your manager.
You can ship partially or in full.

The cycle is completed when the indenter receives the parts.

Spare stock inventory and usage: When the parts are received by the indenter, he adds them to his inventory- which is his personal stock of spares. Spares are used in repair and maintenance – always related to a ticket.

So, irrespective of how you received the parts in your stock, you can only use them to solve a ticket.

You have full visibility of the entire spares inventory with you and in your direct reporting chain of service users. You also have visibility into the usages and interesting reports can be generated regarding spares usages for tickets, regions, history of spares used by equipment and by user. This helps you maintain control over spares used and draw conclusions over the maintainability of equipment.

The complete CRM vision behind service CRM development

Posted on September 2, 2019January 1, 2022

When we built the service CRM– we had some very straightforward goals. Some have been achieved, some will be achieved down the road.

Let me do a quick roadmap sharing and also list the design objectives.

Continue reading “The complete CRM vision behind service CRM development”

Field service case study of heavy engineering equipment

Posted on February 13, 2018January 1, 2022

service crm Saleswah CRM is being used for field maintenance of about 35000 Diesel Generator Sets by a customer. Many of these DG sets are located in remote parts of India. They are installed in Telecom Towers for providing backup power.

A service team of about 30 managers oversee 90 service dealers who employ about 700 service technicians. The service technicians attend to field visits- for repair and preventive maintenance. They are kept supplied with spares. The service is provided under stringent SLA conditions.

See this for more details of the implementation.

The field technicians use the Saleswah CRM mobile app- for service to update the status of the ticket from the field. The service dealers and the managers use the mobile app to stay updated on the open tickets status. They also use the web based application for more involved tasks such as approvals, audits, billing, certification and so on.

After couple of years of use, the customer shared their feedback on what their strategic and operational objectives were and how close they have come to meeting them. We put their feedback in the slide deck that follows.

Have a look at the field service case study.

[slideshare id=87521886&doc=servicecrmprsentationcasestudy-180208134101]