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With failed appointments costing as much as $75, here are ways you can increase your first-time access rates through proactive communications.
Living in an on-demand economy has consequential effects on standard service appointments. Four hour service windows and little visibility for the end-customer means that when they step out to grab a quick bite to eat, you lose money on a failed appointment.
With failed appointments costing as much as $75, here are ways you can increase your first-time access rates through:
-proactive customer job confirmations
-real-time technician tracking en route to a job
-two-way communications between technicians and end-customers
Let’s walk through them.
Proactive customer job confirmations
Between personal and professional tasks, remembering an appointment for a repair or even to check a meter can slip most customer’s memories.
Differentiate your service offering from competitors with proactive communication workflows leading up to the day of service. Send end-customers an SMS notification a day or days prior to an appointment to give them control of their schedule.
Using a browser-based and easily configurable Customer Portal, appointment details are easily viewed with the option to reschedule for a different day. By rescheduling in advance, your business is better equipped to shuffle labor around to existing jobs and you avoid potential missed appointments.
Real-time technician tracking
You can see when a pizza is on its way, when your Uber driver is on their way, but most customers have no idea when a mobile engineer will arrive. Let alone who that engineer may be.
Give your customers confidence with real-time technician tracking on the day of service. Once your engineer switches to the next job, communication is automated to keep your customer in the loop.
Once a customer receives an SMS notification that their technician is on the way, the end-customer can see in real-time the engineer approaching with accurate ETAs that breathe with local traffic.
Driver details such as a photo and license plate number ease anxiety of who will be showing up at the door and adds extra security that the person expected is who is arriving.
This level of transparency ensures that customers are informed, aware and accessible on the day of service. For most Localz customers, this means that their customers are waiting at the gate for their technician resulting in double-digit first access rate increases.
“Our drivers are ecstatic. For the first time in our drivers’ working lives, the customers are waiting at the site gate.”
Two-way communications
A customer leaves to walk the dog around the block while your engineer arrives during a four hour service window. No problem with two-way communications. Not only are notifications automatically sent to your customer to keep them informed of your technician’s ETA and status, but customers have the ability to communicate directly with their engineer.
In fact, 86% of people want to talk directly to an engineer.
For Localz end-customers, this couldn’t be more true. We looked at examples of messages our end-customers have sent to their assigned engineer on the day of service over here. See how many of these important updates can save your technicians unnecessary trips and your business operational dollars.
Bundle it together
Be proactive with your communication strategy, give your customers the real-time tracking transparency they’ve become accustomed to with other services plus the open line of communication to your mobile workforce.
These three things will reduce help ensure your first-time access rates increase while you see operational costs begin to go down. Check out what our customers have done to increase their service success.