GPS and Field Technicians: Improve Remote Employee Management with 3 Tracking Technologies

If your field technicians spend most working hours at customer homes and businesses, it’s difficult for you to know how they’re performing. That’s why you need tools that put you in their passenger seat as they arrive at scheduled appointments, perform jobs, and clock off.

The best GPS technology doesn’t just help you monitor your out-of-office team. These tools collect data that reveals how to improve employee efficiency. They can even help you back up good employees stuck in bad situations.

Let’s start with one of the most powerful GPS solutions on the market – Trip History Reporting.

Stand Up for Your Technicians with Trip History Reporting

Trip History Reporting is a tool that records the past GPS locations of vehicles and remote assets. Using it, you can review where vehicles went, how long they were at each location, and when they left. Field technician managers will find three primary uses for this tool:

1. 100% Accurate Payroll

When you review trip history, you see exactly how your field technicians spent their workdays.

For example, let’s say your accounting department forgot to add overtime for a job done last week. In order to prove your employee really did earn that overtime, all you have to do is look up the job’s date. Then, Trip History Reporting will show you a video mapping exactly when your technician arrived at and left from the job site.

2. Visit Verification

Let’s be blunt – every manager knows the saying “the customer is always right” isn’t always right.

Every field technician has had this experience: They arrive at a customer’s address on time. They knock on the door. They ring the doorbell. They call the contact phone number. No one answers, so they leave. Then, half an hour later, their manager gets an angry call, “Your technician never showed!”

With Trip History Reporting, you can prove that your employees were there. Whether you need to shame a customer who left a dishonest Yelp review or show your boss that your team is working hard, this tool will back you up.

3. 100% Accurate Billing

Of course, sometimes the customer is right – even when you’d rather they were wrong. If you have an employee who said they were at a job site for two hours when they were actually only there for one, you absolutely need to know.

In the era of next-day delivery and 24-hour live chat support, consumers have come to expect top-shelf service. If your company overcharges a client, expect to lose their business for life. When your technicians and your customers disagree about how much time a job took, Trip History Reporting will reveal the truth.

Reduce Risk with Driving Alerts

Inaccurate billing and poor customer service aren’t managers only worries. Technicians spend a lot of hours on-the-clock and at-the-wheel, often driving company-owned vehicles.

It’s not uncommon for field service organizations to have one or two twenty-something technicians on the team. They’re young, they think they’re invincible, and, the second managers are out of sight, they drive like Dale Earnhardt Jr. at the Daytona 500.

If your team’s hotshot burns out and crashes? Your business could be on the hook for a lot of money.

A GPS Driving Alert tool will help you prevent accidents. If your driver is speeding, it will automatically send an automatic alert to your email or text, so you can contact the employee and tell them to slow down.

The most powerful GPS tools also include sensors that monitor other bad driving behaviors including harsh braking, sharp turns, hard acceleration, and more. They’ll let you access Driver Safety Scorecards, so you can see exactly how to increase your team’s safety and decrease your business’ risk.

Improve Dispatching and Drive Times with Optimized Routing

The math is simple – when your technicians do more jobs, your business gets more money. Less efficient dispatch will slow down your employees and keep you from boosting profits. But dispatch that uses GPS with Optimized Routing will be able to cut drive times and fit more jobs into every workday.

The best Optimized Routing tools cut drives time by:

• Tracking driver progress along every route.
• Saving the fastest routes based on time of day and destination.
• Determining the most efficient way to reach multiple destinations in one trip.
• Sending drivers their assigned routes via mobile apps.

With Optimized Routing, your dispatch can see exactly where drivers are, know which routes are fastest at any time of day, and share that info via mobile app. Your team will reach more customers and your business will boost profits.

GPS is a Necessity for Managers of Field Technicians

If you’re interested in learning how GPS technology will help you improve your organization’s billing, payroll, dispatch, and more, reach out. We’ll give you a free demo of the market’s best all-in-one GPS toolkit.