Using a Field Service CRM simplifies and solves field service management. Automations do admin tasks for you, while integrations with your favourite tools saves you time.
While most think of field service management software as a job scheduling machine, the right software works equally well as a comprehensive CRM solution.
Actually, with the right field service CRM, you can configure it to automatically manage clients, boost sales and marketing, enable business growth – and much more.
In this guide, we’ll show you the important synergy between job management and CRM and how to leverage the benefits.
What is the role of CRM for field service businesses?
Great CRM practices can be game-changing for field service businesses.
Why? Because field service CRM software allows teams to track and manage contacts and jobs automatically.
And so many field service businesses use CRM to:
- 💰Increase average order values
- 📈Improve the lifetime value of customers
- 👨💼Enhance the quality of customer relations
- 🚀Boost bottom-line revenues.
Take inspiration from John O’Bree at Chicago Glass, where the CRM functionality is paramount to their work:
“The BigChange system saves us a lot of time with paperwork. The CRM function is paramount to our work, and the ease of use is a big plus point. We would recommend this system to others to improve productivity and data collection.”
If that’s not enough, let’s take a closer look at how you can use a CRM to support all areas of your business.
How can field service businesses use a CRM?
A CRM can be a treasure trove for field service businesses wanting to improve the customer experience.
Ultimately, the goal of a CRM is to centralise data and connect remote and back-office teams.
Here are just a few examples of the tasks your CRM should simplify and solve:
- Customer management
- Sales processes
- Business growth
- Marketing operations
- Employee management
By accessing data all in one place, you can increase your productivity and make time for completing more jobs.
Customer management tool 🔨
Good CRM systems track live customer data. You should be able to see past quotes, jobs, invoices, contact details, and visits for every single client.
By having all this info in one place and available to everyone on the cloud enables sound customer management. Which means you can build trust and loyalty through a connected service experience that adapts to customer needs.
💡Top tip: Look for tools with a secure online booking portal, to make it easy for customers to choose your business and manage jobs at their convenience.
And by sharing critical data and real-time access to information, you can easily boost first-time fix rates.
Sales management tool 🔨
Field service management sales cycles can be long and challenging. Instead of typing the same information into multiple tools and spreadsheets, a CRM provides a fully automated solution that helps your team manage leads through the pipeline and turns them into paying customers.
💡Top tip: Opt for a CRM tool that also helps you to stay ahead of the competition by reacting to leads quicker than the competition with automated quotes and proposal templates.
With a single view of all live opportunities and pipeline data, you can stay on top of valuable new leads and manage each through to conversion.
The right tool should also be able to track calls, emails, and contact history exactly where you need to – so that you have full visibility and control.
Marketing operations tool 🔨
Clean and organised client history means that you can keep track of forthcoming services, upgrades, and more.
You can use this information to send targeted campaigns and messages to reactivate customers and win more work.
As an added bonus, you can enhance comms with custom-branded templates and dynamic fields for personalisation.
Employee management tool 🔨
Additionally, a CRM system is a handy tool for internal operations and employee management.
For example, at BigChange all our staff are on our CRM. This allows us to keep on top of training and certifications, managing annual leave, and expenses.
It also means, for instance, that you can use someone's home address as their starting point on a job if you are including travel to the job charges, meaning that they don't have to go to your own site first. This may seem minor but with lots of small considerations like this, so many hours of admin are saved otherwise spent manually updating records.
Growth tool 🔨
Of course, the real value of a CRM comes when it is integrated with field service management software.
With everything and everyone integrated and aligned, you can deep dive into metrics and measure company performance against goals.
This kind of insight and automation enables growth and scalability by eliminating repetitive admin tasks.
It also means you can equip employees with the right data so they’re prepared for every job and task, every time.
Use BigChange for CRM success
BigChange’s CRM gets your customer management process down to a science. Automations do admin tasks for you, while integrations with your favourite tools save you time.
CRM features you’ll love:
- A centralised database with 360-degree view of every account, contact site, and contract
- Secure online customer portal for easy job scheduling
- Automated quotes and proposals (with free templates to steal)
- A single view of all opportunities and pipeline data to close deals faster
These can all be done entirely on your own without the need for technical know-how, making it an accessible and flexible tool for any type of field service business.
And if that’s not enough, you can transform your back office from a cost centre to a profit maker by ensuring that you can quickly and easily plan and execute jobs effectively to minimise costly recalls and make the best use of everyone’s time.
What you end up with is a comprehensive platform where you can track every single step of a customer’s journey – from lead, to quote, to customer, to project requirements, to completed work.
Check out our CRM overview here, or talk to sales to find out more.
