Repeated callouts are expensive and take precious time. Therefore, when your service team can’t repair the faulty device on the first try, your costs rise. And that financially hurts, especially if you’re a small business. So, how to prevent that?
Common problems
Let’s talk about the roots of the problem first. What are the typical causes of a low first-time fix rate? Often, they fall into one of these categories:
- Incomplete/inaccurate issue reports
- Unskilled technicians with lacking diagnostic capabilities
- Insufficient tools available for the service team
- Chaotic procedures
- Limited technical documentation
- Poor communication
- Bad inventory management
Of course, it may be tricky to tackle all these challenges at once. And let’s be honest—repeated callouts can’t be avoided completely, as unforeseen circumstances may still happen from time to time.
Fortunately, you can significantly boost the first-time fix rate, reduce the number of repeated visits, and their financial impact by adjusting your company’s processes. Your best helper in this situation is digitization—or more specifically, field service management software, designed to make service and maintenance tasks more organized.
Centralize information
One of the problems that we hear about from maintenance experts very often is chaos. Companies frequently keep their maintenance information on paper, or in slightly better scenarios, in a spreadsheet document. No wonder important data gets lost, information won’t get updated, and many miscommunications happen.
Therefore, we strongly recommend keeping all the maintenance data in one place, ideally in an MRO system like Lumnio. A typical field management software for small companies offers:
- Service scheduling features
- Issue and repair tracking (detailed info with photo documentation, etc.)
- Equipment management
- Forms and checklists for industrial preventive maintenance
Such functions may help you solve many of the aforementioned root causes of low first-time fix rate. The centralized app also secondarily serves as a communication tool, making the workflows clearer for everyone.
Did you know? When creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) in Lumnio, you can also fill in recommended tools and necessary consumables for the task. This way, your technicians always go in the field equipped appropriately.
Improve training
Insufficient technician’s skills or inaccurate diagnostics are other common causes of poor callout efficiency. Prevent these problems with more practice-oriented training.
For example, combine your traditional pen-and-paper lectures with mentoring. Create multimedia work instructions with field recordings to provide your newcomers with more hands-on training experience. And, importantly, support an open company culture that praises knowledge sharing among coworkers.
Provide your team with remote support
Sometimes, the issue can’t be solved simply because the technician doesn’t know how—even with proper training. For these situations, it’s best to provide your field team with remote support of some kind. It can be remote visual assistance from colleagues in the control room, an internal chat, or access to your online knowledge base.
Try out Lumnio remote assistance for free. Download the app demo now.
Tip! Start tracking other maintenance metrics
To get a broader view on your maintenance team’s performance, we also recommend monitoring metrics other than first-time fix rate. For instance, to get more information about the preparedness of your service technicians, try measuring their Response time (time from service request to technician’s arrival).
To measure work effectiveness, try monitoring Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), which is the average time from failure report to fix. Similarly, it might be useful to track individual Time to resolution for each reported issue. Another noteworthy metric, especially for the production managers, may be the asset availability (uptime) percentage.
When you’re implementing a new field service management software, consider tracking Technician Utilization, i.e., the percentage of available technician time spent on productive work. It may help you measure the impacts of digitization in your company.
Interested in this topic? Read also 7 tips to ensure flawless service callouts.
