A Guest Post by ServiceTitan

Your field technicians are great at what they do, but they’re being held back by paperwork.

That’s the conclusion of a recent study by The Service Council, which found that 46% of techs consider “paperwork and administrative tasks” the worst part of their day.

The good news is that some home service businesses have already started subtracting much of the pain of necessary paperwork by adopting digital mobile forms. By streamlining the most redundant and time-consuming administrative tasks, mobile forms can empower your techs to focus on doing what they do best: solving customer problems.

Here are five great reasons to start using mobile forms in your business:

1. Easily Store and Access Data

Once data is entered into a mobile form, it is stored forever (or until you choose to delete it).

This is a game changer for home service shops that are subject to compliance requirements. Does your industry require documented checks of personnel, equipment or processes? Then it’s critical to have a strong audit trail and mobile forms create one for you automatically. In fact, you can include key compliance documents directly in your custom form workflow:

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

Aside from compliance, stored data can be used to inform important business decisions. Tracking customer information collected by your CSRs, for instance, can allow you to determine if they are following best practices and setting up your tech teams for success. Combine this with a good call tracking system and you’ll have full visibility into each individual CSR’s performance. With VitalStorm Metrics, all calls to a given campaign are seamlessly tracked and establish a true cost-per-lead and booking percentage.

You’ll then be able to improve that performance through targeted incentives and our customized training for each member of your team.

reasons to move to mobile forms for field service

2. Improve Efficiency

When it comes to efficiency, mobile forms are a direct upgrade to paper forms in every way. They  don’t just cut down on paper costs though. They also save valuable time by automating many tedious parts of the onsite job cycle.

For example, mobile form fields can be auto-populated with information collected by your CSR during the intake process. The forms can also be designed to dynamically hide or change fields based on answers to previous questions, thus eliminating redundant steps.

Most importantly, your invoicing process can be integrated directly into your mobile forms. This allows your techs to accept payment in the field while syncing work order and payment info automatically. It also helps to cut down on potential billing disputes with homeowners, which can result in significant cost savings down the line.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

3. Reduce Mistakes

How many times have paperwork errors prevented your shop from promptly starting a job or tripped up your bookkeeping? Probably more than once. With mobile forms, however, your business can drastically reduce the role human error plays in traditional paperwork.

With custom form templates, you can use drop-down lists or radio buttons to enforce standard responses to certain fields. You can also require essential fields to be filled in before submission, or prevent techs from changing the customer numbers on forms to avoid mistakes.

And since mobile form data can be automatically synced to your back office systems, there is no risk of making a mistake while manually transferring data, or losing that data by misplacing documents.

Conversely, forms can be used to prevent techs from making common mistakes in the field through the use of standard checklists. For instance, a “prep work” checklist can ensure that techs will not skip key steps when starting a new job.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

4. Go Beyond Text

Paper forms are largely limited to text entries. However, mobile forms are much more flexible in the type of data you can collect.

For instance, rather than attempting to describe the specific condition of a dirty air duct in words, why not add photos and videos of the system before and after your cleaning process? This would this be useful for documentation purposes. It can also be used to explain or promote your services to future customers.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

Multimedia can also be used proactively in your estimation process. For example, the ServiceTitan Mobile app allows you to import your own pricebook with product photos and manufacturer videos to build visual job estimates for homeowners that allow them to see exactly what they get for their money.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

5. Streamline Communications and Updates

Mobile forms make it easy for your team to communicate vital information on the fly.

Since all form data is automatically synced to the cloud, both your techs and your office staff can have their eyes on the same information and stay on the same page. When paired with a real-time dispatch system, this allows your team to present a tightly coordinated service that greatly improves the customer experience.

For example, let’s say a customer calls to complain about a shoddy job that was completed a few hours ago. Stop waiting for your techs to turn in a physical form at the end of the day. Your CSR can simply look up the digital form and verify that specific standards were not met. Then, he can track the location of the responsible tech on the dispatch system and schedule a return visit to fix the problem. As a result, the issue is solved the very same day, the customer is happy, and the tech has avoided an unnecessarily long return trip.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

In addition, any updates to the forms themselves are also much simpler to roll out. Techs no longer have to come in to the office to pick up the new forms. You can ensure that none of your teams are stuck using documents that are out-of-date.

reasons to move to mobile forms in field service

Less Paperwork, More Results

About VitalStorm

VitalStorm, a partner of ServiceTitan, provides paid search services and other digital marketing solutions to home service companies. We can help set you up for success with Google Ads and Google Local Services Ads. From there, we’ll track all the calls that come in through these efforts. Our team provides reports that show you how lucrative these ads are for your business. We also offer PPC strategies that take advantage of Google’s Automated Bidding feature and use our proprietary platform, Metrics, to interpret the data about your leads and your revenue from ServiceTitan, and then use that data to optimize your Google Ads campaigns.

If you’re not already a ServiceTitan customer, call us at 855-899-0970.

If you want to integrate your ServiceTitan platform with VitalStorm’s Metrics, call 877-311-5695.

About ServiceTitan

ServiceTitan is the number one, award-winning business software built specifically for contractors and other home service professionals. Thousands of electrical, HVAC, garage door, and plumbing companies have already used ServiceTitan improve workflows, dazzle customers, and boost their revenue by an average of 25% in just one year with us. For information on what ServiceTitan can do for you and your shop, contact our team to request a demo today!