4 Ways to Improve
Mobile Workforce Efficiency & Generate More Revenue

4 Ways to Improve

Mobile Workforce Efficiency & Generate More Revenue

Inefficiency can flatline any business. This mobile workforce challenge takes on many shapes and forms. For businesses with fleets of vehicles, pain points from inefficiencies range from:

Inconsistent Maintenance
Not having a consistent service schedule causes long vehicle downtimes and shorter vehicle life cycles.

High Fuel Costs
Long idle times, too many miles driven, and poor driver behavior all lead to high fuel costs.

Customer Service Falling Short
Quoting long time windows, inaccurate estimated times of arrivals (ETAs), and high compensation rates from settling customer disputes are all effects of this challenge.

Office Inefficiencies
Manually filling out paperwork and continually reaching out to drivers for ETAs create wasted time for employees in the office.

IMPROVE MAINTENANCE WITH A PLAN OF ATTACK

With no service schedule or maintenance process in place, it creates guesswork, opens up the potential for human error, and causes unnecessary vehicle downtime. Odometers have to be retrieved manually from the vehicles, handwriting the information down, and then transfer that data usually to another source like an excel sheet.

Along with the time-consuming manual process, maintenance is often procrastinated or forgotten, causing vehicle issues to worsen. This haphazard approach leads to multiple vehicles coming in for service at once. All of this eventually ends with high maintenance costs and the loss of revenue. In short, its money spent, not money earned when vehicles and assets are off the road and not out on jobs.

Businesses that implement GPS tracking quickly notice a change in these areas. Vehicle downtime shrinks because service now has a schedule within the GPS tracking system. Maintenance stays on time and in a controlled environment – meaning how many vehicles complete service at one time.

GPS tracking provides service reminders for vehicles from tire rotations to oil changes to inspections. The intervals of reminders are either the number of miles driven, engine run time, or due dates. Maintenance costs decrease, and vehicle life cycles increase when service is done routinely and on time.

Automating the service process also means removing the human error from the equation. The GPS tracking device pulls data directly from the engine, which means an always accurate odometer. This automation eliminates the need to retrieve odometer information manually, which helps streamline the service process.

CONTROL FUEL COSTS BY COACHING DRIVERS IN REAL-TIME

There are two low hanging pieces of fruit when it comes to high fuel costs – long idle times and miles driven. Long idle times usually occur when vehicles are left turned on during stops. Also, a common practice for employees is to idle the vehicle before they leave a location. The second scenario is understandable in extreme weather if they either heat up or cool down the cab. However, businesses quickly learn with GPS tracking that drivers leave their vehicles idle for much longer than the time it takes to warm up or cool down.

The common causes of too many miles driven are drivers taking the long way to stops or inefficient dispatching, usually sending an employee who is much further away from a job site than one of their coworkers. There are other factors to consider, mainly poor driving behavior. Poor driving behavior like speeding, rapid acceleration, unnecessary or frequent stops, and poorly maintained vehicles can easily lead to high fuel costs. Without GPS tracking, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is causing this issue.

GPS tracking provides message alerts including if drivers are idling too long, speeding, or stopped for an extended period. This software can also automatically message the driver as well in these cases telling them to “slow down” or “turn the engine off” to proactively coach and curb these different behaviors. GPS tracking gives you location information and the insight to dispatch drivers more efficiently to reduce the number of miles driven. Sending the closest employee to the next job becomes a breeze with complete visibility of where everyone is at all times.

Another way to control fuel costs with GPS tracking is by integrating fuel cards. Combining purchases with fuel cards and GPS tracking data only provides more control over costs. The primary way it achieves this goal is by showing the vehicle location compared to the date and time of the fuel card transaction. This information massively reduces and prevents fuel card fraud from happening in the future.

ENHANCE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Think about the effects of both a positive and negative customer experience. A positive one has the potential of creating life-long and devoted customers (repeat business). On the flip side, it only takes one bad experience for a customer to either leave a bad review or not use a product or service again. Word travels fast in the age of technology. Negative reviews can deter future business from someone researching online or social media.

Customer frustrations come from quoting long arrival time windows, i.e., “we’ll be there between 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM,” or inaccurately quoting ETAs. They can also be caused by employees not completing the job as efficiently as possible (poor planning) or not at all. Employees falling behind has a snowball effect on the rest of the day’s stops. Without GPS tracking, it takes work to update customers and vendors with accurate ETAs of drivers including time wasted calling drivers throughout the day to see where they are.

Gaining fleet visibility from GPS tracking means having a new kind of location intelligence. It provides a quick reference for driver location and ETA to any stop, which means improved and faster dispatching, especially for emergency/last-minute jobs. This location intelligence also means a proactive approach in updating customers and vendors on the driver’s progress. By more efficiently routing drivers to job sites, more customers can be serviced throughout the day and increases the perceived reliability of the organization.

GPS tracking technology also provides insight into how long an employee visited a client’s location. In the event a client disputes the work was not completed, GPS tracking provides the proof necessary to vindicate the driver and reduce the amount of money that would typically go towards compensating them.

INCREASE OFFICE EFFICIENCY AND REDUCE WASTED TIME

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